The Voice in the Ravine

In March of 2019, search and rescue volunteer Dale Hitchens spent fourteen hours combing the hills outside Gatlinburg, Tennessee, looking for a seventy-three-year-old woman named Ruth who had wandered off a marked trail. His team leader radioed twice to call it off. Visibility was dropping. Temperature was falling. Ninety-seven other hikers had made it safely back to the trailhead that day.…