SOLO. STRANDED. STRUGGLING FOR LIFE

Claire Nelson’s hike in California turned to horror when she slipped on a boulder and plunged six metres to the stony ground. She tells Ben Machell about facing death at 35 –and how she survived alone in the desert for four days

- BEN MACHELL

A young woman is recording a series of video blogs from Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California. She is slim, pretty and blonde, with teeth that shine white under the intense glow of the desert sun. Her name is Claire Nelson, she is a travel writer from New Zealand and she has spent the past few months exploring Canada and the USA while documenting everything on her Instagram account.

Scroll through her feed and there she is in freezing Quebec City, smiling in a fur-lined parka jacket and pair of Ray-Bans. In another photo, she’s in the snow-covered wilderness cuddling a husky. In Toronto, she visits a park full of cherry blossom trees and poses under their pink-white canopy in a black leather jacket. These photos go on and on, making her life seem like an endless adventure – all smiles and sunglasses and seasonal hues. When Nelson eventually makes it to Joshua Tree, she posts a picture wearing sandals, cut-off denim shorts and a Bob Dylan T-shirt. She captions it with a quote from Dylan himself: “I kinda live where I find myself.”

A few days after arriving in southern California, Nelson begins to record her video blogs from within the vast, baking expanse of Joshua Tree. Holding her digital camera at arm’s length from her face, she starts to speak. And right away, it’s clear that something is very wrong. She is flat on her back, looks pale and anxious and is doing her best to shield her face from the beating sun. “I don’t want to be here,” she says in a small voice, as tears pool in her eyes before rolling down her cheeks. “I really don’t want to be here.”