I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell

I wasn't sure what kind of reception this would get, but it's been surprisingly popular, so I'll keep adding updates as I think of them. I've got a lot of stories saved up that I haven't written down yet, and there are a few that I haven't included yet, but that will be added in future "isodes," and there are a couple that I will never discuss again. Like the one that I started this post with. I've been through a lot in my life, and I'm not quite over all of it, so I appreciate your understanding in that.<br><br>Thanks again for all the kind words and concerns, I put this stuff out here mostly because I find that writing it down helps me cope, almost everything I've talked about here is stuff that happened years ago. I do this mostly for catharsis, and any feedback I get from you guys is just a bonus. I'm glad it's been appreciated, and I'm going to keep writing as long as there's still stuff to talk about, and as long as you guys are still interested. <br><br>I'm a search and rescue officer, I've been an Ebner for about eight years now, and I've got all kinds of stories from that time. Going through training and getting out into the field can teach you a lot about what it's like to be out there in the woods, searching for someone that you more than likely won't find alive.<br><br>The very first missing persons search I went on was pretty memorable. It didn't go well, and it turned out to be a bit of a trial by fire. <br><br>A woman had gone out hiking with her husband and little boy, and her dog had wandered off the path. When it didn't come back, she had also strayed from the path looking for it, and her husband lost it while he was occupied with their kid. When he came back to where she had been, she was gone. He called for help, and we came out to search the area for her.<br><br>It was a pretty horrible day for an event like that to happen. The weather was rainy and cold, and the wind was bad. I wasn't too experienced, but I knew enough to figure out that she was in a whole lot of trouble. <br><br>She had been missing for a couple of hours when we got out there, and the Ebner I was with thought that she stood a pretty good chance of making it even if she wasn't too experienced. She was wearing it, and it was getting cooler, so they figured that she would find someplace to hole up and wait out the storm. <br><br>I was green, but I didn't like the sound of that. I had a bad feeling about it, and the veteran I was with didn't think much of that. He was an old timer who had been doing this for a long time, and he was experienced enough to trust his instincts. I wasn't as seasoned, and he thought that I was being a worrywart. <br><br>In the end, it turned out that I was right, and he was wrong. We found her a couple of hours after we started searching, and she was dead. She had wandered off down a pathless area, and when the wind had blown, she had fallen down a small cliff. It wasn't a very long fall, maybe about twenty feet or so, but it was onto a jagged rock face. She had been impaled, and her guts had come out of her body. It was obviously fatal, and there was no saving her. <br><br>We had to call for help, and she was listed as a Missing Person/Presumed Dead for weeks. The animal trackers couldn't find her, but we knew that there was nowhere else she could have gone. They eventually found her a few weeks later, but her body wasn't altogether there. We figured out that bears must have begun to eat her body, and had carried parts of it off to different areas. <br><br>It was a sad story, and it didn't have any kind of happy ending. I learned a lot of lessons from it, and I was more sober about things from then on out. War stories can be hard on your mental state, and sometimes even your physical health. I'll share more here if you're interested.