Trail of the Lost Quotes

“On the trail of the lost, you may not find what you’re searching for, but you will find more than you seek.”
― Andrea Lankford, Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

“A solo woman is more likely to survive a perilous incident in the outdoors than a solo man. Yet, the average female hiker fears for her safety more than the average guy does. Ironically, this phenomenon, dubbed the Fear-Gender Paradox, may be why women fare better, because their angst makes them behave more cautiously. Meanwhile, their overconfident male peers are taking more risks and suffering the consequences.”
― Andrea Lankford, Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

“Nature’s beauty often brings me to tears, but every now and then, she can also scare the shit out of me.”
― Andrea Lankford, Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

“Life’s too short to spend it in an office with no windows.”
― Andrea Lankford, Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

“DESPITE WHAT WE SEE IN THE NEWS AND ON SOCIAL MEDIA, IT’S EXTREMELY RARE for a missing person case to go cold. According to the FBI’s database, of the six hundred thousand or so missing person cases filed in the United States every year, over 99 percent of them are resolved.”
― Andrea Lankford, Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

“To cope within a chaotic and mysterious world, to truly "solve" the unsolvable case, we may, on occasion, need to let go of our yearning to fix it.”
― Andrea Lankford, Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

“dealing with ambiguous loss is as practical as it is profound. Some families, especially those of us from secular Western cultures, value mastery of fate over predestination. This causes us to suffer more when facing problems that we can’t solve. But giving in to helplessness isn’t healthy either. To live within this paradox, we must walk a tightrope between our desire to feel in control and our need to endure that which we cannot master. To cope within a chaotic and mysterious world, to truly “solve” the unsolvable case, we may, on occasion”
― Andrea Lankford, Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail

“I had lost innocence,” he concluded as he neared the Southern Terminus at the Mexican border, “but I had found respect—respect for myself, respect for nature, respect for humanity.”
― Andrea Lankford, Trail of the Lost: The Relentless Search to Bring Home the Missing Hikers of the Pacific Crest Trail