For those of you who don't know, Ben East was an outdoorsman and long-time writer-editor for Outdoor Life Magazine in the '40s through the '70s. In the course of his work there, he covered and wrote about scores of instances of survival situations: lost hikers, backwoods injuries, bear attacks. Over the years, he published several books: "Danger!"; "Narrow Escapes"; "Bear Attack": "Wilderness Adventures and Survival." Most of these are still available on used book sites.

His coverage of lost hikers led him to offer the following advice to day-hikers everywhere: "Never step off a road or marked trail unless you are ready to spend the night in the woods!"