On a seemingly ordinary Wednesday, Harry Burleigh, a 69-year-old outdoorsman, bid farewell to his wife Stacy of 40 years, setting off for an overnight fishing trip to Toketee Lake. His plan was simple: spend the night at the lake, chase some German brown trout the next day, and return home in time for Mother’s Day and Stacy’s birthday the following week.

“I caught a couple of nice ones, kissed them on the snout and let them go,” Harry Burleigh reminisced about his fishing experience. However, as the wind picked up, he found it challenging to keep his kayak stationary. He decided to return to shore, load his kayak onto his vehicle, and head back home.

But the day was still young, and Harry wasn’t ready to call it quits. “I wasn’t done adventuring,” he declared. So, he decided to explore Twin Lakes.

“I figured, ‘Let’s take that road and see where it leads,’ ” Harry Burleigh said. “It was 10 miles up a pretty steep road, but I got to the trailhead.”

At around 4 p.m., he filled out a sign-in card, left it on his vehicle’s dash with a note: “Be back tonight.” He was ready for a short hike, dressed in double layers but carrying only the essentials. He didn’t feel the need for a compass, map, beanie cap, or even a water bottle. His footwear consisted of wool socks and leather hiking sandals, which he found perfect for kayaking.

“I didn’t need the pack with my extra shirt. I was just going to make a couple of casts,” Burleigh recalled. “I’m ready to go.”

Little did he know, it would be more than two weeks before Stacy Burleigh would see her husband again.

Nearly two months after surviving a 17-day ordeal in the Southern Oregon wilderness, Harry Burleigh stood in front of a conference room at the Douglas County Courthouse to share his survival story.

“The first night, I wasn’t all that nervous,” Stacy Burleigh said. “For the first couple of days, I was thinking he was going to be coming home. But that second night, I started making phone calls. I was getting really nervous.”

She was under the impression that she had to wait 48 hours to report her husband as missing, so she waited two days to make the call. She later learned she only had to wait to 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Harry Burleigh was getting further and further from his desired fishing hole.

“It was a brisk hike through deep, tall timber and it smelled gorgeous,” Harry Burleigh said. “I crossed a little stream, went further and ran into snow where the trail markers were. That would have been a good spot to say, ‘This might be a good point to turn around.’

“I knew I was close (to the lakes), so I stayed on that trail.”

Harry Burleigh didn’t realize the trail to Twin Lakes took a hard left turn at that junction. His wrong turn soon found him in a fight for his life.

An experienced outdoorsman, Burleigh’s hike that was meant to be an “in and out,” turned into an ordeal that he didn’t prepare for.

“I dropped all of my protocols that I would normally follow,” he said. “I didn’t implement the seven Ps: Proper, prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.”

The late afternoon daylight was turning to dusk. It was approximately 5:15 p.m., and Harry Burleigh was hit with the realization he was going to be spending the night in the woods.

“I just took a deep breath and asked myself, ‘What’s the mental imagery I had when I came in?’” he said. “I had dashed, and my mental imagery was distorted. I took a deep breath and told myself to stay calm.”

The contours of the canyon ridges only caused him to be drawn further from his destination.

“I felt like I knew where I was at, that I had terrain awareness, but I didn’t,” he said. His map and compass were back in his car at the trailhead. “There was no cell service. I couldn’t call (Stacy) or anyone else for that matter and let them know where I’m at and I knew that I’m going way off target here.”

Harry Burleigh found himself on a steep slope. He concocted a makeshift shelter for the night, although he didn’t sleep. At first light that Friday morning, he was greeted with snow. He realized he was in the area of — ironically — Deception Creek, and at least knew that he was well off track.

“I was responsible for my own path to get out, and that motivated me to say I’ve got to do this myself,” he said.

He came across a rock ledge with two large logs long enough to lead him down into a ravine to the creek, where he could finally get some water. He began leading himself carefully down one of the logs when he lost his balance and fell. His head bounced off the second log. He landed on his fishing pole, which was attached to his belt, and his reel slammed into his hip.

“Now I’m on the bigger log, trying to get my sense, and I have blood dripping,” he said. “In an instant, everything became very serious. This was no longer a hike. I had to be mindful, stay focused on the moment.

