In July 2013, 66-year-old Geraldine Largay set out for a hike along the Appalachian Trail. She wasn’t new to hiking, but this time, she strayed off the trail. What seemed like a minor mistake would end up being the one that sealed her fate.
Geraldine got lost. Alone in the wilderness, she lacked the skills to find her way back. She was afraid of the dark, had a poor sense of direction, and didn’t know how to use a compass. The one thing she had was her phone, and she used it to text her husband for help, desperately trying to stay connected, stay hopeful.

“Got off trail to go to br. now lost. can you call AMC to c if a trail maintainer can help me?” she wrote on July 22, 2013. A day later, she texted again: “lost since yesterday. off trail 3 or 4 miles. call police for what to do pls.” But no one came. No one found her.
After those messages, Geraldine’s texts stopped. She wrote in her journal, detailing how she fought to survive for 26 days in the wild. But without the proper tools or skills, she couldn’t hold out forever. The fear of being alone, of the dark, of uncertainty, must have taken a toll.
Two years later, her body was discovered less than 3,000 feet from where she’d strayed from the trail. It wasn’t far. But it was too far for her to make it back.
Her husband had followed the nearby roads, tracking her location, hoping each text would bring him closer to finding her. But those messages, as comforting as they may have seemed at the time, were nothing but reminders of how the distance between them only grew.
Geraldine’s last days were filled with terror, isolation, and an overwhelming sense of helplessness. How can you prepare for something like this? How do you survive when you don’t have the skills or tools?
On Exact Subtitle, I write about stories like this to make you think about the fine line between life and death. How a simple mistake, a single wrong turn, can change everything. Geraldine’s story is tragic, but it also reminds us how unpreparedness can lead to devastating consequences.