Trisha falls back to avoid listening and is therefore unable to find her family again after she wanders off the trail to take a bathroom break.

Trying to catch up by attempting a shortcut, she slips and falls down a steep embankment and ends up hopelessly lost, heading deeper into the heart of the forest.

The girl decides to follow a creek because of what she read in Little House on the Prairie (though it soon turns into a swamp-like river), rationalizing that all bodies of water lead eventually to inhabited areas.

Wracked with pneumonia and near death, she comes upon a road, but just as she discovers signs of civilization, she's confronted by a bear, which she interprets as the God of the Lost in disguise.

In imitation of Tom Gordon, she takes a pitcher's stance and throws her Walkman like a baseball, hitting the bear in the face, and startling it enough to make it back away.

Although George A. Romero was attached to write and direct a film adaptation,[1][2] plans for it stalled in October 2005[3] before his death.