105) What courage is?

A memorial service was scheduled for Doris Anderson over the weekend. The 76-year-old disappeared into the Oregon Mountains two weeks ago, and though rescuers combed the area, they could find no trace of her.

Mourning turned to joy on a Thursday when sheriff's deputies found Anderson at the bottom of a canyon. "Hallelujah! It's just a living miracle," said her husband, Harold Anderson, 74.

At 76, Doris Anderson has astounded doctors by surviving nearly two weeks in the thick woods of Eastern Oregon's rugged Wallowa Mountains. Doctors opined that she was hours away from death when found on a Thursday, with a body temperature that had dropped to just 90 degrees.

Her family members were beginning to think they would never see her again.
"We had given her up for lost," said her brother-in-law Melvin Anderson. "We still don't believe how she could have survived that ordeal. I thought she was gone, but my wife thought otherwise. In the end, my wife was right."

Authorities too had given up hope. Doris had been lightly dressed in an area where temperatures kept dipping. About 70 volunteers a day had searched on land and in the air but to no avail, while her relatives lit candles and prayed.

Lost on a hunting trip, the grandmother of seven was lightly clothed and had no supplies or survival gear as overnight temperatures dropped into the 30s during the nights.
"I've never seen anything like it," said her emergency room doctor, Dr. Steve DeLashmutt. "For one being out in the mountains for a couple of weeks, she was in pretty good shape, infact amazingly so".

Anderson was listed in critical but stable condition soon after. She was extremely dehydrated, cold and incoherent when she arrived at St. Elizabeth Health Services.

Family members said that she had talked to them the next day but have revealed no details of her ordeal. "My mother is so much stronger than I ever thought she was," said one of her daughters, Barbara Moore.

A fortnight back, Doris and Harold were on an elk hunting trip in the mountains when their truck trailer got stuck. Harold broke his wrist trying to free the vehicles, and then the two got lost track of each other after hiking out to find help. Harold was found, but Doris disappeared. Since then rescue teams had been combing the mountainous area just south of the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area, but with little luck.

Baker County sheriff's deputy Travis Ash was looking for scavenger birds as the days rolled by instead it was a flock of ravens that led them to the woman.

Anderson is expected to remain hospitalized for a week, said the chief executive officer of St. Elizabeth Health Services in Baker City.

Meanwhile Doris credits her incredible survival to a healthy lifestyle and prayer. It won’t come as a surprise if a Hollywood producer scripts this tale on the celluloid. (487 words)