From the chapter entitled Day Two:

I turned again and looked back up the beach in the direction I had been walking. It appeared that the landscape took a sharp turn to the left about 50 yards in front of me. Curious, I carried on. Here, the island landscape did indeed turn left. It was such a deep bend that as soon as I had walked around it I could no longer see my home. I entered the way point and description in the GPS as ‘Dog Leg’. I continued walking along the beach entering more way points and descriptions as I went.

I was startled by the lone cry of a sea gull. The gull was lazily soaring high above me, heading in-land towards the center of the island. It was probably laughing at me for having to walk and not being able to fly. I was stunned by the realization that this was the first living creature besides the fish in the cove I had encountered so far on the island. I shuddered. I truly was alone on a deserted island.

After walking along the beach for about an hour, I could see the subtle shapes of the islands that Blaine and I walked across in the hazy distance. That was the path that led me to this island; to MY Island.

My heart started to race as I got closer to what I thought was the spot where Blaine and I camped those three long, frightening, and painful days. Was I really ready to come face to face with this again? I took a deep breath and pressed on; if I didn’t do it now I never would.

I walked for another ten minutes or so when I started to feel déjà vu. It looked so familiar, yet there was no sign of the shelter Blaine and I built. There was no sign of the latrine area; no fire pit or plastic water bottles littering the beach like I thought there would be. It was weird. The area felt so familiar, yet nothing was right. I was sure this was the correct spot, but it was like someone or something had come behind us and cleaned it up. It didn’t make sense.

As I scanned the area, I remembered our euphoric jubilation as we watched the rescue helicopter land on the beach. The crew quickly got out to confirm that we were the lost pilots they were looking for. They asked our names and gave Blaine some water. They had to insert an IV needle into me to get me rehydrated. Then we were in the air. We didn’t clean up the island and we didn’t take anything with us. We just left. We flew directly to the hospital on Majuro Atoll where we were both carefully examined by a doctor. Amazingly, we were in pretty good shape and were discharged from the hospital about five hours later.

I refocused on the mystery at hand. I was sure this was the area we were stranded in, so I began to systematically search the beach and bushes for signs of our previous occupation. I found a small piece of wrapper from the emergency food in the plane’s survival kit and a plastic water bottle partially buried in the ground. Using a stick as a shovel, I was able to establish that our latrine had existed and had been covered up. I decided that when I got back to Majuro Atoll, I needed to talk with my rescuers and thank them for coming back and cleaning up. They did an excellent job. Seeing the beach all cleaned up with no remnants of the campsite somehow started to ease the pain of my memories.