Caitlin Van Mol 0:00 This episode contains discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, you can talk to someone at the suicide in crisis lifeline by calling 988, Hey, everyone. This episode is the second of a two part episode. If you haven't listened to the last episode of live, to tell David part one, go back and listen to that first also, after the last episode, David reached out to me and corrected that he goes by Dave, so that's how I'll be referring to him in this episode. Sorry about that, Dave. So you're at this place where, if you're not moving, suicide becomes a real consideration. Were you stopping and actually talking about it? Yeah,

David 0:50 several times during the morning when it was clear that Crystal was in a lot of pain and not not having much drive left to push through any pain. She, she was ready. She, she asked for the knife, and I said, no, like, No, we're not doing that. We're, we're gonna, we're gonna keep going. It's, it's 10 o'clock in the morning. We're not, we're not giving up at 10 o'clock in the morning. So there were probably three or four different times that we stopped, and it would take 20 to 30 minutes of talking through before we would stand up again and try to keep going. But the distance between those stops was getting shorter and shorter, maybe even like a football field or less. But between talks of I can't do this. I'm done, and I'm running out of ideas. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to help her with her feet. She goes down and she's crying, and she she just says, I am I'm done. I am not getting up again. Give me the knife right now, and I didn't, but I didn't have anything that I could say. I had said everything that I could and I eventually kind of had this just feeling in me that if this was going to be the end, that I at least wanted to get clean I had already started while walking of like I'm not a religious person at all, but like confessing my sins of my life, like trying to purge everything that I felt like I needed to get out, just as we walked, told her whatever came to my mind about my life and didn't know if death was gonna come with anything beyond that, like Yeah, facing a judgment or a heaven or hell or things like that. But I said, if I'm not 100% sure, I might as well do whatever I can. So I said, this is my next deal with you. Let's find some water. We'll get cleaned up. We'll sit down together, and we'll do this.

Caitlin Van Mol 3:06 So they got up again and started looking for water. After about 15 minutes of walking, they came across a little hill that they knew from experience probably had a little stream at the bottom. So down they went.

David 3:23 We kind of crawled down through some thorny bushes. Actually, it's already gotten attacked by some ants that were on one of these bushes and threw off the backpack and like have this moment of panic with this probably 50 ants biting me, kicking off my shirt, and,

Caitlin Van Mol 3:42 like, one last blow, yeah. So

David 3:47 I was like, Well, I don't like it over here. Let's crawl through this bush and see what's on the other side. Like, I gotta get out of this spot and kind of fight through this, the real thick area, and my foot hits water, and there's just water everywhere, and it's a flooded forest where we're really in the canopy of 50 to 100 foot tall trees, but the canopy is down right at the water, like the water is just super, super high in that area, and this is What we had made as our deal, really, going back to the third day, was we were going to walk southeast, and we were going to walk until we found a person or the hostel or a river. And flooded forests are the river like they are connected to the river,

Caitlin Van Mol 4:37 because the river means villages along the river, and those villages contain people that can help them get home.

David 4:44 So it was like this moment where crystal got almost like, really angry. She's like, I have been trying to end this, and I have convinced you that it's going to be over, and then we have. Of what we've been looking for in front of us, and so she took the lead into the flooded forest, and it felt better for her to walk in water than it did to walk on dry ground. Yeah. But walking through the flooded forest didn't even last very long. It eventually got deep enough that we had to swim. And so we would like hold on to a trunk of a tree and rest for a minute, and then, like, push off and float backwards through the flooded forest and kick our feet and aim towards the next tree, and hold on to that one and rest a minute. There were times where I would put crystal in my, like, arms on my back and kick like I was a lifeguard in college, and this was, like, one of the rescue moves, and so I would, like, drag her to the next tree. Or, like, heart rates going up, because we're like, excited that we found something that could lead out. But also we've had so many different moments that we got hope and had that hope ripped away that we said we you can't talk about it. You can't talk about that we are out or that we're we've done it. We this is, this is just another thing like we, you keep your mouth shut and keep kicking your feet and we're going to keep swimming. Up to

Caitlin Van Mol 6:25 this point, Dave and Crystal had no idea that anyone even noticed they were gone. Little did they know that Nile, the hostel owner, was doing everything she could to find them. We

David 6:38 got lost on a Tuesday, May 28 and the owner of the hostel knew immediately that something was wrong. When we didn't get back for dinner that night, sent Antonio, who worked for her, into the forest, and he came back at like 9pm and said, they're not on any of the trails. I don't see them.

