The Cold Vanish

It's absolutely eerie that people can still vanish without a trace in this day and age. The subject matter makes for a riveting read, but that is sometimes despite the writing – the book jumps disorientingly between different missing persons cases and different time periods, with occasional digressions (descriptions of other missing people) that seem included at random, with no connection to the main narrative.

The author is careful not to draw any conclusions (and in fact casts some shade at more sensationalized coverage such as Missing 411) but at the same time tends to bury information such as a person having a short-term memory disability or a history of depression – in some cases these facts are mentioned in passing on the next page, as if they bear little relevance to a hiker vanishing, rather than providing, as they more likely do, some vital context that complicates the “vanished into thin air” explanation. Even the person around whom the main narrative revolves, though presented at first as an ordinary cyclist – well, some reading between the lines again complicates that narrative. The spin that this was a well-prepared touring cyclist falls apart the further into the story you go, learning that he had been acting erratically, that he left without much warning in a rainstorm, that he was more of a surfer than an experienced cyclist, that it apparently wasn't the first time he'd “gone walkabout” without letting anyone know his whereabouts.

It's undeniably tragic, but it felt to me like the author was leaning hard on the strange and mysterious aspects of all the cases he discussed, while sweeping the more mundane explanations under the rug.

Still, it was a very interesting read, and one likely to make me think twice about walking even ten feet away from my gear in the woods. It's surprising and sobering how many people have vanished and are never found, or only found years later. Even if the explanations are depressingly mundane, it underscores that there is still enough wilderness in the world to deserve caution and respect.

Recommended by Tracking Nana: https://trackingnana.com/2021/05/21/the-cold-vanish/