I wrote the first list two years ago. People keep asking for more.
I want to be clear: I don't enjoy sharing these. I share them because I think people who spend time in the backcountry should know. I share them the way you share a trail warning. Not to frighten. To prepare.
Here is the second set of things we don't talk about.
You will sometimes hear your name. Not a call for help. Your name, spoken by someone who sounds like they know you. In the trees, just beyond visibility. The voice always sounds like someone you trust. We do not respond to voices we cannot see the source of. We call out "Search and Rescue, identify yourself" and we wait. If there is no visual, we do not move toward the sound. We move away.
There are places where the compass doesn't help. Not magnetic anomalies — we know what those look like. These are places where the needle is fine but you can walk the same direction for an hour and return to where you started. We've mapped most of them in our region. We stay out of them after dark. On a few occasions, we have found missing persons inside one of these areas. The persons were unharmed and unaware of how much time had passed. We don't discuss what they were doing during that time, because they don't remember, and the ones we've pushed have come apart in ways that take a long time to put back together.
The water rule is the one I take most seriously. If you find a missing person at the water's edge — lake, river, pond, it doesn't matter — and they are standing very still and looking into the water, you do not approach from behind. You call their name from a distance. You wait until they look at you, at your face, and you see their eyes track you normally.
I'm being careful about how I explain this.
Sometimes the thing at the water's edge is standing the way a person stands. From the back, from a distance, in low light, it looks right. You will want to approach. You will want to help. You will feel the pull of your training and your instincts telling you there is a person there who needs you.
I lost a partner that way. Not recently. Early in my career. I was green.
We don't talk about what he called out when he got close. I was too far back to see exactly what happened. I know what the water looked like when I got there.
I know what the water had in it.
Last rule, and then I'm done for tonight: if you are not on a search and rescue team, and you are in the backcountry, and you find someone who is lost and needs help — help them. Walk them out. Stay with them. But if at any point during the walk they stop and ask you to go back — back into the woods, back toward wherever they came from, for any reason — say no. Say no clearly. Keep walking.
They will have a reason that sounds good. They always have a reason that sounds good.
Keep walking.
Don't go back.