On the morning of May 8^th, Amanda Eller meditated, then decided to go for a run. It was a lovely morning, as is so often true in Maui. She drove to the Makawao Forest Reserve. Since it was just a short 3-mile run, she left her stuff in the car – phone, wallet, water bottle, etc.

She tried running, but there were many trees down. So, less of a run, more of a hike. After about a mile and a half she sat on a tree to meditate.

She got up to go back. But then she was lost. Really lost.

She couldn’t find the path back. She spent a couple of hours in that area, trying to find the way back to her car. Confused and frustrated, she picked a different direction than she’d tried before, having a gut feeling that it was the way to her car. (It wasn’t.) She determinedly kept going that way. (In this situation, you should stay in place and wait for help.)

When her boyfriend had left the house that morning at 7:30 am, Eller was meditating. The next morning, with no idea where she was, he called the police. Her car was found at the Makawao reserve.

Rescue organizations – and concerned citizens began searching for Eller. The authorities deployed drones, helicopters, tracking dogs. Hundreds of volunteers fanned out on foot in the 2,093 acres of dense forest. With machetes. Her family offered a $10,000 reward.

After three days, fire and police quit searching. They are mandated not to keep searching after 72 hours. (They are said to have continued “behind-the-scenes” support.)

Family and friends kept searching, and created an organized search effort to use those hundreds of volunteers. There were up to 150 people a day searching, and it was important to make sure they were searching efficiently. Her father, John Eller, set up a search interface so people could use their phones to log searched areas. Yet no one could find a trace of her. One of Eller’s friends said, “As the days go by, and more and more people are in the forest, we get closer and closer to foul play.”

A GoFundMe account was set up to help with expenses – helicopters aren’t cheap. Chris Berquist, an arborist, spent so much time coordinating the search that his boss fired him. All the more time to spend on the hunt.

A week went by. Nothing. Another week. Nothing. On the 16^th day, Berquist, Javier Cantellops, and Troy Helmer were in a helicopter scanning the heavy forest. They were paying special attention to waterways, where lost people often end up. Passing over a ravine between two waterfalls, they saw a grubby figure waving from 150 feet below. It was Amanda Eller, trapped there with a broken leg.

She was hoisted up and taken to the hospital. In addition to a broken tibia, she had lost 20 pounds – a diet of moths and unknown plants had not kept the weight on. She was badly sunburned and had skin infections as a result. And she was emotional.

That was May 24^th. The next day, from a hospital bed, Eller made a teary videotaped statement that was posted on Facebook.

…the last 17 days of my life have been the toughest – days of my life. It’s been a really significant spiritual journey that I was guided on, and there were times of total fear and loss and wanting to give up, and it did come down to life and death and I had to choose. And I chose life. I wasn’t going to take the easy way out, even though that meant more suffering, and pain for myself.

But this is just like a tiny little book of my story and my life, and it serves a much much bigger purpose, and seeing the way that the community of Maui came together, people that know me and people that don’t know me… just under the idea of helping one person make it out of the woods alive, just warms my heart.

Just seeing the power of prayer and the power of love, when everybody combines their efforts, is, incredible. It can move mountains, and at some point, I think we all thought that was lost from the world, and it’s beautiful to know that it’s not only [not] lost, but it’s just SO prevalent, and if we allow ourselves to tap into that side, to open our hearts, to be open to one another and see one another as brothers and sisters instead of like somebody we should be scared of… We’re helping each other, we’re all like part of the same community, we’re all part of the same purpose of being here on earth, then that’s what this was all for, this was all about us coming together for like a greater purpose, of community, and love, and appreciation for life, and I have the most gratitude and respect and appreciation, I can’t even put it into words, for the people that have helped me, for the people that prayed for me, for the people that were at base camp, for the people all over the world that somehow just wanted to be a part of this for the greater good, outside of themselves, so much love and respect, and I appreciate more than words can say all of those donations for the Gofundme, which has funded like my helicopters, because I had no idea how I was going to pay for that! But funding the helicopters and helping the people that have come out to search for me! I mean paying for their plane tickets. It’s such a beautiful exchange of energy amongst people for all the right reasons.

Quite a few people didn’t like that statement. They didn’t like “spiritual journey” – in fact, that made them suspect the whole thing had been either a publicity stunt or a deliberate attempt to seek enlightment in the wilderness at the expense of the citizens of Maui. Some said she probably took drugs to get that spiritual experience – why should we pay for that?

We suspect they didn’t like the fact that she talked about appreciation and gratitude but didn’t actually say “thank you.”

They found her evasive – why didn’t she say how she got lost, in fact did she really get lost? They didn’t appreciate getting a lecture about love and community from a drug-using glory hog. “That’s what this was all for”?

What they saw as evasiveness fed a conspiracy theory about how she was never lost. Armchair theorizers looking at maps online said it was impossible to get lost in an itty-bitty 2,000-acre park full of trails. “How in the world do you get lost in a forest on a small Island lol” said one person.

“From the maps– looks like one couldn’t walk for a mile or two in a straight line without crossing one. The forest is not dense tropical forest either, at an elevation of 2,500 ft. The ocean can be seen through breaks in the trees. For the first day, or two, she didn’t have a broken leg. Her sunburn appears to be only on the feet and front of the ankles. Any other reasons to doubt that she was even in the park for 17 days with everyone looking for her all that time?” said another.

(Oh? Why did volunteers need machetes if the forest is so open? Was she supposed to lie on her stomach to get an even sunburn? If it’s so hard to get lost in Hawaii, how come after Eller was found her rescuers immediately set off to search for Noah Mina? To those who truly doubt a person can get lost even without a broken leg, SorryWatch suggests some wilderness training.)