Caitlin Van Mol 6:58 So Nile put word out that two Americans were missing. It's

David 7:03 like she's immediately getting more and more help, like expanding the rescue efforts from her people that work for her to other men from the village to eventually the police. And so I'm almost fortunate that my parents didn't know any of this was happening. My mom was a teacher. She went through her whole week of school and got home on Friday afternoon and got a phone call from the US Consulate saying that I was lost. Didn't have really, like clear idea of what the best things that they could do to help were she definitely reached out to her her network of friends and church and things like that. But through conversations with the consulate and with Crystal's mom, Susan, they arranged for a search plane to fly over so

Caitlin Van Mol 7:56 back in the Amazon, as Dave and Crystal were swimming this time, the engines they heard were real. The search

David 8:04 plane is flying overhead, and happens to fly like literally directly over our head, while we're slim, swimming through the flooded forest and really slowly, just like we're screaming at this plane and help. We're down here. We're waving our arms. I pick up a branch, break off a branch from a tree, and throw it up at the plane. I only missed it by like, 1000 feet or more. But we're we're making a scene when the because the plane flies over probably three or four passes, and each time where I'm like, trying to climb up the trunk of a tree or swim over to the shore, and I try to run up the hill to get a better view, but we are underneath canopy. There's there's no view of us from below, so that all that piece is happening from the US now

Caitlin Van Mol 9:01 we have to go meet a man named Aja Nielsen, who lives an hour away from a little village called alto alegri in the Amazon rainforest. But

David 9:11 his wife, Teresa, lives in the village of alto alegri, so on this Sunday, they always go to her parents' village, and the women like to sit around and talk all day after their church or whatever, and the men play soccer in the field in the back. This

Caitlin Van Mol 9:27 particular Sunday, Audra Nielsen was listening to the radio.

David 9:31 The owner of the hostel had recorded a message to play through the radio waves. And the message was, basically, there's two Americans that are lost in the forest in your area. If you find them, just know that they are scared, they're they're hungry, they're tired, and treat them like they're your family that needs help, after hearing that on the radio, and Audrey Nielsen is a super shy person, so I. He leaves his wife and family in the village, and he goes paddling up the river and hears weird screaming. And he's like, that's that's the two Americans. I know it is, but he also is super shy, and he's in a tiny little dugout canoe. He's like, I'm scared. I've never met a white person before. I've never met an American before. I don't know what this is going to be like, and I'm not doing it by myself. So he turns around and doesn't come to where we are or where he hears us. Turns around and paddles away and goes to his cousin's house, goes up to where he is, and it's like heard on the radio this morning. There's two Americans that are lost, and think I heard them screaming, will you come with me and we'll we'll see if we can help them.

Caitlin Van Mol 10:51 Meanwhile, Dave and Crystal are still focused on the plane.

David 10:55 The plane has left, and with a little bit of aviation knowledge, I told crystal, I was like, that was a search plane. There's no plane going from miles to another city or something that's flying that low above the forest, and it would circle around a few times, right? People are out there care. People know we're missing. They're looking for us. It kind of gave a little bit of some extra little motivation and hope in those last time swimming in the forest, we also kept looking up at the canopy, and the more we swam in one particular direction, the more the trees were spread apart. We knew that was leading us out towards the river,

Caitlin Van Mol 11:39 seeing the plane and potentially getting to the river was the bolster of hope they needed to forget their suicide pact.

