Trapped in pitch-black darkness for five days with only a handful of licorice to eat, 10-year-old Joshua Dennis was tempted to walk out of the abandoned mine on his own.
But he remembered his mother had taught him if he ever was lost, to stay put. "I just called for help and most of the time they couldn't hear me and there were several times I just kept on calling and no one heard me," Joshua said.Speaking to reporters from his hospital bed at Primary Children's Hospital, Joshua said Thursday he believed he spent only two days lost in the Hidden Treasure Mine near Stockton, in Tooele County. The boy became separated from his father and fellow Boy Scouts during a weekend troop outing.
Remarkably, Joshua said he remembered only one occasion he felt discouraged. "I was mostly sleeping I slept a lot of the time and when I got tired of looking around I just sat there. I wasn't feeling lonely or scared."
Joshua said he spent the time sleeping, praying and yelling for help.
"I was thinking about what they were doing up (above), if they were thinking about me or looking for me and stuff like that. If they were, how many people were looking for me and if there was anybody else in the mine and stuff.
"That's really what I was thinking about mostly and how long it was going to take me to find my way out or someone to rescue me or find me."
Except for dehydration and frostbite on some of his toes, his pediatrician, Dr. Ted Jenkins, said Joshua weathered the ordeal well. "As you've seen, he's a pretty stoic kid. He's a good boy. He's squared away. I think he'll be fine," Jenkins said.
Jenkins said Joshua should be released this weekend. He was listed in good condition Friday.
At one point while he was lost, Joshua attempted to walk out of the mine but he became disoriented, he said.
"I was just following the wall and there were a whole bunch of different exits. I just went over to the wrong one," he said. "I went to a dead end and and went around in circles." So, he sat and waited.
By the fifth day of the search, hopes were fading that Joshua would be found alive, said Tooele County Sheriff Donald Proctor. Search and rescue crews were tired and some 25 minutes before Joshua was found about 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, some searchers were talking about giving up the manhunt.
But the boy's father, Terry Dennis, insisted that crews continue looking.
"I just couldn't give up," Proctor said. "I talked to the father. He insisted the boy didn't come out of the hole."
Aided by Tooele-area historian John Skinner, UP&L mine searchers Ray Guymon and Gary Christensen made another pass by the ledge on which Joshua was perched some 150 feet above the main floor of the mine. Proctor said Joshua was located 500 feet from where he last seen.
They had passed the pocket dozens of times during the search and had called Joshua's name. This time, they heard his faint cry.
"It was great. He (Skinner) poked his head out of that hole and said `We found him and he's alive.' It's probably the highest high I've had in 31 years of law enforcement. That explains how high it was," Proctor said.
Sleep - perhaps what Joshua needs most - has eluded him since he was rescued.
Sensory deprivation has clouded the exhausted boy's sense of time and disrupted his sleeping patterns, said Jenkins.
"He's been sensory deprived for five days, so he probably didn't know if it was night or day. He didn't know the time had passed. He might be a little messed up like that for a while," Jenkins said.
Proctor said he, too, has not had a good night's rest since the ordeal started last weekend.
"I had about four hours of sleep since this started and that was because of the worries going through my mind. Last night I probably had less than that because of the elation going through my mind. I was too high to sleep."