“That was a realization. You know you did everything wrong, but at that point, you can’t knock yourself down. You have to stay focused and do something, do it your best and don’t expect more.”

Meanwhile, in Roseburg, Stacy Burleigh has called to report her husband as missing.

After Stacy Burleigh called the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office to report that her husband was missing, she received a return call from Deputy Dave Ward, who works with the county’s Search and Rescue team. Her communication with Deputy Ward would prove to become a source of peace.

“That deputy was a Godsend for me,” she said. “He called every day. It would get hard, but every morning would be a new day. I had hope. When I have information, it makes me feel better. Getting that information from the deputy was what got me through.”

Meanwhile, her husband was lost in difficult terrain with a skewed sense of direction, and Stacy relied on those calls from the deputy and the support from the community to keep hope alive.

“Sharing with the (online) community was what kind of got me through it,” she said. “It felt like there were people there with me. To have that message go from Roseburg, throughout Douglas County, across the United States and into the world, that was very uplifting. It kept me going.”

Harry Burleigh had reached the confluence of Twin and Calf creeks and decided to shelter there. After all, while he had not eaten in four days, at least he had water nearby. Using fern branches under a low cover of Douglas fir limbs, he was able to build a shelter to minimize the elements, which included low overnight temperatures and the threat of inclement weather.

But, he didn’t have anything to keep his head warm. His beanie cap was back at the trailhead.

So he got creative.

“I thought to myself, ‘What do you need underwear for? Just go commando,’” he said. So he removed his underwear, sewed one leg shut and suddenly had a head covering proper enough to help minimize the loss of body heat escaping through his head.

“It took a couple of days to assimilate it to the natural forest smells,” he said with a wry grin, “but it kept my head warm.”

The next day, Harry Burleigh was working his way up another steep slope when he heard the sound of an airplane. He found an opening in the timber and began waving as the plane passed over. The pilot didn’t see him.

“I blessed him then and I bless him still now,” Harry Burleigh said. “He was trying to see something in a hole in the trees, and there’s a gazillion of these holes and every bit he moved, the angles changed. The ‘needle in a haystack’ is so true.

“There were highs and lows, but that was a high. Just to see that someone was actually out there.”

It had been at least a week since Harry Burleigh had eaten, and at least a week since he had a fire. He was getting proficient at literally rubbing two sticks together, and said that the sticks would be too hot to touch. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to spark the tinder for his fire.

Then he remembered a 40-year-old gift that he’d forgotten he had.

“About 40 years ago, my father-in-law gave me a gift and said, ‘Here, put this in your wallet. You might need it someday,’” he said.

That gift was a plastic magnifying glass. Harry Burleigh said that every time he got a new wallet, that plastic magnifier would always be in there.

He was finally able to combine the direct sunlight and that magnifying glass to create enough heat to start a fire. The problem was that the wood he had gathered, with the plan of hunkering down for a couple of days, was so dry that it burned through on the first night. His attempt to use moss to try to create smoke — which might be seen from overhead — was squelched by the wind effects of the canyon he was in. The smoke would dissipate before it had a chance to reach the canopy.

“At that point, I wasn’t thinking very clearly,” Harry Burleigh said. “No wood, no fire, no smoke, no food.”

He eventually got to higher ground and tried to use nearby logs to create markers such as “HELP” or “SOS” which might have been seen by passing aircraft. While trying to construct these markers, his body was overheated.

“My tongue was dried out, my peripheral vision was starting to go,” he said. “I got some shade, but I wasn’t recuperating.”

Harry Burleigh had reached his last resort.

“I had read about it. I had seen movies about it,” he said, “and I drank my own urine.”

A short-term hydration solution, Harry Burleigh still needed to get fresh water. The water was at the bottom of the ravines, while his chance to be spotted was on the ridge tops. And he was growing exhausted.

On Day 10 of the search operation, Harry Burleigh’s original camp — the one near the confluence of Twin and Calf creeks — had been found.

They left Burleigh some supplies, a lighter, asked Burleigh to start a fire, and left a note that said “we will be back tomorrow to get you.”

In that singular moment, Stacy Burleigh had a reason for optimism.