Oh, and they wanted her to “Give the GoFundMe money back.”

People.

Three days later, still bandaged up, Eller made another statement. She was calmer.

I wanted to stay out of the limelight, but feel I need to make a statement to clear up some misunderstandings….

I want to go back to the details of… the situation of me being lost in the woods. That day, that I decided to go into the Makawao Forest, I had it in my mind that I was going for a 3-mile run. …I decided that I didn’t want to carry anything with me. Soon after starting out on that run, there were a lot of trees down, and so it turned into a hike…. I sat down on a tree, and I meditated. …I was listening to nature, and just listening and observing what was happening around me. There were not any drugs taken. At all. I was not under the influence of anything, just complete sobriety and clarity.

After meditating, I tried to return to my car, and I couldn’t find that path…. I spent a couple hours within that same part of the forest trying to find my way back to my car. After a couple hours I got disoriented, and frustrated, and picked a direction… It was a different direction than I tried, and I felt that that was the direction of my car. So clearly it was the wrong way, and I continued to go that way.

Had I had my cell phone with me that would not have been the case. So that was my irresponsibility, and for that I apologize.

That day I never intended to go on any kind of spiritual journey… it was simply just a hike through the woods…. It was never my intention through any of this to put anybody in harm’s way, to create a rescue effort out of my being lost in the woods.

I want to apologize for putting anybody in harm’s way, for any kind of… rescue effort that people feel were unnecessary. I apologize and I also thank like, every single person that showed up, who was on the ground, to try to help and find me, thousands of people, thousands of people were praying for me. I am in such awe and gratitude of all of the people that helped me find my way back to my family. I can never repay that. All I can do is just thank you from the bottom bottom of my heart.

I realize that I was irresponsible, that I should have had my cell phone with me, that I should have had some water with me… I am completely aware of that. And… this situation is hopefully making other people very aware of the preparations that they need when they choose to explore Maui…

I understand that my comments earlier on, about this being a spiritual journey, may have bypassed the details of what really happened. I’d like to clarify that I did, at the end of this experience… find a silver lining, and the bigger picture as to what was happening, but this was never intentional, and I did not set out that day on a spiritual journey. I set out that day to go on a very simple hike through the woods.

I should have spent more time in the beginning explaining the logistics of getting lost. Versus, you know, the messages that I tried to pull from the overall experience. I was naive and it was irresponsible of me to head out into the woods that day in the way that I did. It [was] never my intention to put anybody in harm’s way or to require rescue efforts, because of my irresponsibility. So for that I deeply do apologize to the community. I now understand how many people dropped their lives and what was important to them, to help me, and the dangers that they were maybe put in to help find me. And I’m relieved that that were no injuries and no serious consequences to that, but I do apologize for putting anybody in harm’s way.

It was not my right to be so casual about safety.

All of that being said, I would like to thank the Maui community, all of the local communities of Hawaii, and the global community, for the support, and the love, and the kind words that I’ve received, to expedite my healing, and to allow me to return back to my family, and back to my life in some kind of normal way. Thank you for everybody that helped me get home. Thank you for everybody’s prayers. I am in awe and gratitude for all of the love and support that I’ve received.”

Some people were still angry. One Facebook commenter snarked “It is good that you are safely home – but remember that you are not an inspiration, you are a cautionary tale…one that we have heard quite enough from.”

But another wrote, “This statement was very important for many of us who either are first responders or are married to a first responder… Their safety and the public’s safety cannot be taken lightly…. Your apologies seem unimportant to many but to those of us who are vested in the lives of these first responders/rescuers, that was a missing piece. You humbled yourself and gained perspective. All in all, we praise God that you’re alive!”

Was it right for Eller to apologize? Yes.

What for? Her family and friends were terrified and brokenhearted. Thousands of people were worried for her. Hundreds spent time, energy, and money searching for her. Others searched and when ordered to stop, suffered pangs because they couldn’t keep trying.

She didn’t mean to cause anyone harm. But she was a little careless and very unlucky.

Sometimes – often – we hurt others with no intention of doing so. We don’t mean to, but we do. Sometimes it could have been avoided, as in Eller’s case. Sometimes it can’t be helped.

Kids defend themselves by saying “I didn’t mean to.” Yes, there’s a difference between being kicked accidentally and being kicked deliberately. So it matters if they meant to. But it’s not the whole story. It’s not an excuse.

If Sumac kicked you completely by accident – and got hurt herself in the process – she should still apologize for kicking you. (What were we doing in this hypothetical example? Practicing ninja jitterbug? Wrestling a horse out of a hospital?)

Eller apologized for her carelessness – “It was not my right to be so casual about safety” – and also for explaining herself so incompletely in her first statement. The apology is a good one. She names what she did wrong in each case.

Her first statement, with no mention of how she got lost, and then got stuck, and with its dreaminess about spirituality and loving-kindness, left a vacuum that certain people filled with viciousness and conspiracy theories.

Eller shouldn’t be blamed for that. She had just come near death, she’d been desperate in the wilderness for weeks, and she was in a starving condition. She didn’t forget to be grateful to those who worked to rescue her. She must be forgiven for deploying imperfect PR skills from a hospital bed.

Those who sat at computers and invented stories, cruel ignorant stories, about her supposed wickedness are the ones who are at fault here. They say ‘a thief thinks everyone steals.’ What do these stories tell us about the people who made them up? We haven’t heard any of them saying they were sorry.