The Bad Earth

As he whistled southeastward out of Oakland, Calif. in his T-33 jet one day last May, Air Force Lieut. David Steeves, like any pilot, could survey the earth beneath him with something of detached contempt. Traveling at better than 500 m.p.h., he seemed almost motionless in space. Just behind him, in twinkling miniature, lay the sweep of San Francisco Bay; ahead, curving gently with the earth, was the hot yellow of Death Valley and the desert wastes beyond. And below, like the riffles in a child's papier-mache relief map, were the grey granite thrusts and the white snow splotches of California's rugged Sierra Nevada range. In this country, pioneers had baked--or frozen--as they struggled westward a century before. Eastbound Dave Steeves was due at his home base in Selma, Ala. in about four hours.

Suddenly Steeves felt a sharp explosion. The cockpit filled with smoke. Working methodically by the numbers from the training manual, he jettisoned his canopy, blew himself out by the ejection rig, pulled the cord on his parachute. Down, down he swayed toward the Sierra's peaks. Up, up they came in sharpness, ruggedness, meanness. He landed hard on a 12,000-ft.-high slope, spraining his ankles as he hit one of the few rocks in sight. Coolly he measured the stillness around him, took inventory of his assets: a .32-cal. revolver, a knife and some book matches (he had forgotten his survivor's kit). Dave Steeves was, in fact, some 11,000 ft. up in the Sierra--a dangerously low altitude for a transcontinental jet pilot, a dangerously high one for a man on his own.

Salvation in a Shed. There was only one instinct, one Air Force rule of survival, to follow: go downstream. And down Pilot Steeves struggled day after day--crawling, hobbling and sliding through snow-filled gorges, sleeping in hollow logs and under sheltering rocks. In 18 days he went 25 miles, finally got to Simpson Meadow (elevation: 6,000 ft.). There, crazed from hunger, he stumbled on a park ranger's storage shed. Breaking in, he found more matches, fishhooks, a map of the area and a tiny store of provisions--a can of beans, hash, tomatoes. He wrapped himself in canvas, rationed the food so that it would last, and waited for his ankles to get better.

That was the turning point. Soon Steeves was catching fish, supplementing them with garden snakes ("They weren't bad"). He rigged a snare with his cocked revolver at a salt lick, finally bagged deer. In mid-June, certain that his health had returned, he made his first try at getting out by going down the torrential Idle fork of the Kings River, attempted to swim across. He tied his summer flights suit and boots around his neck and gripped his underwear in his teeth, but, out in midstream, he found that he couldn't make it, lost his underwear when he opened his mouth. Making his way back to shore, he trudged back to the cabin, the bones of the deer carcass, and a couple 1954 issues of the Reader's Digest he had found in the shed. His favorite Digest story: the tale of a man who was washed off a ship and remembered how much he loved his wife and children while waiting for rescue.

Back from the Dead. As June ended the snow receded, Steeves packed some strawberries and a couple of fish, finally made it over Granite Pass and came down into Granite Basin. One day last week one of the season's first camping parties heard the clatter of rock, looked up to see a heavily bearded, gaunt figure (he had lost about 30 lbs.) sitting on a rock munching strawberries. The campers shook their heads at his story, reckoned that he had walked about 100 miles, eased him on a horse to the nearest ranger station. From there he went out into the rauous notoriety that civilization reserves for a hero returned from the dead.

But neither the bear hugs of Air Force pressagents, the television interviews nor the well-publicized reunion with his wife and daughter would ever alter one basic fact. Never again, as he flew with the high and the mighty, would Jet Pilot Steeves feel quite the same detachment about the earth beneath.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.