When 84-year-old Royce Clark went missing last month, his friends and family feared the worst.
But the New Brunswick senior was found alive after surviving eight days in the woods last month.
“I’m just a very fortunate man that I’m still able to tell a story about it,” he said.
“I had quite a — I guess you’d call it an excursion, but I don’t know if I’d want to do it again.”
Clark was last seen in Woodstock, N.B., on Aug. 9 after running an errand in his son’s truck. He says the vehicle got stuck on a trail, and when he set off to find help, he became lost.
“I thought, ‘Where in the world did his truck go to?’ And there was no way I could find his truck that evening,” he said.
As the days passed, his son Alvin was getting anxious. He filed a missing persons report with RCMP two days after his father’s disappearance.
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At one point, he received wrong information that his father had been found deceased.
“I just need to find him because you always expect the worst,” Alvin said.
Just over a week after the senior’s disappearance, searchers found the truck but no sign of Royce.
The family’s neighbour, Colton Weeks, took it upon himself to comb through the area that day, driving slowly along the trail and scouring the ditches.
“It was just more or less to find a body and give closure,” Weeks said.
While Weeks was driving back down the trail, he found Royce on the ground, covered in mud.
“And he said, ‘My name’s Royce Clark, I live in Rosedale, can you take me home?’” Weeks recalled.
Royce says he had survived those eight days by drinking water from puddles and eating clovers. At some point, he felt little hope.
“I thought, ‘Well, if I lay down right there and die, somebody will find me,’” he said.
The senior has now recovered, and is back to living life full force. His son says Royce’s survival and rescue is nothing short of a miracle.
“God led him out on that road, and God led him back out there safe. And I said they can say what they want, but I said that’s the way it is,” said Alvin.
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