The only time in my life that I’ve needed to call 911, it didn’t work. I was up a mountain, on my own, in a real emergency, and my phone had no reception. I was out of energy, out of cell reception, and out of luck.

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Camping at 9,000 feet elevation, we wouldn’t have lasted long without water. Someone had to drive from the campsite to the water pump to fill water bottles and prepare us for a hot summer hike, and as an enthusiastic new driver, I volunteered. I hopped into the old minivan without saying goodbye to my family, without thinking much of it, and drove off down the bumpy gravel road of Colorado’s State Forest State Park.

The drive between the campsite and the water pump was straight, tracing the edge of a gleaming, turquoise reservoir. After I filled the family’s water bottles with bitter iron farm water, I decided to drive around the other side of the reservoir to circle back to the campsite; after all, I had only gotten my driver’s license a month before, and the prospect of turning my car around on the narrow gravel road was daunting. I would be following the shoreline of the reservoir the whole time; it’s not like I could get lost.

Gravel crunched and groaned under my tires like a bag of potato chips. My car lumbered through a campground, rumbled over a cattle grate, and then lurched a little as the road became bumpier. I couldn’t see the reservoir anymore, but I wasn’t too worried--I hadn’t missed a turnoff, so surely the road would dive back to the shoreline soon. As I peered through the spiny trees to my right, searching for the reservoir, the van jolted up and then down again on a hump of gravel. Something clunked. My heart clunked too, and I slowed from 15 mph down to 10, then 5. The ruts in the road became steeper and more frequent. The low-clearance minivan scraped against the gravel with a horrible grating noise that I never wanted to hear again, but it repeated the next rut, then the next. It was my mom’s car, and it had gotten a flat tire on a similar mountain road only a week before, so I was petrified that the car would break again.

A terrified sob broke between my lips. “Please help the car not break. Please help me not be lost,” I prayed. I risked a glance at the clock--it had been over a half an hour since I left my family and my campsite. I couldn’t see the reservoir or any other landmark. I drove past one more campsite and then civilization vanished, leaving only trees and rocks and an endless, car-breaking uphill. I was crying hard now, gasping for breath as I inched the van forward with shaking arms.

“God!” I screamed. The primal sound ripped my throat. “God!”

Crying. Screaming. Begging. The van scraped, clunked, and jolted so much I was sure entire pieces of machinery were falling off the bottom. It had been over an hour since I left the campsite. I couldn’t breathe except for shallow wavers in between my screams. My vision narrowed and my muscles trembled. The ruts and bumps in the road were more like valleys and mountains now, each one almost stopping the van in its tracks. 

Finally, I couldn’t do it anymore. I stopped the car, turning it off in the middle of the one-lane road and stamping on the emergency brake. I stabbed the hazards button. I dug for my phone, crying as each of my attempted calls to my dad spun off into no-service oblivion. I called 911 for the first time in my life, but that didn’t work either. 

“GOD!” I screamed one last time. Once I ran out of options from within the van, it seemed that I couldn’t leave it soon enough. I scrambled out onto the gravel, gasping in fresh air. Using a ripped sheet of notebook paper and a stolen church pen, I scrawled two identical notes, one for the front windshield and one for the back windshield: “I’m sorry I’m blocking the road I’m stuck I’m lost call [my dad’s phone number].” My hands shook so much that I didn’t even try to punctuate my message. I wedged the notes under the windshield wipers, checked that the van was locked, and started running back down the mountain towards the last campsite I had seen, clutching my phone and car keys. 

My legs ached from weeks of hiking as I stumbled quickly down the road. I couldn’t stop crying, even as the thin mountain air seared my lungs. As soon as I left my car, I remembered the high population of moose and bears in the area. If I make a lot of noise, I can scare them away so they don’t attack me. 

“I’m here! I’m human! Help! No bears! No moose! Help!”

It took 15 minutes of running as fast as I could, crying and wheezing and screaming, before I reached the closest campsite. 

I wandered crying through the large family’s clump of tents before the mom of the family physically grabbed my shoulders to stop me. “What’s wrong?” she asked with concern.

“I’m lost and my car’s stuck up there and I’ve been away from my family for hours,” I blubbered.

By the time she got the full story out of me, a dozen more family members had left the tents and gathered around. It turned out they were mostly first responders and they knew the park well, this being their most recent of many family reunions at State Forest State Park. The mom (an ER nurse), her teenage daughter (a new driver just like me), and the uncle (a firefighter) shepherded me into their sturdy SUVs and followed my directions up the mountain to find the van. It was the height of COVID and the air in the car tasted thick and dangerous without a mask, but it was more important in the moment to accept their help. The family sympathized with me and chatted cheerfully as I leaned against the window and sobbed silently. 

When we reached the miraculously not-broken van, the firefighter took my keys and promised to turn it around somehow and get it back to our campsite while the mom and daughter in the safer SUV drove me back to my family as soon as possible. I waited in desperate impatience until we pulled up at the campsite, then dove out of the car and straight into the safety of my mom’s arms.

My family had been panicking too while I was gone--by the time I got back, my mom and sister were being interviewed by two rangers in a truck, while my dad had taken off running to find me in the wrong direction an hour ago. They hadn’t had many options, since I had taken the only car as well as all the water, food, and phones. I think we thanked the family that saved me, but I was fixated solely on my family. 

About 10 minutes after I was delivered back to my campsite, another ranger truck pulled up, having picked up my dad 6 miles away as he ran and searched in vain. He didn’t see me at first. He hung his head and walked out of the truck, sweaty and discouraged. “I couldn’t find her.”

“She’s here, she’s here, baby,” my mom choked, and then the four of us were all hugging and crying in relief and leftover fear. The long camping trip had caused strain and annoyance, as always happens when a family is stuck together for too long, but after I was lost and then found, we were fragile and loving and achingly grateful to be safe and together. 

I had been lost and helpless, panicking more than I ever have, and it was traumatizing. But even though I cried and screamed, even though I only got lost because I was too scared to turn around when I should have, I still kept going and made smart choices like turning on my hazards and leaving a note when I left my car. I’ve always thought I would be paralyzed in an emergency because of my overreactions to little injuries as a child, but my experience getting lost in State Forest State Park proved that I can handle myself well in an emergency. I have more confidence for future emergencies now, knowing that I can keep my head and make smart decisions even when I’m terrified.