The Adventurer's Son(60)

I couldn’t shake the feeling that everything I had done with him in the wild had all been a mistake, that in the end, I had been that irresponsible father the cowboys saw on Umnak. I might not have hurt the six-year-old boy then, but the suffering of a twenty-seven-year-old man lost and broken in the jungle now felt like my fault. Yet every time those thoughts circled round me, Tennyson’s words came too:

I hold it true, whate’er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

’Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

The love that I had for Roman—and for Peggy and Jazz, for that matter—was stronger and deeper for the time we had spent together in wild places. I would not give that up, even as I felt more helpless than ever. And while moments like this would plague me—still plague me—I would hold it as a truth that the bonds we form in nature with others are the truest bonds between us. While Roman may have been lost and dying because of our time in Australia, Borneo, or wild Alaska, that time we had together compelled me to come and do whatever was necessary to find him now.

SOON, THAI’S FRIEND Ole Carillo from Anchorage; my friend Steve Fassbinder; and his Spanish-speaking coworker, a young woman named Armida Huerta, both from Colorado, would arrive. Ole lacked Thai’s wilderness skills, but he was even more easygoing and had nearly as much travel experience. He also spoke fluent Spanish. I knew Steve well from a two-hundred-mile beach bike and packraft trip along Alaska’s southern coast, but I’d only soon be meeting Armida. Neither had tropical experience.

Meanwhile the Pata Lora story had seeped deeper into the Osa, into every pulperia and hovel. A rumor had spread that we were offering a reward. The situation was spiraling out of my control. But a lifetime of risk had taught me that a calm mind works better than an excited one. On this—the most important journey of my life—I controlled what I could: my emotions.

Dizzy with a pounding headache, I woke sick to my stomach and hurried to the toilet. Chewing Pepto Bismol pills only added nausea to my diarrhea. Morning meetings with officials didn’t make me feel any better; they thwarted my plans to ask the Cruz Roja for personnel and a long rope to take into the Negritos. Park Superintendent Eliecer Arce, a father himself who was sensitive to my plight, remained adamant that the area was illegal for anyone but park officials.

I decided to keep my canyon rappelling plan to myself. Every official made it clear they were upset with me already, both for my known forays into Corcovado and for the ones they suspected I’d made or soon make.

Back in Alaska, Peggy fielded phone calls and sifted through offers from Facebook friends. Most were of the we have contacts in Costa Rica variety:

I just heard a little about your son. Interestingly enough, my next door neighbor here has a nephew who owns a place called Good Times, a surfer retreat in Costa Rica. He has been there a while and speaks Spanish. If you give me information, I can pass it along and maybe he can do some nosing around for you.

So many people wanted to help. But people asking questions around the edges of Corcovado, Puerto Jiménez, and Carate would simply turn up the Pata Lora story. We needed immediate assistance from people with tropical search and technical rescue skills. Mead Treadwell and his friend Josh Lewis—both active Alaskans in the venerable Explorers Club—were eager to effect this kind of assistance. Mead even took precious time out of his run for U.S. senator to do what he could.

Mead wrote a letter of introduction to Costa Rican officials that described me as “well-known for exploration and search and rescue work under very difficult conditions in many climates including tropical rainforests.” He informed the embassy that I was “more than a distraught parent,” but “an asset [that he] would want on any search in these conditions.” In the end, MINAE permitted me into the park because of Mead’s efforts and Josh Lewis’s connections.

The son of a successful Colorado oil man, Josh had an old family friend in Costa Rica named Juan Edgar Picado, a lawyer in San José. Juan Edgar’s father had been very influential in Costa Rican politics, as was Juan Edgar himself. Juan Edgar was a personal friend of Costa Rican president Luis Guillermo Solís and of Public Security Minister Celso Gamboa Sánchez, the Costa Rican equivalent of the U.S. secretary of defense.

Minister Gamboa signed a letter giving me and my friends special dispensation to enter the park. As part of the deal, we had to fax copies of our passports and signed, notarized statements to San José waiving Costa Rica of any responsibility should we be hurt or killed. We were also required to travel with a MINAE permit and rangers.

Impatient to get back to the jungle as soon as possible, I wrote the GPS coordinates of Zeledón on the documents, faxed them to MINAE, and suggested they send our permit in with the ranger when it was ready. Ole, Steve, and I left for Dos Brazos without the permit or rangers. Heeding Dondee’s threat of arrest if I were caught, I shaved off my beard and ducked low in the back seat when police, MINAE, or Cruz Roja vehicles passed by. It was discouraging to think that officials might now put more effort into stopping me than looking in the park for Roman.

A multisport athlete and adventurer, Steve carried with him a pair of two-hundred-foot ropes and climbing gear to rappel into the Negritos canyon. Without ropes, the canyon is inaccessible, blocked by waterfalls at top and bottom. We hiked into Zeledón, set up camp on one of the few flat spots above the creek, then scrambled down to the Negritos branch of El Tigre where it drops off the first of a half dozen waterfalls. Jenkins said Roman had climbed out at the lowest waterfall. I thought that perhaps he could have somehow fallen into it afterward, in a Hollywood version of a slippery slope in the wilderness.