David 11:47 Started talking about plans for that night and what we were going to do. I began pulling some vines off of some of the trees, and I'd wrapped basically one of my arms was completely wrapped with vines that I was collecting, thinking that I would find some logs that we could lash together and make a raft, and we get out to like this last little tree that I've later called like the tree of life, and taking a deep breath and looking out, and there's just this river That's probably 50 feet wide in that spot that leads off into the distance. It's like, oh man, we've done it. We found a river. That's what we set out as a goal. We know if we find a river, we can find people. And we're just kind of catching our breath there. And then crystal looks up and sees Otto Nielsen and Armand gildu paddling from very far away. They're paddling towards us, and she's thinking that she's not seeing it for real. She's like, is that real? Or do you see people? Is that are those canoes? And I'm looking, I'm like, I think so. I think these are actual people. I think we found people, and we start screaming again, and help us. Help us. Hello. Over here, I try at least saying hello in Portuguese. I don't even know the word for help, but they, they're very reserved people in the Amazon, like they don't change their facial expression, maybe, except when Brazil wins the World Cup. But they're just like, they have eye contact with us as they're getting closer and closer, but they just have this stone cold look on their face, and they don't wave, they don't they don't even seem to acknowledge that we're there, but they're heading directly for us. Clearly, they do know we're there, but they eventually get maybe 10 yards away, and otter Nielsen picks up his paddle out of the water and sets it down into his canoe and just glides towards us and slides perfectly right next to the tree and just reaches out his hand to Crystal and pulls her up. He's trying to steady the canoe at the same time, and pulls her up into the canoe with him, and she is in tears of joy and tries to crawl along the canoe to tackle him with a big hug. And he's just scared of this moment. Still, they have not said a single word to us, and really wouldn't the entire time they talk to each other while paddling back, but Armand gildu picks me up out of the river, and so they just get us settled into the canoe, and they pick up the paddles and just start paddling back the way they came, and we had no clue really what was going on, where we were going. But it was also this surreal scene that the sun was setting at this time over one of the banks and King fishers and the cause were just like flying across the river. And squawking these beautiful sounds, and we're side by side, probably five feet away from each other, as they're paddling, like in unison together. And we were able to, like, just kind of look at each other across the way, and we're both just crying, and it's like, not just like a weight off our shoulders, but like this joy of this world is such a beautiful place, and it's this scene is so beautiful, and our lives are saved, and these people, even though they haven't said a word to us, are just such amazing people that they found us and that they pulled us out, regardless of what happens after there was just, just a complete flip of a switch from we our lives are done, we are dead, and now we're not. Now we've got another chance at life, and I've I've never had another moment like I've had some incredible moments in life, and I have never had anything like what I was feeling.

Caitlin Van Mol 16:06 We'll be right back. The cousins took Dave and crystal to the village. I

David 16:15 mean, they picked pulled us out of the river probably a little after 5pm and they paddled for more than an hour to get to the village. So it was dark, or maybe dusk, kind of dark, and they kind of rounded a corner of the river and just pulled up to a muddy bank that had a path leading over a hill and a Nielsen and Armand gildu Basically just get out and just start walking up the path. They just leave us there. It's like I said, they have not said a single word to us in Portuguese or anything up to this point, but they just take off. And I'm like looking at Crystal like, we need, we need, let's, let's go. We let's find out where they went. And Crystal says, I don't know if I can walk. Crystal's

Caitlin Van Mol 17:12 feet had been ripped apart over the past six days and were painful to walk on. So Dave said he would go check it out, but they had no idea what they were walking into.

David 17:26 And so I walk up above this steep, kind of muddy bank to the top of this hill, and see the village that's there, and a large group has started to kind of gather together, and I see Audre Nielsen and Armand gildu are kind of in the middle of that group, and there's a lot of talking going on. And so I start walking towards them, and when I get up there, it seems like, feel like the the tone is very weird. The tone almost seems like they are planning, like an evil miss, like a plot of like, what they're gonna do to us, or something like,

Caitlin Van Mol 18:09 you could have just walked right into some, like, Brazilian cult.

