Missing. Lost. Gone.
Missing. Lost. Gone. Found is better, of course, but often GONE is the result. When people go missing in the wilderness and stay missing, it’s called a ‘cold vanish’. The stories of some of these people have captivated me in recent days as I read my way through the accounts of men and women, younger and older, who ventured into the North American wilds — sometimes on beaten trails through the bush, sometimes on paved trails within sight of the park’s visitor centre. Written by academic, journalist and outdoorsman Jon Billman, The Cold Vanish weaves stories of loss of human life underpinned by the call of the wild and matched by the fantasy of a mere person being able to survive in it. Billman’s writing moves us through some of North America’s most beautiful, most rugged, most dangerous national parks and forests, and pulls us into the hearts of those who hike and bike it — but not into their minds: When the missing become the lost, the gone, their minds and what was in them as they cl