Survival

The engine quit so cleanly it felt like someone turned off the sky. When the wheels hit tundra and the windshield went white, I realized our biggest problem wasn’t the crash—it was where we’d crashed.

The engine coughed once and quit, and the sea went quiet in a way I didn’t know it could. By the time I realized the radio was dead too, the coast was already a thin gray line I couldn’t reach.

I heard my boot snap before my body hit the rock. When I opened my eyes at the bottom of the canyon, the sky was a thin blue ribbon and my phone showed one bar—then none.