Ep. 37 - Stranded in the Wilderness: How a 6-Year-Old Survived 52 Hours Alone

The wilderness is entirely unforgiving when lines of communication break down. Knowing how to react under intense psychological and physical pressure is the exact difference between life and death. In this episode, Pat O'Brien sits down with Haley Zega, who shares her incredible account of disappearing into the rugged terrain of the Ozark National Forest in April 2001 when she was just six years old.

We sit down to discuss the exact series of events that led to her separation from her family hiking group near Hawksbill Craig. Haley walks us through her instinctual decision to follow the Buffalo National River, her use of an imaginary friend named Alicia to remain calm, and her survival mechanisms, which included navigating treacherous bluffs and identifying poison ivy. She also highlights the reality of dealing with severe dehydration and exposure, which eventually caused vivid hallucinations of flamingos and family members in the dense forest canopy.

Operating in a high-stakes survival situation requires absolute clarity, a trait Haley possessed even as a kindergartener who refused to panic. The physical toll of spending 52 hours isolated in the elements with no food or water left her severely scraped and dehydrated, proving that survival is often a grueling test of mental endurance. Viewers will walk away with a profound appreciation for local tracking expertise, as independent hunters utilizing mules ultimately located Haley miles away from where the official search parties were looking.

If you care about wilderness survival, incredible human endurance stories, and practical search and rescue logistics, you’ll get a lot from this. Please remember to Subscribe and Share this episode to help us grow the channel. What piece of Haley's tactical decision-making surprised you the most for a six-year-old? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome back, everybody, to the Radical Moderate Podcast. I'm your host, Pat O'Brien, and today I have an amazing woman who had an amazing story when she was very young. Welcome to the show, Haley Zega.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

So, for people who have not heard this story before, I think you're in for quite a treat. All I'm gonna do is set the stage a little bit. I believe it's April 29, 2001. So we're talking pre-9-11. We're in the Ozarks of Arkansas, general description, wide big mountains in northwest Arkansas. You're six years old.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Yes, I was in kindergarten.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

You were in kindergarten, and you're with a couple grandparents, maybe some friends, and you're you're out and about, maybe hiking, walking through the woods. That's the stage. What uh what happens next, Haley?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Uh yes, so I was hiking with my grandparents, my mom's parents, Jay and Joyce Hale, um, and some family friends from the Sierra Club. And it was my first time out in the woods. My grandparents really wanted me to uh get a sense of how beautiful and lucky we are to live in the Ozarks, um, just how uh incredible this part of the world is um because they thought of me as a city girl, which is very funny because I, you know, Fayetteville is much larger than it is, than it was. Fayetteville is now much larger than it was then. Uh I think it's about doubled in size, but um not not much of a city. And I I did go on to live in an actual city later in life. Uh, but they wanted me to uh experience the natural world and um hopefully, you know, appreciate it and want to conserve it. And so they took me out for a hike. And because I had never been out in the woods before and because that terrain is quite rugged, I was not having the best time in the entire world. So I was getting a little fussy. Um and there is a waterfall on the trail that we were on. Um, the trail is quite near Hawkspil Craig, which is a very famous lookout here in the Ozarks. Um, very iconic. You you can see the mountains from that lookout point, and it's beautiful. Um, I was not appreciating the natural beauty. I was tired and grumpy and hot, um, and I wanted to go home. Um, and so we would we had stopped at a waterfall that's on that trail because uh my my grandfather wanted to see it, and it is difficult to get to the waterfall. You have to like kind of climb down a tree or hike down around some sort of treacherous uh bluffs to see the waterfall. And um, I figured that if my grandfather was gonna hike down and see the waterfall, that meant that I should get to see it too. And my grandparents were like, absolutely not. It's far too dangerous for a six-year-old who's never been out in the woods before to try to climb down and see this waterfall. And that was kind of the last straw for me. I was already just grumpy. I didn't want to be out there anymore. And I'm an only child. And so I'm, I won't say I was spoiled, but I was relatively used to being listened to and getting my way. Um, I was pretty stubborn. I'm still pretty stubborn. So I sat down on top of that, um, on top of a rock uh at the top of the waterfall. And um I said, you know, I'm not gonna move unless you carry me out of here, which would absolutely not be possible in that terrain. And my grandparents were also not gonna put up with that. Um, it was very much a battle of wills between me and my my grandmother in particular. Um, and you know, she said to the rest of the group, you know what, y'all hike on. I will deal with this angry child. And um, so I was I was sitting there and she basically said, you know, if if you don't get up um and and walk yourself out with us, hike out with us, um, then we're gonna leave you here and I'll call your mom and tell you where she's at, where you're at.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Um And let me get, did you remember that? Are you remembering that like yourself today, or are you remembering that part of the conversation because people told you later? Because you were only six years old.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

