When a sharp screech pierced the quiet night in Maine’s 100 Mile Wilderness, Shady threw himself over the person next to him in the shelter to protect him with his body. He thought that an improvised explosive device (IED) was going off, and he was going to save as many of us from it as he could. He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t think about what would happen to him; he just did what he could to protect us. None of us had any doubt that Shady was willing to sacrifice himself to protect us. It did not matter that what he was actually protecting us from was an alarm clock going off in his pack.