Meanwhile, Harry Burleigh was on Day 12, and things were beginning to unravel further.

He abandoned his outpost on the ridge to try to follow a creek that he believed would lead him to Twin Lakes and, ultimately, to that same mile and a quarter trail out of the wilderness. When he came to a sheer rock wall — alongside a waterfall that he said he was “mesmerized” by — he saw a possible path to the top, but knew it was going to be difficult for an already worn-out 69-year-old man.

“I took a couple of pretty serious tumbles, but I managed to get up about halfway and my sandal disintegrated,” Harry Burleigh said. “It was just hanging by the ankle strap. I had just twisted my ankle, I was stabbed by a branch in my other foot, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

“I had to get to the top.”

He made it to the top to hear the sound of a Coast Guard search and rescue helicopter dispatched from North Bend. Harry Burleigh raced as best he could to get to a clearing where the crew of the helicopter could see him, but got there moments too late.

“I blessed him,” he said of the pilot. “He was doing his job the best he could.”

It’s May 23, and Harry Burleigh is both mentally and physically drained. His body is beaten up, his mind wandering. That morning, he hears a bellow through the woods. It’s human.

He replied in kind with all the energy he could muster.

“This man, I call him ‘Guffaw Man’, shows up and he helps me to sit down,” he recalled when he engaged one of the first rescuers. Another search and rescue team member helped hold him so that he could relax while the first man put fresh socks on Harry Burleigh’s damaged feet. A third rescuer presented Harry with a bottle of Gatorade, blueberry/raspberry flavor.

“That was like God’s own stash of honey,” he said.

A fourth searcher in the group asked what he had been eating for the past 17 days. Harry Burleigh said the menu consisted of some millipedes, termites (“Tricky to catch”), the occasional scorpion, one crawfish and a big snail.

More than 100 volunteers assisted in the search for Burleigh in the Calf Creek area, ranging from trained mountain rescue and ground searchers, K9s to eyes in the sky via both plane and helicopter. That search began on May 9, Mother’s Day, based at the lower Twin Lakes trailhead.

“He was very thankful to have been found,” Douglas County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Brad O’Dell said May 25.

“One of the searchers said, ‘If anybody wants a hug, Mr. Burleigh is handing them out for free.’”

Harry Burleigh was immediately transported by helicopter to PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center at Riverbend in Eugene, where he spent his first 12 days in the intensive care unit. He was suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, hypothermia and gastrointestinal issues, not to mention the fact that his feet had suffered a significant amount of trauma.

“They swelled up like two big footballs with little bitty toes on them,” he said.

He was down to 152 pounds when his normal walking-around weight was at about 180. He was emaciated due to the lack of nutrition. He joked that during a recent morning when he and Stacy were brushing their teeth together, he noticed just one sign of his body’s recovery. He explained by flexing his right arm to show an impressively constructed biceps muscle.

Harry Burleigh’s body is recovering. There is still a combination of nerve damage and pain due to swelling in his feet, for which he still requires a cane to maintain his balance, although the nerve damage is expected to heal and the swelling to dissipate.

However, he said that during a time when he could have easily died in the elements, his soul was enriched.

“I left that mountaintop with something I didn’t have before. My body was beaten beyond what it could give,” he said. “My mind was stretched beyond what I thought I could do.

“But my life spark, that loving energy that we have inside of us, was filled.”

Our Thoughts

Harry Burleigh’s story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of survival instincts. His account of his 17-day ordeal in the Southern Oregon wilderness is both harrowing and inspiring.

Burleigh’s decision to venture into the wilderness without essential gear, including a compass and map, serves as a stark reminder of the importance of preparedness. Even the most seasoned outdoorsman can find themselves in a predicament if they are not adequately equipped.

It’s interesting to note that despite his initial lack of preparation, Burleigh was able to adapt to his surroundings, using his ingenuity to build a makeshift shelter and even fashioning a head covering from his underwear. These actions demonstrate the importance of adaptability and resourcefulness in survival situations.

One cannot help but admire Burleigh’s perseverance and determination to survive, even when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. His story is a cautionary tale for all outdoor adventurers, highlighting the importance of preparedness, adaptability, and the will to survive.

Let us know what you think, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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