I I do remember, I I remember um the feeling of like I don't want to be out here. I remember sitting down and making that decision to stay. And um, that sort of battle of wills, I absolutely remember uh doing that. And so, you know, my my grandmother did, I think what a lot of parents and caregivers of children have done over the years, where she said, Okay, well, I'm gonna walk away. And then she did. And um, you know, I didn't want to be left out there, of course. So I tried to follow her, but at that point, it was quite a dense forest setting, and the trail was not very easy to follow, especially if you don't know what you're looking for. I think today it's far more well known, so it's much more well-worn and easier to follow. At that point, 25 years ago, that was not the case. And so I tried to get up and follow her, but I wound up taking the wrong path. And um, I took a path that I thought linked up with the main trail. Like I because I couldn't see her anymore, she got far enough away that she was out of my line of sight. So I took a trail that I thought was meeting up with the main path, and it actually just went in the complete wrong direction. Um, and I kept following that trail and kept following that trail. And um What time of day is this? This would have been before lunch. It would have been um late morning. And so it was, you know, full full daytime out. But I uh couldn't hear them calling for me anymore. I couldn't hear, you know, couldn't see anything. The because it was spring, um, all the leaves were on the trees, quite dense. Uh, it was essentially like a curtain had dropped between me and and my grandmother. Um, and so I just kept walking. And eventually I figured out, okay, this trail isn't meeting up with the main trail, but I still thought I was going in the correct direction. So I figured I'm just gonna keep walking and I'll make it back to the truck where we were parked. Um, and that is not what happened. I kept following the trail until the trail disappeared. Um, it was probably a game path or something, not not an official, you know, uh maintained trail that people used. It was probably used by like animals or something. So eventually it sort of petered off. And then um I was just alone in the Ozark National Forest.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Well, and and for people who don't know that that area so you're talking about trails and it's a national forest, but this isn't like a park where a bunch of people are trailing and you're you're thinking, oh, I'm gonna run into an adult. This is fairly people go there, it's a destination, they cut and and yeah, you might run into somebody, but it the chances are probably more so you would not run into any into anybody.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Correct. A lot of times when people think like national park, this is not a national park. It is nationally protected land, but it is not maintained in the way that something like Rocky Mountain National Park would be or you know, Yosemite. Like there aren't like ranger stations out there. There aren't, there's not infrastructure. It's actually, I think the statistic is it is the most rural place in the United States between uh the Appalachians and the Rockies. So there is really it is very sparsely populated. There is basically nothing out there, even still to this day. Um, there is very little infrastructure. There are people who live out there, but they kind of live out there specifically because they want to be left alone. So there's really just there's there's not even really good self cell phone service, even in 2026. So imagine 2001, there was no cell service out there.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

So you're six years old. You now realize I'm pretty much lost. Do you have any provisions? Do you have water or anything?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

