The original text of this article from Kate Santich Sentinel Staff Writer Posted September 24, 2006 is at
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/lifestyle/orl-eaglin06sep24,0,1136246.story
In case this link is down or removed here is the text only of the article. Many thanks to Kate who put in hard work and is an accomplished athlete and biker.
Perhaps there really are two kinds of people in the world, and the dividing line is this: Some see a fork in the road or a trail into the woods but continue contentedly on their way. And others think, I wonder where that goes. . .And they have to find out.
For about as long as anyone can remember, 43-year-old engineering professor Ron Eaglin has done the latter -- a trait that has led him through murky swamps and thorny thickets and the chigger-laden wilderness that is Central Florida. He has suffered hypothermia and heat exhaustion, a broken jaw, hallucinations and an inestimable number of insect bites."Deer flies, bees, ants, fleas, every type of spider known to man -- they've all had their piece of my flesh," he says. "Fire ants I don't even notice anymore."But Eaglin doesn't just forge ahead blithely. In two decades of zealous exploration, he has become intimately familiar with the region's ever-shrinking wild places.
He has become, as one friend puts it, "the guy you want looking for you if you're ever lost in the woods."
Eddie Meadows discovered that the hard way.Meadows is the 62-year-old jogger who this month spent four days lost in the woods near the University of Central Florida. Though Orange County deputy sheriffs and naval investigators searched for several days, Eaglin knew the area so well he figured there was only one place dense enough to cause a man to lose his bearings like that. Once Eaglin joined the search, it took only a few hours to find Meadows -- who by then was dehydrated, disoriented and in acute kidney failure. He had been only a quarter mile from a road."
People say, 'How can you not find your way out?' " Eaglin says. "Well, that's easy to ask -- until you've been there. You have to understand what it looks like and feels like to be in the middle of deep-canopied forest and swamp where you can't see more than 20 feet in front of you. If I blindfolded you and took you out in the woods, not more than 200 yards from a road, and then took the blindfold off, you would be lost -- and probably for a long time."
Eaglin, who has a few other things to keep him busy -- running UCF's engineering technology department, coaching his younger daughter's soccer team, training for adventure races, working on computer programs that have won him recognition from the Department of Homeland Security -- spent the next few days explaining the complexities of the backwoods to the media, including CNN and the BBC. But the following week he was back tromping around in the woods himself, this time to teach a class on orienteering, a blend of cross-country running and navigating through the woods with a map and compass to find hidden checkpoints.
"Hey, it's the hero!" teased a woman as Eaglin arrived. "I saw you on television."The professor blushed. "Yeah, well . . ." he offered sheepishly.On the one hand, Eaglin had been ecstatic to find Meadows. But he was also relieved."I was stopping about every 20 to 30 feet," he says, "and listening for the signs of a body" -- the buzzing of flies and the circling of vultures.In his element
Eaglin doesn't much fit the stereotype of an adventurer. At 5 feet 8 inches tall, he's not a particularly imposing figure. His wire-rimmed glasses, thinning hair and beard give him a professorial look. His nickname, because of his doctorate degree in environmental engineering, is Dr. Ron.But put him in his element, in the middle of nowhere in particular, and it's obvious he would have done just fine scouting alongside Lewis and Clark.
Hiking through the woods of Rock Springs Run State Preserve near Sorrento, Eaglin notices details most people might not -- elusive sand skinks, small patches of prickly pear, banana spiders waiting in the shadows. He points out the signs of man's intrusions -- the unnatural growth of small pine trees in the middle of a field, an abrupt end to the tree line where a bulldozer must have come through.
"And power lines -- you can't be lost if you can see power lines," he says, squinting into an early-afternoon sun. "If you follow it, it's going to take you to somebody who needs power or something that's giving power, but either way it's going to take you to humans."
Eaglin has been exploring woods since he was a kid, moving with his family from Missouri to Illinois, Nebraska, Georgia and finally South Carolina, where he took up cross-country and swimming, played soccer and became a Boy Scout.
He was, from early on, exceptionally bright.
