There is a sign at the southern entrance to the Hundred Mile Wilderness. It is made out of rust brown wood and painted with white letters, and it sends a stern and unmistakable warning to all who enter:
Caution. There are no places to obtain supplies or help until Abol Bridge 100 miles north. Do not attempt this section unless you have a minimum of 10 days’ supplies and are fully equipped. This is the longest wilderness section of the entire Appalachian Trail and its difficulty should not be underestimated.
The last photograph we have of the two women shows them posed beside this sign with their arms around each other, looking more like sisters than college friends who have hiked together from Georgia to Maine. Their faces are deeply tanned from months in the sun, and they are dressed in well-used backpacking gear—bright synthetic shorts, patterned bandanas rolled around their necks, and heavily scuffed boots. Samantha Boggs is wearing a tie-dyed shirt: a wannabe hippie. Missy Montgomery has on a pink tee with the words MONSON: BY THE SHORES OF LAKE HEBRON. They are both smiling like bridesmaids at a wedding.
We know that the photograph was sent at 11:33 A.M. on Sunday, September 7, by a Samsung Galaxy smartphone. It traveled via cell tower and satellite down the eastern seaboard to their parents, who lived less than five miles from one another in the wealthy community of Buckhead, in the North Atlanta suburbs. Samantha and Missy had e-mailed home many similar pictures since they’d set off on their journey seven months earlier. This one just happens to be the last we have of the two women before they vanished. And we will probably never know who took it.
The accompanying message said they would be in touch when they arrived at Abol Bridge, on the West Branch of the Penobscot River. Cell service is spotty throughout the Maine Highlands, but the Thru-Hikers’ Companion (the bible of the AT) said there was a pay phone at the campground store from which they could reliably call home. Samantha and Missy told their parents not to worry; the so-called wilderness was not as dangerous as it sounded. The path crossed logging roads that had been built since the Appalachian Trail was first blazed in 1937. And besides, they were sure to encounter other hikers along the way, including friends who were following the same rugged route from Springer Mountain to Baxter Peak—a journey of roughly 2,200 miles, which the young women intended to finish before the last week of September.
Samantha and Missy said it would take ten days to cross the Hundred Mile Wilderness. They told their parents to expect a call on September 17. The families waited—and waited—and now three more days had passed since the hikers should have arrived at Abol Campground. But still there was no call. Finally, on September 20, the parents gave in to their growing fears. They used the Montgomerys’ political connections to mobilize a massive search on their behalf in the distant Maine woods.
Which was how I came to be involved in the case.
In my four years as a Maine game warden, I had practiced search-and-rescue drills in all seasons and in all weather, and I had taken my skills into the field on more occasions than I could count. There was no aspect of my job that was as rewarding as finding a living person. And there was no experience as heartbreaking as following the calls of ravens to a flyblown corpse that had once been someone’s daughter or son, father or mother.
At the Advanced Warden Academy, my search instructor told me, “You will experience strong emotions. Do your best to ignore them.”
What he meant, I have come to believe, is that passion blinds you to the truth before your eyes. It causes you to miss important evidence. In the rush to find a missing child, you step on the bent blades of grass she left while wandering away from home. If you hope to find a lost person, you need to set aside your emotions. But how do you remain calm when a toddler is lost near a raging river? Or when two hikers vanish without a trace on the most heavily traveled trail in the country?
The truth is, no training exercise ever prepares you for the mood swings you go through when you are hunting in a remote place for actual human beings who might or might not be alive, and you realize that their fate is entirely in your hands.
At the start of a search, best-case scenarios still seem possible. Maybe one of the women twisted an ankle, you think, and they are hobbling back to civilization. Or they simply wandered off a moose path that they mistook for the main trail and ended up mired in an alder swamp, from which you can still rescue them. They might not be in the woods at all. You’d be amazed how many “lost” people are found drinking in bars, eating in restaurants, and sleeping in motel beds, unaware that the state has mobilized a massive search on their behalf because they didn’t have the self-awareness to check in with worried friends and family members. In those early hours, you tell yourself that any crazy thing might yet happen.