No, the only thing I had with me, uh I had a a shirt that um we had bought from uh Cape Canaveral, the Kennedy Space Center, and a pair of black shorts and tennis shoes. And I had had a sweatshirt with me, but we had left that in the truck because it was a pretty warm day. So I was literally just in a t-shirt and shorts, and that was it. I didn't have any food, I didn't have any water. And unfortunately, the shirt I was wearing was gray, and so it blended in perfectly with the surroundings, and so I was even harder to spot because I was basically camouflaged.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

So you you're you're isolated. It's April 29th. It's we're starting the story kind of the middle of the day. Take us through the the red what you remember from the rest of just that day.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yeah, absolutely. So um, as soon as I realized I was lost, um, I had an imaginary friend with me. Um, her name is Alicia. People tend to really get like hung up on that part of the story. Um, but she was with me from the moment that I knew I was lost and until obviously, um, spoiler alert, I was found. Uh, you know, I am here today. I'm not broadcasting from a cave.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Well, and let me, the Alicia, uh, had she, you said imaginary friend. Yes. Did you have her prior to being in the woods, or did you make her, did that friendship happen in the woods?

SPEAKER_00 10:12

I was not a child that ever had imaginary friends uh leading up to this. And I I never had any after, never saw her again after. Um, my mom talks about how she was really shocked when I had told her that I had an imaginary friend because um she had told me about imaginary friends that she had when she was a child. And I thought that that was ridiculous. And so then, you know, after this experience, when I said, Oh yes, I had this imaginary friend, she was like, What? So yeah, I I was not uh a very fanciful child. Um I had a very rich inner world, but I was also very good at discerning like the difference between fiction and reality.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Um but you did have in a friend when you really needed one. Yeah. So what are you and her name one more time?

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Alicia.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Alicia. What did you and Alicia do next?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

So um I just we just kept walking through the woods. And um, my plan was still that I believed I was walking in the correct direction to get back to the truck and my grandparents. Uh, that was not the case. Um, and on the first day, I actually managed to get down the bluffs and to the Buffalo National River. And um, for context, that the trail that we were on is uh on the bluff, like sort of along the edge of the bluffs, and it's about a 200-foot drop to where the river is in the valley below. Um, and so the fact that I didn't fall off the cliff is kind of a miracle. Um, but I did manage to get to the river safely. I wasn't even really aware that there was a river there. But once I made it to the river, I kind of realized, okay, so I'm not going in the direction of the truck because we didn't at any point cross a river on this hike that I had been on with my grandparents originally. Um, and so then once I got to the river, the the plan changed because I was like, okay, this is this is new. What do we do now? Um, and the plan from that moment through the rest of the experience was follow the river because a river will lead to a bridge, which will lead to a road, which will lead to a gas station or some sort of civilization where I can call my parents because I did I had their phone number memorized. So I was going to be, that was the plan was find people and the people will hopefully help me.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Well, and taking everybody back to 2001, I think I had a pager. I might have had a flip phone. You were only six. You didn't you didn't have a cell phone. I mean, there's no GPS on you, there's no iPhone uh tracking you. I I think it's interesting, you seem to have a very logical approach. Were you do you think you were calm, like, well, I just have to do this? Like I you know, or were you freaking out?

SPEAKER_00 12:59

No, I've never been a panicker. Um at least not about big life or death things. Um, I in any emergency situation like this that I've ever been in since then, I am extremely uh solution oriented. I am very logical, like, okay, what do I do? What how do we how do we fix the situation? I'm not always like that when the stakes are not quite so high, but uh when when that sort of switch flips, I'm like, all right, now what do we do? We don't panic because panic, panic leads to mistakes. So, uh, and not that I was thinking through that as a child, but that now I understand that. Right. Um, but no, I was never scared really. I I didn't want to be out there. I didn't I knew I wasn't in a good situation. I knew I needed to get out of the situation, but I was never panicky. I've never really freaked out. I um was extremely solution-oriented through the entire experience.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Um so we're so we're just on day one now. Yes. Let's take it into that evening. So now it's it's more the sun's probably up till eight o'clock or so, but it gets dark. What do you do just on day one when it gets dark?

