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It happened in one of the regions of our republic. A young family: father, mother and their five-year-old daughter went to the forest to pick berries. We stopped at a picturesque clearing. The father took the bucket and went deep into the forest to places known to him, and ordered his wife to look after her daughter and the car.

The daughter frolicked in the clearing, and the mother, after running and playing with her, decided to take a break. She sat down next to the car and began to admire her daughter’s fun. And suddenly something changed. The mother saw her baby, jumping and laughing, go into the forest.

It was as if someone was leading her there, luring her. The mother wanted to shout, to stop, but her voice did not obey her, she wanted to jump up and run, but her legs suddenly stopped obeying… So she sat in silence and watched in horror as her daughter ran further and further into the taiga. Now the dress has stopped flashing among the trees.

When the mother came out of her stupor and screamed, she did not hear her daughter’s voice in response. The woman, distraught with grief, ran in the direction where her child’s dress had last appeared. She screamed and cried, but the forest was silent. Finally my husband came.

He threw the bucket, ordered his wife not to leave the car and ran in the indicated direction. And the rocks called to his daughter until it became dark. Having loaded his deranged wife into the car, he drove to the village and gathered people. In cars, with flashlights, we went to look for the child.

They searched until dawn, but the girl disappeared into thin air. They searched for a day, then another. Many have already “buried” the child. “Can such a little thing survive in the taiga alone for so long?”

Surely either the animals killed her, or she fell through somewhere, or she simply died from fear.” On the third day her father found her. The girl lay under a tree on a moss bed, bitten by mosquitoes, exhausted, but alive. Seeing her father, she stretched out her little hands to him and stammered: “Dad, I knew that you would find me. I want some tea.”

“What did you eat?” - they asked her later. “Berries,” she answered. “Was it cold at night?” - “Yes, it’s cold. But I tore up moss and slept in a hole under a tree”

— “Wasn’t it scary?” “It’s scary, but I knew that dad would find me anyway.” This is how the story happened. I remember a case when in Gornaya Shoria they searched for an eleven-year-old boy for five days. He went down the spring himself, safe and sound.

Many Ulan-Ude residents probably remember the tragic story that happened on the 20th kilometer of the Barguzinsky tract. In July, a man froze to death near the road. I went into the forest in clear, hot weather in a shirt, without matches. And two or three hours later clouds rolled in, a cold wind blew and snow fell.

The man apparently panicked, got lost, got wet, exhausted, sat down to rest, fell asleep and did not wake up. What helped the children survive? I think it is the absence of fear that paralyzes the will. And, most importantly, accepting the situation as it is.

They did not fight, but simply walked home, confident that they would go out anyway and that they would be found anyway. In August, a sixty-year-old man was lost in the Gusinoozersk taiga. I went in my car to pick berries. Stopped in Ardasan padi.

I went to investigate. On my way back, I missed the parking lot and fell into a nearby fall. It began to get dark. I went out onto the logging road.

I reached the old cutting area. The road ended, I went back. So he wandered along the logging roads for two days, trying to reach his own. Finally I came across a cordon of foresters fifty kilometers from my camp.

Spent the night. Then he hitched a ride home. It should be noted that snow fell in the ridge during his forced journey. The temperature was below zero at night.

Nevertheless, the man survived. Because he didn’t give in to despair. So, what to do if you still get lost? Once you realize this, sit down and figure out how much time has passed since you felt lost.

This will help you estimate the distance you could travel from your parking spot. The most reasonable thing is to try to go back according to the remembered signs. If you don’t remember any signs, it’s better to stay where you are and get ready for the night, keeping yourself busy with work. This will help cope with the emerging panic.

Remember, upon discovering your absence, your comrades will definitely organize a search. If you are near the camp, you will definitely be discovered. In addition, in the evening, screams can be heard from a great distance. In addition, from an elevated place (from a tree, a hill) you can see the fire.

If you have taiga experience and remember some landmarks, try to go out on your own. But for this you need to sit down and calm down. Then mentally go back step by step to the moment when you turned off the right path. Analyze: why, how and when this could happen.

Try shouting and listening carefully. Sometimes a person who finds himself in such a situation begins to imagine voices, the noise of a running car, or a train. Therefore, the first and most important thing you must do is calm down. Take this situation as completely natural.

After all, essentially nothing terrible happened. Well, you will spend the night in the taiga alone, without any amenities, without comrades, but in the morning you will definitely find the right road. And if you don’t find it right away, then it’s okay, they will definitely find you. And the sooner you stopped, therefore, the closer you are to the camp.

When a person begins to rush from side to side, running headlong in the “right” direction, then we can guarantee that he will run far from the camp and it will be very difficult to find him. So, if you are lost, stop, wait and think. Better yet, work: prepare for an overnight stay, even if you don’t need it. All of the above advice has been verified by personal bitter experience and the experience of those people whom I have been looking for.

And here’s what, for example, Anatoly Gostyushin advises in his “Encyclopedia of Extreme Situations.” “If you get lost in the forest, you must immediately stop and sit down. And no longer take a single step without thinking. You can only think about one thing: remember the last sign on a familiar part of the path and try to trace the road to it.”

If this fails, remember familiar landmarks. Long and noisy ones are best: railway, navigable river, highway. Listen. In the absence of familiar landmarks, trails and roads, go “out on the water” — downstream.

The stream leads to the river, the river leads to people. If there are no landmarks, you need to try to climb the tallest tree… Sounds help you get out to people: a tractor is running, a dog is barking, the smell of smoke helps.”