David 18:13 And there's one particular man whose name is Chico, and he's in kind of, like the middle of this, and he has a very stern face, and he's just looking at different people and yelling and pointing. And I'm like, starting to get a little bit nervous. What's what is going on? And then, like, the thought hits me of, oh, wait, I just left crystal back at the canoe. So I start to, like, turn and look in the direction I came up, and I see crystal had made it up to the top of this hill and was still probably 50 yards away from where we were, but she was limping and and looking like she needed help. And immediately, like everybody's eyes turned towards her, and this group of like six or seven women just take off at a full sprint towards her, and they get down to her, and they sweep her off her feet, literally, and carry her up this pathway. Don't, don't even come near where all the commotion of the men are. They just walk right past them and head straight into one of the the houses that are there, this mud, adobe brick kind of houses with that truths. I'm trying to focus on what's going on with this group of people, and I've got no clue what any of them are saying, but it just seems very chaotic. Then when a guy that's been yelling the most comes and, like, grabs my shoulder, and kind of motions, like, come with me. And so I follow him down to their their common area. A couple guys come down with hammocks, and they string up hammocks there, and he motions for me to get in the hammock. And. Of so I'm soaking wet and in these wet clothes, but, and I still have my wet boots on, but I just lay down in the hammock and do what I'm told. And a few minutes go by and Crystal comes down wearing different clothes. They had given her dry clothes to change into, and they put her in the hammock, and it probably wasn't very long before it's dark. Also, they had turned on their generator, and they've got a couple of lights in the village that is super dark, but we're exhausted. It was maybe a few minutes go by and I fall asleep, and then I guess crystal had spent some time trying to wake me up at some point, and our come to and in between us, they had set this small little table and a giant bowl of spaghetti with some chicken that they had slaughtered one of their village chickens and cooked it. So we start eating a woman, an older woman, comes down with a plate full of basically donuts, like fried rolls with some powdered sugar on them. And there was probably a dozen of them on there, and I like, three immediately. And then I looked at Crystal, and I'm like, do you think we're supposed to share this? Like, this is food for the whole village, right? And she's like, I don't know. We just keep eating. We eventually fall back asleep, and then we are woken up again, and they motion for us to come with them to the schoolhouse. And we get down to the schoolhouse, where there's a light that we get into the schoolhouse, and they've got bright lights in there, and they bring a little tray over that has some scalpels, like, really, just, uh, like, replacement razor blades for a tool. Kind of razor, they've got this, like, purple, a bottle of, like, this purple ointment. And they, I guess, had seen that we, I had thorns in me, so they start to, kind of like, look over all the spots of our body. They're pouring stuff on Crystal's feet, and they start pulling thorns out of me. They and crystal, and each one, they would like use the razor blade and cut just a tiny little bit of skin and just enough to be able to grab the end of the thorn, and they'd pull it out, and they'd put some of the purple ointment on it. They pulled a pretty big thorn out of my head, about a, like, a two inch thorn that was like, just perfectly sideways through the scalp. Oh, they thought that was hilarious. They passed it around the room, and they're it was just like they're having so much fun doing this. But it was that moment realized the food and the hammocks had already set us at ease, like these people were taking care of us, but they they went to like, extra lengths to do everything that needed to be done for us in the in those moments. Meanwhile, they also, they don't have a phone in the village. So they had sent somebody that takes about a three hour paddle up the large river, the Rio Ma was a suit to an another village that has a satellite phone. And so they sent that person, and it took three hours to get up there, but they called for the police and told them that we were found there. After

Caitlin Van Mol 23:28 they were done being plucked of thorns and tended to Dave and Crystal went back to sleep, only to wake up to

David 23:37 lights come on, we hear the buzz of the generator, kind of groggy, and come out of it, and the door opens, and it's not any of the people that we were starting to recognize from the village that had been taking care of us. It's like eight men in regular kind of street clothes, like city street clothes, all armed with guns, and there was like this confused panic for a minute, like, did what's going on now, just

Caitlin Van Mol 24:06 the side of guns, I would be like, Oh no, yeah, we made it through all that just to die. Now, these are the search party that