SPEAKER_00 14:15

So at this point, um there were helicopters flying over the the area. And because I had never been in the woods before, I didn't know if that was normal. Um it is not normal for helicopters to be that mini.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Not at all.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Um, you know, over and over again, back and forth. But I knew helicopters meant people. So I was trying to get their attention. Um, but as night began to fall and they weren't seeing me, um, I decided that it would probably be best for me to sleep somewhere where they might see me. So I slept, I I crossed the river into uh into the middle of the river where there was like a rock, and I slept on top of the rock that first night so that the helicopters river, not a big river, but kind of a or how big of a river? It's it's a pretty big river. And it and at that in the spring, the river's currents are quite brisk. Um, and you this is the Buffalo River? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

You let me just I I didn't I've heard the story before, I've never heard this part of it. You get the Buffalo River, which can definitely be brisk. I mean, at various points could easily be a hundred feet wide. People people canoe it, this sort of thing. You wanted to be seen, so you find a rock in the middle of the tributary, yes, and you you're able to sleep on it.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

Well, I don't know that I slept very well. Um, I was sort of dozing. Um, I but the the idea was that maybe if I'm not under the trees, the helicopters will see me. Um because I had been throwing like sand in the air, I'd been waving my hands and and they just never saw me.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Um how do you recall, like, do you were there times where you thought there was a clear line of sight?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yeah, I mean, I could see them, so I figured, you know, um, there was there was a point where I thought about climbing a tree. Thankfully I didn't do that. Um but I was trying any way that I could think of to get their attention. Um, but you know, they they just never saw me. And so that once I realized, okay, the sun is going down, I need to figure out where I'm gonna spend the night. That was that was the best solution I came up with. Um you spend all night there.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah. And let me ask, you you don't have food.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

And did you try to drink any of the river water?

SPEAKER_00 16:44

I didn't drink any anything um because I didn't know if it was safe. Um I was I didn't want to get sick, so I just left it alone. Um, I was wet because I had been in the water, and while it was getting pretty hot during the day, um, it was getting quite cold at night, especially up in those mountains. So I was very cold. Um and I could see lights on the mountains from because there are people who live out there. So I could see, I guess, from cabins or farms or you know, whatever, I could see like, okay, there are people because there are lights on the mountains. So I knew somewhere out there there were people. Um, and so I was just having to figure out how to get to them. And while I was never really scared, I do remember thinking, okay, well, maybe if I fall asleep and wake up, it'll turn out this was a dream.

unknown 17:37

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yeah. Unfortunately, it was not a dream.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

What was your friend telling you, your your imaginary friend?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Um, she was just like keeping me calm, basically. You tell like little kids stories, like fairy tales and sing songs and and things like that. Um, just like, you know, stuff kids talk about. It wasn't like uh, okay, and now you do this and now you do that. It was very much just like stuff normal kids would talk about on a normal day.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Like you and your friend are in the woods, you're having an adventure.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Yeah, pretty much. But I mean, like we I I very much knew like this is not normal. This is not a situation I want to be in, this is not a situation I would choose to be in or want to be in again.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

But um So now we're let's so let's go to day two, which is April 30th, 2001. You've now been lost for approaching 24 hours. What do you do on day two?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

So on day two, I just it was sort of more of the same plan of okay, um, well, now I have the river as a guide. So I'm just gonna keep following the river. So I got down off the rock and got back to shore. And um, you know, occasionally I when it would get too hot, I would go into the shade of the trees. I knew what poison ivy looked like, so I was trying to avoid that. Um and, you know, something that I actually realized not that long ago, um, because I had no experience in in nature like this, but I did realize I grew up next to a creek. And I think my parents had probably told me, you know, like, don't drink the creek water or, you know, like maybe like small things that did help me at least somewhat. You know, they had pointed out to me, like, here's what poison ivy looks like, because we had a backyard that may have had it. And so even though I wasn't super experienced in the wilderness, I did have at least a little bit of knowledge that I think did did serve me. Um, just having grown up in Arkansas.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Well, and you mentioned that you the reason you didn't drink the water is you didn't know if it was safe. Well, not all six-year-olds think that way. I mean, I I probably I mean, I drank out of the hose and God knows what when I was six years old, and I had I could have walked inside. So it sounds like my guess is your parents had told you things that you probably didn't think mattered until you're like, Well, what did my parents say about that? Yeah. So the whole the whole day of that's day two, is it just kind of the same? You're f you're just walking and you're just but and you still see the helicopters during the day?

