It was supposed to be just another regular Sunday afternoon for longtime Port McNeill residents Ken and Lynda Biggs.
"I had made some homemade soup and then I made some buns, and the buns needed to rise," Lynda said in a phone interview with the North Island Gazette as she recalled the early events on March 9. "My husband Ken suggested we go for a drive around 'the loop', as we call it."
Lynda noted whenever they drive around 'the loop' they go past the Beaver Cove dryland sort, "and just after you go past it there's a turnout and then a little bit further, there's a gravel road on the right. We took that gravel road and went all the way almost to the Bonanza Lake area."
She stated before you hit the Bonanza Lake area, "you can take another right off the gravel road, which is the Ida Lake turnoff where you can go down to the Ida Lake campground, but we didn't follow the loop and take that turn. We teetered off of it and took a road on the left, just past Ida Lake, and we ended up at the northern tip of Bonanza Lake, and that's where we ended up stuck when our truck broke down."
"We couldn't back up and we couldn't go forward anymore," said Lynda, who noted it was an issue with the transmission, and when it happened it was still early enough in the day, roughly around 3 p.m., so she was hoping "maybe some other fool went for a Sunday drive like we did and would see us out there" as there's no cell reception in the area so they weren't able to call anybody for help.
All they had in their truck with them was "an apple and an orange," Lynda said. "I think I had about three little biscuit cookies in my pocket for my dog and I also had my jug that I pack around for my water."
The water jug was only big enough to hold about two cups or so in it, she pointed out, but luckily they were parked right in front of a small cabin with an outhouse.
"We slept the first night in our truck," said Lynda, adding they knew who the cabin belonged to and didn't want to intrude.
"It's not our cabin, so we stayed in the truck and just about froze to death. It was so cold."
"In the morning I was shivering so bad, and I thought, 'I'm not going through another night like this'. I was planning on breaking into that cabin, but it turns out I didn't have to. I stomped up the stairs, tried the door, and thankfully it was open."
The first thing the Biggs did was immediately start a fire.
"That fire lasted for three days with me supplementing it by going out under the large canopy of trees and grabbing any branches that had broken off," said Lynda as she reminisced on how she kept the fire going. "I used those branches for starter. And then we started chipping at all the candles we could find in there and I used that for starter as well."
They also thankfully had a small pruning saw with them, which was still in the back of their truck from Christmas-time.
"I'd get pieces of wood and I'd chop them up six or eight inches long so they would start drying out more in the cabin," she said. "I did that right in the cabin, the sawdust and everything, and then I'd sweep it all up and put it in the fire to keep it going."
When asked if the cabin was warmer than the vehicle, Lynda laughed and said it was colder.
"I don't believe it's insulated in any way and it's just one big room," she said. "One big room with four beds in it, a table with four chairs, and a kitchen sink."
The Biggs looked around the place and quickly scavenged all the food they could find, which turned out to be mostly preservatives.
"I found a jar of applesauce," Lynda said. "Grandma's homemade applesauce and a jar of pickled beets. There was a little Tupperware container with some peanut butter in it. So after the first two nights of my dog not getting any food, I tried an apple with him and he didn't want to even eat that, so I mixed for myself and Ken some applesauce with peanut butter, and my dog just kind of looked up at me while I was eating it so I put it on the floor and he ate it. That became the dog's food."
As the days began to blur together, Lynda refused to lie down and quit, choosing instead to go into what she called survival mode.
"We weren't going to die there," she said proudly. "I was going down to a nearby creek every day and gathering water for us."
She noted to help pass the time she started to use "some paper and an ice cream bucket with crayons and pencil crayons and stuff that was there for kids. I started a journal and I wrote out everything that happened each day."
She also started writing a children's book.
"Yuki Goes on Adventure with Mom and Dad," laughed Lynda. "It was my dog telling his part of the story. I also wrote to each of my three kids on a piece of paper."
As the days and nights passed, Lynda admitted she and Ken were starting to have to face the dark reality they might never be found in time.
"That was when I truly began to worry I was never getting out of there," she said. "I wanted to walk away one day but Ken said no, we have to stay together. I have an artificial knee, and the other one's kind of going, so he was worried about it and he begged me not to walk out."
Instead Lynda made signs and posted them outside on fallen trees as far as she was able to walk. She then went down to the water and filled up a bucket with white rocks, placing them on the driveway and spelling out the letters HELP.
"I could hear planes flying over us," she said when asked about the rocks. "I was making a big visual so hopefully somebody could see it."
No planes saw the message, but their daughter Jacquelyn, who also lives in Port McNeill, was beginning to wonder why she hadn't heard from them in a few days.
"She went to the house and saw the buns had rose and then fallen," said Lynda. "She took the tea towel off and she could knock on the buns. That's when she was like, 'oh my God, where are mom and dad!'"
A missing persons report was quickly made to the police along with posts on social media, "and then people started looking for us, and it was my son, on the Sunday morning, seven days later, he was going down the other side of the lake, when all of a sudden, in the corner of his eye, he saw the smoke across the lake and stopped and got out of the truck to take a look."
Two young men with cougar hounds had come along with him to help him search the area, "and he said to one of them, 'do you have binoculars?' And the guy went, 'yeah'. He lent them to Daryl, and he looked and said, 'that's their truck'."
As the three men raced over to the cabin, they all started honking their horns announcing their presence.
"I came flying out of the cabin," said Lynda, her voice breaking with emotion. "I was just sobbing, and my husband, who was in the truck warming up, got right out and gave my son the biggest hug ever."
After being rescued from the cabin, the Biggs went straight home, showered, and then went to the local hospital for a checkup as they both take blood pressure medication. They are going to be on the mend for awhile after having to fight through some incredibly rough conditions in what lasted an entire week.
"I'm just happy to be alive," Lynda said. "We're recovering, we're definitely recovering."
Above all else, she wanted people to take away from their story that when you go out for a drive in the backwoods, "make sure you have a bag that's packed with some essentials when you leave. Be prepared."