David 24:13 had been looking for us, just they weren't in their normal uniform at that point. Yeah, they kind of grabbed our hands and dragged us out the door and down the same little muddy path that we had come up, and they had a speed boat, and they sat us down, and we didn't even really think to like, look back at the people that had just taken care of us. We didn't wave. We didn't say, thank you. We were completely out of it, driving at full speed up the river, and it was cold and windy, and we didn't know where we were going or anything. None of them spoke any English, but they docked up with a big boat in the middle of the river, and as they were pulling up, Nile is lean. And over like the railing of the boat and starts to talk to us in English. That's when we knew, like, this really is kind of over now, like we we've we've made it somewhere that we know, and it was sometime between three and 4am at that point, and nail a has a satellite phone that she uses at the hostel, and she gave it to Crystal first and said, call your mom. Call your mom let her know you're okay. So crystal called, and her mom didn't answer the very first time. Then she called her her dad, and her dad answered, and we were told, like, this isn't like, just, just tell them you're okay, and tell them you'll you'll call them back when you're in the city. We're heading to the city, we're going to take you to the hospital. Just, just let them know you're okay. So it was really quick conversations, but I get the phone and I called my parents, and they answered, and I just said, Mom, I'm okay, we've been found. I love you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I love you, though I love you, and I'll call you later today, I'm heading into the hospital, and I mean, she can hardly get any words out. It's just tears and probably like a 32nd phone conversation, and then crystal does get in touch with her mom and has a similar, very emotional 32nd conversation. Then we, we get to the city of my ways, and they, they pull their boat up on the main dock, and there's several cars and motorcycles, and probably 100 people on the dock there meeting up with the boat. I don't know what, what all those people were there to do, or anything, but we basically were able to get into a car, and they drove us only, like, two minutes to where the hospital is, and they took us into a room, and the doctor spoke English, so that was helpful, but basically just asked us, what, what kinds of things were we were dealing with, like, what? What's wrong? What can I do for you? And we obviously said Crystal's feet were in shreds, and we were dehydrated, tired, so he put a IV in to each of us and had some fluids coming in. We didn't really like the hospital too much, other than, like, getting the help there, we were like, Is there anywhere else we can go? I think we're okay now. I think we're we've made it like, so we ended up leaving after only a couple of hours in the hospital and going to one of the two hotels in my ways, and got a room and just went to sleep for a long time. Yeah, after sleeping basically the whole day, we decided it's, it's time to eat. We're going to the restaurant. We're gonna get like, four meals. We're gonna just eat everything. We had to call a taxi because crystal couldn't walk to the restaurant. But we we made it there, and we ordered a few things and ate so much I couldn't even walk back to the hotel. So we took a taxi back there and went back to sleep.

Caitlin Van Mol 28:19 Now, if you're anything like me, I would be on a plane back to the US immediately, but Dave and Crystal are not like me. But then after

David 28:30 that day, we nail a was staying in my ways also, we told her we're ready to go back to the hostel like we don't need to be in the city. There's there's nothing for us here.

Caitlin Van Mol 28:42 When you told your mother, I'm gonna stay down here, what was her reaction?

David 28:49 She said, and we'll, we'll get a plane ticket for you. You can, you can come home. We'll, we'll get you home. Because I didn't have money to buy a different plane ticket than what I already had. So she said that, and I said, I, you know what I, I, we, I want to stay down here. We felt like we didn't want to be losers and give up like this was, this was a dream we had worked for for four years of trying to get to we had been down there for four days and then get lost. And it wasn't quite the experience that we were hoping for,

Caitlin Van Mol 29:29 right? But in the way you had the like, ultimate Amazon experience. Like, what else could you want to do or see?

David 29:40 Well, we wanted to see more. It

Caitlin Van Mol 29:43 was also very important to them both to go back and thank the people that rescued them.