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Yes, yeah. The helicopters were still flying over, so I was still trying to get their attention. Um, you know, I was just kind of walking along. Um, you know, I didn't have anything to eat, I didn't have anything to drink, so I was quite hungry, very thirsty, hot, tired, um, but very determined. I just kept going. Um, and so it was really just a full day of walking and taking breaks and then getting up and walking more, and you know, just um as much as I possibly could trying to make progress.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

You never encountered any animals or any scary stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

No. Um, the only animals I saw, you know, were birds um occasionally and then some insects, but I never saw, you know, we have mountain lions and and black bears. And that was actually a a bit of a concern I found out later was that they thought a mountain lion could have gotten me and uh carried me off because at that point I was definitely in the range of what a mountain lion would be able to to take down as prey, but I never saw any animals at all. So um that was quite lucky. I never I never even saw any deer. Um and so yeah, I just I just kept going. I don't even think I think at one point I did think about oh, there might be bears out here, but I it never it never came up.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

So um yeah, just a lot of time lost in the woods. So like okay, so that's day two again, April 30th, 2001. That night, what do you do that night? Same plan, or do you do something different?

SPEAKER_00 22:05

So that night I actually thought it might rain because uh my mom had told me something about how if the moon is walking in water, like if the the way that the clouds look around the moon on certain nights means that it could rain. And so I didn't want to be caught in the rain. So I found a little like outcropping cave kind of situation not far from the river. I never wanted to be out of sight of the river. Um, so I spent the that night in a cave just in case it rained.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

And well, and I think maybe on episode two we'll talk a little bit more about the search part of it because there's a lot of stuff going on. Yes, but I I'm I I'm just all in on just what's going through your little six-year-old brain in your experience. So to recap here, you you realize you're lost on day one, you're being smart, you're not drinking water because Mikey's sick. Did you ever eat anything? No. No berries or anything? Nothing. And did you did you were you tempted?

SPEAKER_00 23:07

What I don't even really remember there being any berries. Okay. Um, there may have been, but I I don't I don't have any recollection of there being anything that I even considered eating.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Um, that remotely looked appetizing to me.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

So you're you're being very super smart. Night one, you sleep on a rock in the middle of a water tributary. Night two, because your mom had taught you about, you know, signs of when am I ringing, you end up in a cave. But you're at this point, it's like more than 36 hours. Is that right? Yeah. So you wake up on day three, you've got to just be, you gotta be exhausted, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Absolutely exhausted, scraped up, bug bites, dehydrated, all the things. Um definitely starting to suffer from the effects of exposure. Um, and I was hallucinating actually. Um, and my hallucinations were like quite distinct from my imaginary friend. Um, but you know, that's a relatively common phenomenon, especially when people are extremely dehydrated and hungry. Hallucinations are you hear about people like in the desert hallucinating like oases and things like that. But um, I hallucinated a valley of flamingos. Um yeah, so and we don't have flamingos in Arkansas, so I know that was a hallucination. Um, and I was also hallucinating like family members, and like, you know, and I I knew they were hallucinations, but they, you know, like I was hallucinating people in the trees.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

And um, did you you you've said already that you did you weren't scared, you were solution-oriented. Was there any on that day three, was there any concern like I may not get out of here, or were you still not there?