"He excelled in school, taking college classes when he was only 14," says his father, Ronald Eaglin Sr., the past president of Morehead State University in Kentucky, who now lives south of Myrtle Beach. "He was teaching college professors how to use computers when he was still in high school."
Ron Jr.'s most remarkable quality was not his brilliance, though. It was his drive.
The summer he turned 15, Ron got a job on a textile-plant loading dock."He was the only young person out there," says his mother, Bonnie Eaglin. "And it was such hard work. He'd always come home completely exhausted, but he still wanted to swim with his team in the evenings. That's when we found out how much endurance he had. He didn't ever win, in part because he was so tired from working, but he just had so much drive. Nothing seemed to intimidate him."
Taking it to extremes
Consider his method of training for adventure races -- a team sport in which you are given a last-minute map and instructions to trek, mountain bike, rock-climb, kayak and swim through the wilderness, sometimes for several days on end with little or no sleep and carrying your own food and water.
For practice, Eaglin likes to print out U.S. Geological Survey maps from his computer, close his eyes and randomly point to a spot. Then he grabs a training buddy and goes off to find it.Once the point was a marshy area near the St. John's River. His first approach was blocked by barbed vines and briers. Next he decided to cross the marsh itself."At first it was knee deep, and we're happy," he says. "Then it was thigh deep. Then it was chest deep. And then we were swimming. And every time you took a stroke, you churned up what looked like chunks of peanut butter off the bottom and it came bubbling to the top."He found his spot and his way back -- although not before trekking through wire grass and enduring scores of paper-thin cuts all over his body.It was a most excellent workout, he says.
He has raced in searing heat and heavy winter rain. Once, 2 1/2 days into an event, amid a 65-mile mountain-biking section, he hallucinated that his teammates were some mysterious enemy chasing him, so he sprinted away to try to lose them in the woods. When they finally caught up to him, one of the men tackled him. After all, Eaglin was the only one with the map.
Another time, he crashed his road bike and broke his jaw, which required his mouth to be wired shut for six weeks.
His competitors say he is not just tough. He is patient, generous and methodical."Even if you're in the midst of a race, he's willing to give you instructions and advice," says Jason Amadori, 33, a fellow adventure racer from Windermere. "He may not help you find something, but he has no problem in helping you learn how to find it. He's not one to keep secrets just so he can win. He's an incredibly nice guy."
As president of the Central Florida Adventure Racers club and an orienteering expert, Eaglin also plots some of the courses himself. They are notoriously difficult.
"We have these green areas on the map that mean very, very thick vegetation," says Bob Putnam, founder of the Florida Orienteering Club, "and people speak of their unwillingness to go through these impassable areas. And Ron just looks at them, puzzled, and says, 'Everything is passable. It's just that sometimes the going is slower than other times.' "Life with RonIn the middle of Seminole County's Black Hammock Wilderness, amid the dense tangle of trees and brush, is a lovely, solar-paneled, Cracker-style wood-frame house with a climbing wall in the backyard, a ropes course in the front, three dogs, seven cats, one bunny and a large wayward frog.
This, quite fittingly, is the Eaglin home, shared by Ron, his wife of 12 years -- fellow engineer Linda Eaglin -- and daughters Catherine, 9, and Anna, 8.The girls' play room is dubbed "The Jungle Room," its walls painted with tropical birds and a jaguar and elephant, its shelves full of class projects and Ron's exotic musical instrument collection. The kids each have a computer, but television is limited to a single hour per week.
"It's not just that kids waste time watching TV," says Eaglin, heading out back to check a banana tree for ripe fruit. "They waste their lives."
Most mornings he awakens before daylight to run in the darkness through the woods -- which is where he has discovered the abandoned cats and dogs that are now part of the family. Then he rides his bicycle 11 miles to work, carrying 35 pounds of gear on his back, and swims half a mile at the university pool before teaching class and conducting research.After work, he pedals home, coaches soccer and sometimes does a second run.
If it sounds like a delicately planned existence, it's not.