David 29:48 So we went back to the hostel for a few days, but made plans to go and visit alto Allegri, the village that we've been taken to the following Sunday one week. Week after we were found. So we came back into the city on Saturday before that, and to every store in the city to basically buy them out of toys and candy and food. And we got diesel and just anything we could to try to say thank you to them, yeah. And then got a chance to go back say thank you. We and and there was a huge change in my kind of feelings towards humanity from this going into the experience humans, in my opinion, were just like these leeches on the planet, like we just were destroying we were a negative thing for the planet, until these people found me and gave me things that they couldn't afford to give me and take care of me and show me that love is something that's there, and it's not just like because you love one particular person, like love can be something that you have for for for all people, for all living things, and it just completely changed my like Outlook on my place in the world and humans place in the world. And it wasn't I didn't stay down there just because I wanted to see more animals, just because I would love to have seen a jaguar in the wild, or every different monkey that's out there, or anything else. It was that I wanted to to explore more with these good people that maybe aren't just leeches on the planet, that maybe, maybe I was wrong in that thought, not

Caitlin Van Mol 31:40 only did it improve Dave's belief in humanity, it completely transformed how he thought about his own family. I

David 31:49 mean, I grew up as a rebellious teenager like I didn't understand the things my parents did that were intended to make me on a path to be successful in life. I hated them for that. Like I hate is a strong word. I disliked many things of how I was raised, but all that's really just in my own perception of what was going on. Like my parents were amazing. I just didn't recognize that. So during the six days when we talked about people in our lives and started going through like regrets and things that was that was a big one for me, was that I had such negative feelings towards my family and my family was amazing. Our parents were loving parents, and not everybody gets that. So getting to call them on the boat was was very emotional and telling them that I love them. I often say it's the that I never told them that I love them. I'm sure when I was very young, I told them often, kids are much better at that. But in my adult life had never really said that when they've said on the phone, I love you, like, yeah, all

Caitlin Van Mol 33:07 right, have a good night.

David 33:11 So they they met us. We flew back into Greensboro and met us getting off the plane, and I gave him a big hug, and my mom was just balling, and there wasn't a lot of like conversation. It was more just like we hugged and we went and got our luggage and but since then, I've, I think, gotten stronger and stronger relationships with my parents sitting in their house right now. Gonna spend the whole day with them today. And

Caitlin Van Mol 33:48 though the six days they were lost weren't quite the experience they bargained for, it really bolstered Dave's love of the outdoors. So

David 33:56 I mean, it was really like almost the beginnings of pushing myself to get out as much as I possibly can. Wow, I'm on a current life goal of climbing the highest point of all 50 US states. And I've done 45 of them, and I've got some big ones coming up this this summer, and setting my sights on climb and Denali, hopefully in 2027 and each one of those that I've done has not, maybe not to the same degree as being lost for six days, but each one of the herds has has had those same kind of sparks of happiness and of connection to earth and building confidence in myself and who I am and what I'm doing. And I don't know that I would have pursued something like that if I hadn't survived. I mean, I've been dead, but if I hadn't gone through something like this and had the strength that came out of it, I don't know that. I would have pursued some of the things that I've been able to do. Yeah, and I think, I think in crystal, I don't want to speak for her, but I think she has had a similar kind of response to it as well, which is pretty amazing. And she has led an incredible life since it she's a veterinarian. She's spent time in expeditions in Africa, like tranquilizing elephants from a helicopter and then landing and then checking their health like she's she's done awesome things also, and they all involve nature. They all involve animals. And I think neither of us had any negative thoughts of like, oh, this planet. How could this planet have done this to us? Like we took responsibility for our naivety and our our bad choices and it we didn't put blame on these things that have have no, no impact, like they didn't cause this. Yeah,

Caitlin Van Mol 36:05 but how did you feel about that blame after and did you have like guilt around it at all? Definitely have

David 36:13 had guilt of it was my res. I was in the front when we got lost. It was my responsibility. It was my lack of preparation and awareness of the dangers that we were getting into. I've had that. But also, luckily for for me, Crystal, like I said, has had a kind of a positive approach to the the aftermath of it, and she has had similar comments that I've had where I would say that this was the best thing that could have happened to me, that the path that I was on leading up to this was not going to lead me to happiness. It wasn't going to lead me to love in the world, that it was the changes that happened during those six days that have put me on the path today, that I think has been a really positive path. And so it's hard to like blame myself when it's been such an incredible thing that turned us around and has helped our lives.

