• Lost in the Wild

  • Danger and Survival in the North Woods
  • By: Cary J. Griffith
  • Narrated by: Roger Wayne
  • Length: 7 hrs and 47 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (1,252 ratings)

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Lost in the Wild  By  cover art

Lost in the Wild

By: Cary J. Griffith
Narrated by: Roger Wayne
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Publisher's summary

In the wilderness, one false step can make the difference between a delightful respite and a brush with death.

On a beautiful summer afternoon in 1998, Dan Stephens, a 22-year-old canoeist, was leading a trip deep into Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park. He stepped into a gap among cedar trees to look for the next portage - and did not return. More than four hours later, Dan awakened from a fall with a lump on his head and stumbled deeper into the woods, confused.

Three years later, Jason Rasmussen, a third-year medical student who loved the forest's solitude, walked alone into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on a crisp fall day. After a two-day trek into a remote area of the woods, he stepped away from his campsite and made a series of seemingly trivial mistakes that left him separated from his supplies, wet, and lost, as cold darkness fell.

Enduring days without food or shelter, these men faced the full harsh force of wilderness, the place that they had sought out for tranquil refuge from city life. Lost in the Wild takes listeners with them as they enter realms of pain, fear, and courage, as they suffer dizzying confusion and unending frustration, and as they overcome seemingly insurmountable hurdles in a race to survive.

©2006 Cary J. Griffith (P)2018 Tantor

What listeners say about Lost in the Wild

Average customer ratings
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  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 Stars
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  • 3 Stars
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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Great book, but should be organized differently

This book contains many lessons as to how quickly your plans can go wrong when in the wild. There are two true stories that keep you engaged... you become so wrapped into each story that you do not want to stop. How will each person overcome the long odds and survive? Read and find out. Both tales are informative and entertaining.

My only issue is how the book is organized (so 4 stars instead of 5). Each story is broken into alternating chapters, so neither is told in its entirety. The context-switching between the 2 stories when starting a new chapter soon drove me crazy, trying to remember exactly all that happened in the previous story before the change. It was so distracting that I gave up listening sequentially. I completed the book by skipping chapters so I could finish one story first... then go back and finish the other story by skipping chapters again. The book will be more enjoyable if the chapters are re-organized so the stories are complete instead of disjointed.

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89 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

What a great listen!

As one who lives in a rural, northern area and who hikes the wilderness often, this book intrigued me. What a treat! The story narrates the stories of two men and their journeys through the wilderness as they got unexpectedly lost in the very remote woods of northern Minnesota and Canada. I listened nearly the entire way through, stopping only to sleep. The stories were captivating, and it provided terrific info on what to do (and what NOT to do) if lost in the woods. The narrator did a great job with the stories, and each of the two men's tales were equally riveting. Their determination to survive was heart-wrenching. If you're a lover of the outdoors or of survival stories, I highly recommend!

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40 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Enjoyable Overall

I enjoyed this book overall. I always struggle with narrators who do voices, and the falsetto voices were distracting, but otherwise the narration was well-paced and didn't distract from the story. The format of the book, with its alternating chapters, was a little hard to follow in the audio version, especially if you missed the chapter subheading. I appreciated how the author highlighted the mistakes of Jason and Dan without dwelling on them too much, since they were largely the kinds of mistakes any person could make. I'm not sure I would listen to it again, but I don't regret picking it up.

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Too detailed

too many details turned this very interesting story into a chore to listen to. The smallest detail like when and exactly how the person went to the bathroom really took the polish off an otherwise good story. Would have been much more enjoyable had it been a wee less descriptive. It's hard to engage with since not even the most minute detail is left to imagination.

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20 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Not Great.

This book chronicles the tales of two separate men lost in the woods.

One is a guide who falls and gets a concussion and makes some major errors as a result. This, at least, is understandable. Alas, it doesn't make for much of a story. Slightly more interesting are the decisions that his group makes with no guide.

The other lost man's predicament is so foolhardy that is hard to listen to. He first walks, alone, in late late autumn, deep into a back country of crisscrossing logging roads and trails. He does so while paying scant regard to his map or his whereabouts. After a day or two, he finally realizes he is lost. He then spends the better part of another day walking in circles with his compass in his pocket. When he finally pulls out his compass, he makes a very questionable decision to start bushwhacking due south. While bushwhacking he immediately loses his map. Now, extremely lost, he sets up his tent and at least manages to get warm and dry for the night. When he wakes up the next morning he makes the confounding decision to abandon his tent, stove, lighter and backpack so he can move faster. Soon, you guessed it, he is lost in the woods with zero survival gear and can't find his way back to his tent.

The author does a fairly poor job of chronicling these misadventures. The lost hiker makes many assumptions about his whereabouts based on his map (before losing it) and a guidebook (after he loses his map) but the reader never learns which, if any, of his route finding decisions are in any way accurate. At multiple points he thinks he is seeing one specific lake or another. Was he right? I still don't know. Since he ends up frost bitten, sleeping in tree stump covered in snow with no food, and being rescued be sheer luck, I suppose we can assume most of his assumptions were wrong.

If you need to teach someone (perhaps a youngster) that the back country needs to be respected and why... this might be a good place to turn.

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20 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

awesome read.! what not to do before You get lost

i couldn't stop untill i found out what happens next. A big reminder of what to pack,. how to know your limitations and that learning how to navigate might be the most important tool you could have.

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17 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Gripping accounts of survival and rescue

I began listening to this book just days after a 6 day canoe trip in the Boundary Waters area. I am familiar with some of the areas where these sagas unfold and can attest to the wild nature of the terrain and environment. It’s a gripping account of the will to survive and the absolute dedication of the first responders and SAR personnel that come to rescue lost or injured folks in the backcountry. One you start listening you won’t want to hit the pause button!

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17 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Great story told in the present tense

Gripping story of two separate lost hikers. I'm not sure why the author decided to tell the story in the present tense, which was a little distracting to me. The narrator was superb.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

great read

great book my only issue would be that they could have made it easier to know when they switched stories

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Very Good Read!!!

this was very well written. I enjoyed the story and was very happy with the rescue!!

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2 people found this helpful