In July, heading home from a family camping trip in the Ocala National Forest in their 1994 GMC van with its 180,000 miles on the odometer, Ron spotted a dirt road off to the side. "I wonder where that goes," he mused.
Of course he couldn't resist.He plowed onto the detour, flanked by heavy vegetation, until it opened up into a field of bright sunlight. In front of them, the road turned to sugar sand.
"Let's go through it," Ron said. His wife shook her head. Soon, of course, they would be digging at the sand, trying to get the van unstuck.
Linda eventually gave up, called for help on her cell phone, pulled out a lawn chair and read a book while she waited.
Catherine, who, like her sister, has been training with Dad for future adventure races, voiced concern that the lone bag of pretzels wouldn't carry them through the night. She began to build a spit on which she planned to cook wild turkeys. Anna launched construction on a shelter they could sleep in.
About three hours later, though, as the sun was sinking low in the sky, a tow truck finally showed up and hoisted them out.
"We were all filthy dirty, but Ron took us to a nice restaurant on the way home," Linda says. "And that's life with Ron -- always an adventure."
Kate Santich can be reached at 407-420-5503 or ksantich@orlandosentinel.com.First photo ran on page F1.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Search Path
The search route I took is in yellow - Bob, Jerry, and I all crossed the ditch at the marked crossing point and re-split up after making it to the path. We were planning to meet at the fence (marked location) to regroup and continue searching.
Eddie Meadows Rescue
The first time I heard about Eddie being missing was in an email message from Roy, a triathlon friend.
Triknights,
It is Friday about 1:30 and I am asking for help if anyone is available some time today. A friend of mine (Ed) who works in research park went for a run yesterday at noon and never returned. The police are looking for him as are the UCF ROTC. But, I am thinking runners would know where runners would go. He is an older guy but very fit so he could have went 3 to 4 miles away from research park. This may be silly but I am planning on riding my bike where I think a marathon runner would go from research park to see if I can find him. He probably was going to run for 45 min to an hour. I could use help from some of you in searching too. Particularly, I do not know the trails around the campus that he probably did know and may have been on.
So, if anyone can spare some time today, I would appreciate you help in looking for Ed.
I will email the listserv if he is found.
Roy
I had planned on heading out Saturday to help with the search – but instead was feeling very fatigued on Saturday. I had seen that there were large crews that were looking for him and felt pretty secure that with all the hands out there on Saturday (and also on Sunday) that he would soon be found. By Sunday, when I heard there was no success – I felt some guilt that I had not helped. My wife Linda had told me that a friend Bob Putnam was trying to put together a group of experienced orienteers to look for him and I called Bob the next morning (morning) to tell him I would be meeting them at the command post Monday morning.
The scene at the command post was not what I had expected. Most of the people that had turned out to volunteer were in street clothes. I felt that we would need to be searching the deeply wooded areas. Bob, Jerry, and I were the only ones dressed correctly for what I expected the search would require. After getting the facts of where he was last seen and the direction Bob I and I made a decision on where we would search first. My theory and Bob was in a agreement was that he had looped back around to the east side of campus and had taken the back trails along the far east side of the UCF campus.
One other gentleman with 2 dogs (Bruce Truog) joined our group and we first decided the search the area of the ditch along the far east side of campus. I had ridden mountain bike from my house and planned to use it to help me cover more ground. While Bob and Jerry covered some of the rabbit trails on foot – I used the bike to scout ahead and behind along the east side of the ditch. Bruce went up the middle of the ditch with the dogs wearing hip waders), a truly amazing sight with the two hunting dogs in the lead.
Eventually Bob and Jerry and I bushwhacked across the ditch and after a few tries of heading into very thick brush we were able to get all three of us and the bike out to the north-south trail on the west side of the ditch. At that point we planned to split up to cover more terrain. My hunch had me thinking he was either in the thick woods west of the trail where we were, or in the deep swamp west of the water tower and north of Neptune Drive. I biked south (while Bob and Jerry headed north) and decided I would look for areas that were the ATV tracks from the previous days searching weren’t found. This took me along the retention ponds on the North side of Neptune Drive. Along that section I somehow entered into an area of bees, but only picked up one sting from one that had crawled into my shirt. My plan was to follow the treeline and fence west along the edge of the retention ponds and then hop the fence and follow a sparse trail on the north side back to my bike and then I’d meet up with Bob and the other team members.