Caitlin Van Mol 37:19 And did our two young lovers walk off into the sunset and get married, and now some are back at the same hostel in Brazil. Whale relationships

David 37:28 are super complicated. So I mean the week really spending time a couple of days in my Wiz and then going back to the hostel. At first there was like a conversation of, remember, like, how we talked about, you know, how close we were, how much we loved each other. But it's also this just weird time of, like, healing and fatigue and like just trying to process everything we had just gone through. It's not like during that week, we were romantic or anything. And then after that week, we spent another five and a half weeks or so together in Brazil. There was never All right now, now we're through this. Now it's time to, like, get back together. It was just sort of a confusion of, I know I love you, but I don't know that now's the time. And then we get we get to the end of the summer, and come back home, and I go back to Asheville, and she goes back to Pittsburgh. I don't have a cell phone, like we're not communicating much, just

Caitlin Van Mol 38:41 a reminder, this is the early 2000s when not everyone had a cell phone.

David 38:46 And then a couple of months go by and a friend of hers calls me and says asked if I knew about Bill. I'm like, I don't know anything by the name Bill. And so she had started dating somebody in Pittsburgh and didn't tell me, but for probably at least a good solid year after that, I still had thoughts that we there's no way we went through that together and are not gonna be together. Yeah,

Caitlin Van Mol 39:17 that's the fairy tale. Yeah,

David 39:21 yeah, years went by and I was still holding out hope foolishly. I think holding out hope just it just never. Didn't look like it was going to happen. She moved out to California eventually, and was working for Boeing, working on satellites for Boeing, and what? Yeah, she's done amazing things, like I said, but I had started kind of getting to know somebody in where I work, and I was like, Well, I still have feelings for Crystal, and I need to, I need to give up on those. Is I need to see if that's a real thing before I can start a relationship. And so I flew out to California in 2011 this is many, many years after, but flew out there and spent three or four days with crystal. So

Caitlin Van Mol 40:15 this is where they get together and get married and spend Christmas hiking the Appalachian trail that

David 40:22 the whole time I just was thinking this, this is not working, where she's not who I need to be with and, and that was sort of the end of me pursuing her. Yeah, it's

Caitlin Van Mol 40:34 almost like the distance allows you to build her up in your mind. Oh, yes, definitely. And like, kind of create these stories of not really who she is, because you don't necessarily know 100% of the details of her day to day life. But like, you get to make that up about her, and then once you see it, it's like, Oh,

David 40:54 I definitely had that, that vision of her as being the person that I was building a teepee with on the second night, and not, not who she she really was. And it took spending a few days with her and really telling myself, like, this is this, is it, this is this, is do or die like you, you're either, you're either going to commit it and and make a strong stance that you should be together or you're going to move on, and it was definitely a time to move on.

Caitlin Van Mol 41:26 Did the girl that you were interested in? That's my work.

David 41:33 He's amazing.

Caitlin Van Mol 41:35 Dave and Amanda, his now wife, met at school where they both teach. It's the same school system that Dave grew up in, so everybody knew what happened to him. Amanda, however, moved to their town for the job, so she had no idea. Somebody

David 41:53 asked her, like, how do you feel about Dave being lost in the Amazon? She's like, What? What Dave being wet? So she, like, asked me, and I don't know if it was the wrong time or if I just wasn't up to, like, opening everything about it, because it's difficult to talk to her about a story that you're with somebody you love, and you've claimed you want to spend the rest of your life with and all those things. But told her that, oh yeah, there's, there's been like, TV shows and everything. And the weekend after that, she and her parents find the show and watched it together.

Caitlin Van Mol 42:35 Dave and Crystal both participated in an episode of I shouldn't be alive on the Discovery Channel.

