Fiction Wilderness Survival Stories

December 13, 1920. It was a typical Monday morning when three US Navy officials boarded a hot-air balloon for an easy, routine training flight. But as evening came, heavy rain and wind knocked Lieutenants Louis Kloor, Stephen Farrell, and Walter Hinton off course, eventually forcing a crash landing deep within the snowy Canadian wilderness. As the men searched for salvation, they were overcome by freezing temperatures, starvation, and fatigue. To survive this harrowing experience, the brave military officers would have to go up against their greatest enemies yet.

When a deadly plague reaches the small fish camp where he lives, an orphan named Leif is forced to take to the water in a cedar canoe. He flees northward, following a wild, fjord-riven shore, navigating from one danger to the next, unsure of his destination. But the deeper into his journey he paddles, the closer he comes to his truest self as he connects to “the heartbeat of the ocean...the pulse of the sea”.

Twelve-year-old Donn Fendler steps away from his Boy Scout troop for only a minute, but in the foggy mountains of Maine, a minute is all it takes. After hours of trying to find his way back, a nervous and tired Donn falls down an embankment, making it impossible for him to be found. One sleepless night goes by, followed by a second...and before Donn knows it, almost two weeks have passed, leaving him starving, scared, and delirious.

3:47 a.m. That's when they come for Wren Clemmens. She's hustled out of her house and into a waiting car, then a plane, and then taken on a forced march into the desert. This is what happens to kids who've gone so far off the rails, their parents don't know what to do with them anymore. This is wilderness therapy camp. Eight weeks of survivalist camping in the desert. Eight weeks to turn your life around. Yeah, right.

For twelve-year-old Coral, having divorced parents means only getting to see her dad a few times each year. So when he invites her on a guided elk hunt—on horseback—in the Colorado mountains over fall break, Coral is thrilled. She's sure that this will be the adventure of a lifetime—and great bonding time with her father—even if she is nervous around horses.

Thirteen-year-old Juniper is full of excitement when she’s offered the chance to visit her aunt and uncle in Alaska and take part in a hunt in the Tongass National Forest. Juniper has plenty of experience hunting mule deer at home in Colorado, and she's sure she’ll be ready for whatever Alaska can throw at her. But Southeast Alaska isn’t quite what Juniper expected.

Jimmy Benge is excited to celebrate his thirteenth birthday with an ice fishing adventure in northern Minnesota. He's even allowed to invite his best friend, Ryan, to spend winter break at the family’s lakeside home. The two boys learn a lot about ice fishing and catch a few panfish but decide to fish for something bigger: Northern pike, the alpha predators of the lake.

The International Peace Ascent is the brainchild of billionaire Sebastian Plank: Recruit a global team of young climbers and film an inspiring, world-uniting documentary. The adventure begins when fifteen-year-old Peak Marcello and his mountaineer mother are helicoptered to a remote base camp in the Hindu Kush Mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. When the camp is attacked and his mother taken, Peak has no choice but to track down the perpetrators to try to save her.

These three short stories give listeners a dog’s-eye view of the action and adventure associated with the American West. From an award-winning poet, these stories provide a window into the sometimes fickle relationship between man and dog. Barbara Nelson Blinn used writing as a way to escape her abusive marriage, and these stories are indeed an escape, as listeners will have the opportunity to befriend three different canines, each with their own story filled with mystery, adventure, and the underlying message that controlling the pet population is of utmost importance.

Embsy is a teenager whose biggest problem is that her scientist mom is ready to date again. How could her mom go to Alaska to work for the summer, meet some dumb guy, and mess up their perfect life? Then the crash happens. Now Embsy is stranded in the mountains of Alaska and must use her wit to overcome her injuries and survive long enough to navigate the wilderness.

A young couple from Paris sets out on the adventure of a lifetime: a journey by sailboat around the tip of Cape Horn. But when they stop on a deserted island to explore the barren landscape, the unthinkable happens and they find themselves stranded. Unprepared to survive in the harsh conditions on the island, their only supplies from an abandoned research station, the two must depend on each other as they never have in their lives to hold on until rescue comes, if it ever arrives at all.