It was extremely thick where I jumped the fence and it took me a few minutes to bushwhack my way to a more open area northeast of the fence corner. From there I was stopping about every 20-30 feet and listening for the signs of a body – the buzzing of flies and the sounds of carrion birds. My plan was to take the indistinct trail back through the woods to where I had dropped my bike. It was at this point I head the splash coming from within the Bayhead and I called out “hello”. I was immediately greeted by a series of “help!” calls. At this point I though another rescuer might be back in the swamp area and had found the body and was calling for help. I called “are you looking for Eddie?” and heard back “I am Eddie”. I had been walking (quickly) in the direction of the voice – trying not to make so much noise that I would not be able to hear the voice. I yelled back – “Stay there – I’m coming” and immediately broke into a full run directly into the swamp. We called out – “Can you see me?” and basically kept shouting until I came upon him about 100-150 meters back in about thigh deep water, The swamp was extremely thick at this point and was extremely tough to move through. I first checked his condition which was surprisingly good – he was tired and thirsty – covered in scratches and bites – but was lucid and standing. He asked me if I could help him find his way out of the swamp and I said sure. He was heading East which would have taken him much deeper into the swamp – we wanted to head south to get him out. At the same time I had the phone out and was calling 911. I had some frustration with the 911 operator who kept wanting an intersection to send rescue crews to. I eventually convinced her to send the crews to the UCF observatory and told her to please ask them to turn on their sirens so we could use them to keep our south bearing. When Eddie had seen my phone – he immediately asked to call his wife who he said would be worried and probably angry with him. I dialed his number and handed him the phone and he had a tearful conversation with what I think was his son on the other end.
We fought our way out of the swamp (Eddie mostly on his own power) and as we emerged the rescue crews were coming towards us from the road. Eddie was relieved to see an actual trail and despite being very thirsty and hungry he was eager to get out of the woods and actually led the entire crew out – jogging the last little bit to the ambulance. After he was safely in the ambulance I jogged back to get my bike and the rest of my team – who had already heard the news by the time I got to them. We headed back over to the rescue trucks where the press was waiting (they were fast) and showed the folks the details of the rescue.
Eddie had been in the woods from Thursday at noon, till the next Monday at 11 Am when he was found. He survived by staying low in the water of the swamp – keeping cool and preventing further dehydration. He had drunk the swamp water and eaten berries to survive. I was elated to have found him alive and OK – it was one incredible tale of survival.
Triknights,
It is Friday about 1:30 and I am asking for help if anyone is available some time today. A friend of mine (Ed) who works in research park went for a run yesterday at noon and never returned. The police are looking for him as are the UCF ROTC. But, I am thinking runners would know where runners would go. He is an older guy but very fit so he could have went 3 to 4 miles away from research park. This may be silly but I am planning on riding my bike where I think a marathon runner would go from research park to see if I can find him. He probably was going to run for 45 min to an hour. I could use help from some of you in searching too. Particularly, I do not know the trails around the campus that he probably did know and may have been on.
So, if anyone can spare some time today, I would appreciate you help in looking for Ed.
I will email the listserv if he is found.
Roy
I had planned on heading out Saturday to help with the search – but instead was feeling very fatigued on Saturday. I had seen that there were large crews that were looking for him and felt pretty secure that with all the hands out there on Saturday (and also on Sunday) that he would soon be found. By Sunday, when I heard there was no success – I felt some guilt that I had not helped. My wife Linda had told me that a friend Bob Putnam was trying to put together a group of experienced orienteers to look for him and I called Bob the next morning (morning) to tell him I would be meeting them at the command post Monday morning.
