The Adventurer's Son(63)
Expenses piled up, too, with food and lodging; car rental; international cell-phone calls; logistics for friends coming down to help; hiring guides. Peggy managed the contributions that family, friends, former students, and even generous strangers gave us to help pay for all the costs.
The 2014 Wilderness Classic began while I was away. I’d planned to race with a friend in a two-person packraft and boldly descend the Tana, a major glacial river near the end of the route. Tragically, one of the 2014 racers, a well-liked, good-natured, and experienced veteran of the race, died on the Tana when his raft flipped in an icy Class IV rapid swollen with glacier melt. In spite of many close calls over the race’s thirty-year history, his was the only death ever in the event. The racers had all donated their entry fees for Roman’s search before the race start. Peggy said the dead racer’s check sitting on our kitchen table was a poignant reminder of the sometimes irrevocable cost of adventure.
Like a mother bear, Peggy squarely faced any threat to her offspring. With her phone always close and posted at her computer day and night, she dispensed news from me and answered the same questions from others over and over. We shared emotions that peaked when we were convinced that our son was alive and well (just ignoring and avoiding us), and plummeted when we imagined him lost, injured, suffering, or worse.
Peggy took care of details that could only be handled from home. Because we’d sent Costa Rican authorities an outdated picture of Roman from 2012, she searched for more recent ones: with his friend Denali in Hawaii; at home with his sister in Anchorage; on a boat fishing in Alaska’s Prince William Sound with Katelyn; in Guatemala with traveling companions. His straight white teeth showed behind a broad smile in each. Peggy forwarded these to Costa Rica for distribution to Fuerza, Cruz Roja, and MINAE.
In a little-known international agreement, the National Guard of every state in the U.S. is paired with an American ally to help in humanitarian crises. Lieutenant Governor Treadwell suggested that the Costa Ricans pull the New Mexico National Guard into the search. Peggy urged Alaskan politicians to follow up on this suggestion.
She also pleaded with bank representatives to share Roman’s last financial activities. “If there’s one thing to be learned from this,” she told her friends, “it’s to be sure that someone else is listed jointly on your children’s bank accounts. Otherwise you’ll never be able to track their financial movements if you need to find out where they were last.”
The office of Alaska’s then senator—Democrat Mark Begich—called Peggy to say the senator sometimes involved himself in missing persons cases. However, while neither he nor his office ever said so, it seemed to us unlikely that a sitting Democratic senator, up for reelection, would pitch in with Treadwell, a Republican campaigning for Begich’s seat in the upcoming November election.
All officials, from the embassy, to the FBI, to the senators’ offices, asked the same missing persons questions: did Roman have a Facebook page, a cell phone, a GPS; did he use drugs; how experienced was he; when did we last hear from him; etc., etc. Peggy answered the American authorities with the same responses Cruz Roja got from me my first day in Costa Rica.
Like Roman, Peggy had avoided Facebook. But now she found it an efficient tool for connecting with and updating people. In an outpouring of support, Facebook friends reported that family, friends, and former guides were willing to help. But what Facebook friends couldn’t know was that even an army of well-meaning acquaintances and friends of friends would have no better luck getting permission to enter Corcovado than we had.
Even if they did get into the park, how many Facebook friends had the jungle savvy to follow thin, unmarked paths used by poachers and illegal gold miners, trails meant to be hidden? How many could dodge green vipers at eye level and fer-de-lances underfoot while watching their step through slippery mud without grabbing spiny palms as handholds? Jungle travel needs four eyes and a sixth sense for hazards. How many had those and the time to come down, even if our GoFundMe campaign could foot the bill?
At first, Peggy kept a list of these names and their contact details. Some offered places to stay, locals to translate. But as our private search efforts were both illegal and risky, she stopped keeping the list and instead politely thanked those who offered. By two weeks in, the sleepless nights, incessant communication, and stress over her missing son had just plain worn Peggy out. Thinking about what her son was going through—out of food and three weeks overdue—made it harder and harder to keep it together.
She confided her fears to her friends, but never to me. She was confident Roman was alive, and I needed her faith. Early on in the ordeal she had broken down and sobbed long and hard, flushing grief from her system to better focus on the tasks at hand. Friends invited her to get away from the phone and the computer, to berry-pick, or just walk and talk. They gave their prayers, their love, their money. They shared stories about their kids as distraction.
Peggy’s brother-in-law Steve, together with sister Maureen, Carl Tobin, and other friends and neighbors, completed a house siding project left unfinished when I dropped everything to head south. Steve and Maureen helped Peggy strip and sand our living room floor. Peggy sent me photos of their work. It all looked great and provided her a constructive diversion from worry. “Keeping busy is good,” she wrote. “It helps keep the breakdowns at bay.”
AS EARLY AS July 29, a slew of high-ranking politicians—Treadwell; Alaska senators Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich and Congressman Don Young; Florida senator Bill Nelson; and a handful of generals including General John F. Kelly—all expected that National Guard personnel would soon be deployed, like a cavalry to the rescue.