SPEAKER_00 24:56

It I don't think it ever crossed my mind that I wouldn't make it. Um, I think I was lost kind of at exactly the wrong and right age in a lot of ways. Um, because I think if I had been any younger, I would have sat down and cried and I would not have thought, oh, I can just walk myself out of this. If I had been any older, I probably would have understood a little bit more about my own mortality and would have thought, okay, a moving target is more difficult to find. So I may have stayed in one place as opposed to just continuing to walk. Um, but you know, this was my first real uh my first real experience with uh a near-death experience. I at that point had not had any family members die. I was not, I had never had any pets die. I think I knew what death was like as a concept, but it never occurred to me that that was a real possibility for me.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Well, here we've got a couple minutes left. What I'd like to do, and then next week we'll get into kind of the search, and then I want to I want to hear what you've done for the last 25 years. But so you wake up on it's now May 1st, yes of 2001, and this is the good day. This is the day where good things happen. What do you remember about how you were found?

SPEAKER_00 26:24

So I was sitting next to the river. Um, I think I had my feet kind of dangling in the river, and uh all of a sudden from across the river, I see two men on what I presumed were horses, they were actually mules coming out of the woods. And I was just so relieved to see people. Um I was very exhausted, so I don't think I was terribly demonstrative, but it was the first people I'd seen in 52 hours. So um I was just overjoyed to see people. And um, you know, they came out of the woods and they said, essentially, you're that little girl everybody's been looking for. Um, and so that was William Jeff Aligns and Little James. Um, and they were natives of Newton County. They lived there their whole lives. They they knew those woods frontwards, backwards, sideways, and they were um basically expert trackers and hunters, and they were not a part of the official search party, but they believed the search party was looking in the wrong place, and they were able to uh basically track me down and find me, and they put me on the back of uh the mules, copper and big mama. Um I preferred drag copper because Big Mama was she she was she was big, she's Big Mama, and um they walked me out of the woods, and that took hours. Um really. Yeah, it took them hours to get me back to um back to the trailhead, back to Cave Mountain Road, um, where you know the search party was set up. Um, because it is truly like I was in the bottom of the river valley, the search party was basically on the top of the mountain. So it took them a long time to get me from the river back to any kind of civilization at all.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Like I said, we'll talk about the search on the next next episode, but you you after a couple hours of being on these mules and with these guys who who did the thing that they weren't they they went in the other direction. Yeah, he was like, I don't think these this search party knows what they're doing. Um you eventually see your parents.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

How did how did that go? Um, it was the first time I'd ever seen my dad cry. Um, which is funny because he's he's a big softy. But you know, it was the first time I ever remember seeing my dad cry. And I was in the back of an ambulance. They'd loaded me up into the ambulance, and and my mom basically like climbed on top of me into the ambulance. And I was just so relieved to be out of the woods and and uh safe and with my family again. Uh, they kept trying to get me to drink pediolite and I hated it. I did not want to drink the pediolite.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

I was like you're stubborn again. Like what else do we got, bartender? Like, because that's not gonna work for us.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

The same cut. I I just I wanted water. I I've always been like a big water drinker. Um, I'm drinking a Dr. Pepper right now, but in general, I I drink a lot of water, even still, and so I was like, no, just give me water. I don't want pediolite. Ugh. Um, but I was really dehydrated, so they were trying to get, you know, like electrolytes into me. And I was like, no. Um, yes, I did not learn my lesson on being stubborn. And to be honest, I still haven't learned it to this day.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

I think, I think we're gonna, I think we're gonna give you some grace. Uh well, wow, we're already out of time for this week's episode. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have you on next week. We'll kind of summarize the whole search, and then I also want the audience to hear this was 25 years ago, and very a lot of people face adversity in life at some point. Most people don't face adversity the way you did at six years old. So I I I'm really interested to see see what happens next. Uh, but for this week's folks, I told you uh got an amazing woman in the studio day with an amazing story, and I'm sticking to that. And for this week, that's the POV of POB.

unknown 30:47

Some some something.