The scene at the command post was not what I had expected. Most of the people that had turned out to volunteer were in street clothes. I felt that we would need to be searching the deeply wooded areas. Bob, Jerry, and I were the only ones dressed correctly for what I expected the search would require. After getting the facts of where he was last seen and the direction Bob I and I made a decision on where we would search first. My theory and Bob was in a agreement was that he had looped back around to the east side of campus and had taken the back trails along the far east side of the UCF campus.
One other gentleman with 2 dogs (Bruce Truog) joined our group and we first decided the search the area of the ditch along the far east side of campus. I had ridden mountain bike from my house and planned to use it to help me cover more ground. While Bob and Jerry covered some of the rabbit trails on foot – I used the bike to scout ahead and behind along the east side of the ditch. Bruce went up the middle of the ditch with the dogs wearing hip waders), a truly amazing sight with the two hunting dogs in the lead.
Eventually Bob and Jerry and I bushwhacked across the ditch and after a few tries of heading into very thick brush we were able to get all three of us and the bike out to the north-south trail on the west side of the ditch. At that point we planned to split up to cover more terrain. My hunch had me thinking he was either in the thick woods west of the trail where we were, or in the deep swamp west of the water tower and north of Neptune Drive. I biked south (while Bob and Jerry headed north) and decided I would look for areas that were the ATV tracks from the previous days searching weren’t found. This took me along the retention ponds on the North side of Neptune Drive. Along that section I somehow entered into an area of bees, but only picked up one sting from one that had crawled into my shirt. My plan was to follow the treeline and fence west along the edge of the retention ponds and then hop the fence and follow a sparse trail on the north side back to my bike and then I’d meet up with Bob and the other team members.
It was extremely thick where I jumped the fence and it took me a few minutes to bushwhack my way to a more open area northeast of the fence corner. From there I was stopping about every 20-30 feet and listening for the signs of a body – the buzzing of flies and the sounds of carrion birds. My plan was to take the indistinct trail back through the woods to where I had dropped my bike. It was at this point I head the splash coming from within the Bayhead and I called out “hello”. I was immediately greeted by a series of “help!” calls. At this point I though another rescuer might be back in the swamp area and had found the body and was calling for help. I called “are you looking for Eddie?” and heard back “I am Eddie”. I had been walking (quickly) in the direction of the voice – trying not to make so much noise that I would not be able to hear the voice. I yelled back – “Stay there – I’m coming” and immediately broke into a full run directly into the swamp. We called out – “Can you see me?” and basically kept shouting until I came upon him about 100-150 meters back in about thigh deep water, The swamp was extremely thick at this point and was extremely tough to move through. I first checked his condition which was surprisingly good – he was tired and thirsty – covered in scratches and bites – but was lucid and standing. He asked me if I could help him find his way out of the swamp and I said sure. He was heading East which would have taken him much deeper into the swamp – we wanted to head south to get him out. At the same time I had the phone out and was calling 911. I had some frustration with the 911 operator who kept wanting an intersection to send rescue crews to. I eventually convinced her to send the crews to the UCF observatory and told her to please ask them to turn on their sirens so we could use them to keep our south bearing. When Eddie had seen my phone – he immediately asked to call his wife who he said would be worried and probably angry with him. I dialed his number and handed him the phone and he had a tearful conversation with what I think was his son on the other end.
We fought our way out of the swamp (Eddie mostly on his own power) and as we emerged the rescue crews were coming towards us from the road. Eddie was relieved to see an actual trail and despite being very thirsty and hungry he was eager to get out of the woods and actually led the entire crew out – jogging the last little bit to the ambulance. After he was safely in the ambulance I jogged back to get my bike and the rest of my team – who had already heard the news by the time I got to them. We headed back over to the rescue trucks where the press was waiting (they were fast) and showed the folks the details of the rescue.
Eddie had been in the woods from Thursday at noon, till the next Monday at 11 Am when he was found. He survived by staying low in the water of the swamp – keeping cool and preventing further dehydration. He had drunk the swamp water and eaten berries to survive. I was elated to have found him alive and OK – it was one incredible tale of survival.
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