David 42:41 So leading up to this interview, I was like, I need to kind of refresh and remember things, getting the mindset so we have spring break starting today. So I used my class time on Thursday and Friday to play the I shouldn't be alive. Special and like for your students, yeah. So every time, like I said, I'll pause it after each day of the show and give you a chance to ask questions. But every time I paused it, I had to be like, yeah. That's not really how it happened. Or I did not go running after white lips peccaries with a knife, as if I was going to attack them. Yeah, there wasn't any moment at night that we heard sounds and we got super scared of what it was. We talked about things that, oh, what do you think that sound was? That there wasn't a lot of fear of the animals. When I did the interview for that there was like six months that went by, and then the producer sent me a tape that was going to air and said, you could preview this. And I watched it, and watched the rescue scene. The

Caitlin Van Mol 43:58 show ends with a single man happening upon them and driving them off in the same little boat. There's no mention of all the help they got from the people in the village. And

David 44:08 I immediately started typing an email to him, and I was just really upset that they made up a story. Essentially, there's there's almost nothing in that scene that's based out of what actually happened. And his response was, my show's called I shouldn't be alive. It's about the survival part. We don't, we don't feature rescues, like it's not about that. But

Caitlin Van Mol 44:33 this show is, I know this gave you, like, a renewed sense in humanity, but did you have any mental issues coming out of this, like PTSD or anything, not

David 44:47 that I could identify really seems to have all been a positive for me, but I've never had like a nightmare of going through any. Of the the traumatic parts of it, one problem that I have is that Nyla, the owner of the hostel, had a much more, I think, traumatic experience of this, I basically ruined her her business. She had nightmares, and she just didn't feel comfortable having guests. She stayed open and I I went down there for six months in 2003 and was homeschooling her her kids as my payment for being down there. And I became like a tour guide. They would take some of the visitors there. But after I left in 2003 she moved back. She moved to California, where her husband was from, and she never opened back after that, so she's not down there. She sold her property. I've had Facebook messages with her maybe 10 years ago, that when she sold her property, it was illegally blogged after it so the forest I was lost in is was clear cut completely, which is so super

Caitlin Van Mol 46:08 sad, no, but that experience homeschooling nightly children helped him find his calling, but

David 46:15 having that kind of a connection where I was somebody that could help them get through things or help them understand things. Was, was pretty cool. But seeing like that, that learning process was, was really cool, having a a connection with a kid. I mean, I didn't have a lot of direction leading up to that. I was studying economics, but didn't care for economics. I cared for the environment, and just tried to make that work. And one of the things I talked about with crystal while lost was that, if I had died there, what, what did our life really mean? Like, what was our impact on this world? Yeah, we can say that we loved animals. We can say that we wanted to stand up for the forests. But what did we really do to Yeah, to make that a reality? And so while kind of teaching a little bit or having this, like seeing a kid and seeing them as somebody that's going to grow up and be their own adult and make their own choices. I was like, well, that that's like, almost like a pay it forward kind of idea, like, if I can make an impact on this one kid, and they grow up to to have a respect for Earth, that that's that's my chance of making an impact on the world. And so that those six months made me think maybe I could be a teacher like my mom. Because if you would ask me before, I would have said, that's the worst possible job in the world. And then I started. I needed a job after graduating and spending all my money down in Brazil. So I moved back home with my parents, and she was a teacher, and she had a an after school, like social at her house, and the principal was there, and she's like, What are you doing? Like, why don't you I need any a sub tomorrow. We come sub in one of my classes tomorrow.

Caitlin Van Mol 48:18 So they just let you do that. Yeah, it

David 48:22 was a different time period. So I started substitute teaching, and then the same principle is, like, you don't need to be a sub. Like, I need, I need you to be a teacher. Like, why don't you just come work for me next year? So I was a lateral entry teacher where you can be hired without having any teaching experience or background, and then you have a certain time period to go to school and get the certifications. That was kind of the path I took, but I accepted it by thinking, even if I can just impact like two or three kids in this year, and they grow up, and they're out in the world, and they're good people, and then the next year, I get another chance with all new kids. That's pretty cool. And then next year, and the next year, and 30 years can go by, and that's the way that maybe I could have a lasting legacy on earth. You

Caitlin Van Mol 49:25 Caitlin, this is live to tell. I'm Caitlin Van Mol you can follow the show on Instagram and Tiktok at live to tell podcast. If you enjoy today's episode, please rate review and subscribe. It really helps the show. I'll see you in two weeks. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai