Leyton Cassidy
MTHRFCKING MISSING
Day one is an eleven-mile ascent to a cabin set up for foolish and foolhardy souls like myself. As I begin my walk, I stop in the only grocery store in Bohinj, Slovenia and buy some food, mostly peaches. I make a phone call, the town dropping behind me as I say, “Goodbye, I love you!” The presence of human life starts to thin. Blonde teenagers sit outside a log cabin drinking beer in the morning. They glance up as I enter the woods alone.
A few families out on day hikes pass me as I head alongside a jade-colored stream towards Hudičev Most (Devil’s Bridge). The gravel path soon turns to gnarled roots and large rocks. In retrospect, the trail was comically foreboding, like Mother Nature trying to signal to me that I am a fucking idiot who didn’t do very good research.
I come to a shack. A small, white-haired man stands inside. I assume he has been guarding Devil’s Bridge for centuries. I answer his riddles three and he gestures for me to sign in. At the end of his hand is a damp pile of papers and a pen on a gray string. Like most sign-out sheets, the “out” column is neglected, making it look like no one has ever left alive.
O
In 1959, ten Russians went hiking in the Ural Mountains through what is now known as the Dyatlov Pass. They had planned a 200-mile skiing and mountaineering expedition (even now I hear that and I am thrilled at the idea of participating, despite knowing how this story ends. I terrify myself). One of the students got injured and turned around. The remaining nine died. The hikers’ bodies were scattered, each of them being found over a period of months as the snow thawed. Two almost naked bodies were the first to be discovered. Three more bodies were found, seemingly headed back to base camp from somewhere else. While their nakedness is strange, it can be explained by “paradoxical undressing,” from hypothermia. Two months later, the remaining four bodies were found in a ravine, all with extreme internal injuries not consistent with a fall. Some of them were found dressed in the missing clothes of the other hikers that had died miles away. Some of the hikers’ clothes had high radiation exposure.
Until recently there were just many half-baked theories: military experiments, a strange storm, wind (which is stupid), and other cobbled-together arguments. A passionate few think that Bigfoot did it, the theory that holds the most water in my opinion.
The Russian government decided to reopen the case in 2019, and came to the conclusion that the deaths were caused by an avalanche. While this seems too simple an answer, it is technically the correct one. Apparently, based on the way their tent was set on top of a pair of skis, a small avalanche, only the size of an SUV, killed all nine hikers in what can only be called a weather anomaly. So apparently the wind people were onto something.
The Dyatlov pass is not my story (clearly). But every time a rock came loose I thought of my body half-naked, cracked and twisted in the roots of some Slovenian tree, nothing but a strange mystery.
O
As I continue on the trail, I grow more and more alone. I have passed a few groups before, but at no point have I seen a solo hiker. The signs for the hutch I am aiming for are painted wooden arrows reading: VELO POLJE - TRIGLAV. The rain has slowed, and I feel like I am in the clear—but not so fast! I see a flash of lightning. I hold my breath and wait for the boom.
The last picture I took of myself that day is a selfie by a wooden sign. I have on a lazy smile and my favorite baseball hat. I had stopped to eat a peach. In a different context, this picture is terrifying. Then came the real rain.
O
Two twenty-something women went missing while hiking near Boquete, Panama on April Fool’s Day of 2014. I’m on Google images right now. Look up “Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon.” You’ll find a picture of one of them in a red tank top, looking over her shoulder as she ducks under low-hanging trees. The forest is so thick that it seems to build to a dead end in the background.
They were staying with a host family, who first became worried when their dog, who had gone on the hike, returned without the girls. Their digital camera shows that ninety more photos were taken between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. that night of nothing but dark woods. Brilliantly, one of them used the flash as a torch. Would I have thought to do that?
Ten weeks later, authorities found a backpack with their cell phones, a camera, bras, folded shorts, and some cash, all dry and in fine condition. Even later, pristine human bone remains and an intact foot in a hiking boot were spotted downstream. No one has ever been able to piece together what happened, and whether or not it was foul play.
O
The rain is now consistent and I am cold to my core. My heart pumps what feels like cold, stale blood. The lighting and thunder strikes get closer together and light up the now dim forest. I know that lighting is drawn to trees; I am sure to not touch them. The water adds the weight of a toddler to my backpack. The grade becomes so steep that I scramble on my hands, using roots like the holds on a bus. My poles are geometrically irrelevant and drag behind me, attached to my wrists. The trail signs have downgraded from painted words on wood to spray-painted dots on the occasional rock in some unexplained color code. After seeking some illusion of shelter under a beech tree, I pull over to look at my maps, shaking droplets from my now useless glasses.
I have lost myself on my map. I scan the miniaturized trail but I have no clue how far away my cabin is. I pray to an unidentified god. I reach a fork. I flip a coin. I start to plan for a night alone in the woods. I have plenty of water, a few peaches, and two cans of tuna fish. I could collapse in the mud and wait until the sun rises, but my body won’t stop moving. Hours, or seconds, or weeks go by. With each breath I let out a strained sound, which grows into a yell. I chant to myself above the roaring forest.
Y O U W I L L N O T MOTHERFUCKING G O M I S S I N G
I feel like I should have planned for a moment like this. I have always known in the back of my mind that one of my stupid fucking adventures might end badly. I think of the blizzards I’ve skied through and my calloused hand on rocks two stories in the air, untethered to anyone below. I think about my broken ankle, nose, shoulder, and ribs. I know about shark-bitten surfers and mountain bikers bleeding out in the middle of nowhere. So how did I get here? Ignoring the weather forecast and with a damp, useless map from some random, unvetted travel company? Why had there not been even a tremor of doubt through the fantasies of being some new Walt Whitman/Cheryl Strayed hybrid?
It might be because I also know about cars coming out of nowhere. I know about angry men in the night. I know about unstoppable, internal attacks in our own bodies, or all of the millions of other ways to stop existing. When a plane crashes into the ocean, and they never find it, the bodies rarely rise to the surface. They stay strapped in, arms in the air as if on a roller coaster, their bodies being continually manipulated by their killer. I’m not scared of dying, I am terrified of never being seen again. I have been screaming and no one has heard.
About the Author
Leyton Cassidy (they/them-she/her) is a nonfiction writer, painter, and comedian living in New York City. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 2016 and was the producer for the podcast Gay Future. She is working on a book about trees.