Naked 19-Year-Old News Update

Posted on Comments


Officials have halted search operations for Maureen Kelly, who has been missing since Sunday in a remote Washington State forest. Kelly, a 19-year-old from Vancouver, disappeared in what can only be described as a search for the answer to the eternal question: “How stupid do you have to be to try something like this?”

Deputies are searching for a naked Vancouver woman, 19, who left her campground in west Skamania County on Sunday afternoon.
Maureen Kelly reportedly left the Canyon Creek Campground in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest just after 5 p.m. Sunday on a “spiritual quest,” wearing only a fanny pack that contained a compass and a knife. The woman was supposed to return that night, but didn’t. A friend reported her missing around midnight.

Local wildlife include wolves, mountain lions and bears. Never mind the problems of hypothermia and other dangers.

Skamania County Sheriff Dave Brown said Tuesday evening that two days of searching have failed to find 19-year-old Maureen Kelly. He says the search is being suspended until the end of the week.

Going out into the woods naked was no sudden impulse:

“She had talked about doing this spiritual quest for evidently quite some time,” he said. “The folks that she was with, they felt that this was something she needed to do.”

If you’re hanging around people who think this is something you need to do, you’re hanging around the wrong people. And are we surprised to learn she had a history of substance abuse?

Clark County court records indicate Kelly was in district court last Friday after failing a drug test required as part of pleading guilty last yer to being a minor in possession of alcohol.
At the hearing, a judge reordered Kelly to comply with all conditions, which included a fine of more than $500, according to court records.
Two days later, Kelly apparently went on her “quest.” . . .
Kelly is active on social media; she described herself in her Facebook profile as employed as a “guru” at “Spreading the Love.” On June 6 she posted a picture with the caption “There is no path to happiness. Happiness is the path.”
On her YouTube page, Kelly posted videos of herself playing ukulele and beatboxing, a form of making percussion sounds with one’s voice and mouth.

These are interesting skills, but not much help when it comes to surviving naked in a remote forest. Probably a public school graduate.

There is no path to stupidity. Stupidity is the path.

UPDATE: Did another species of predator get her?

If she made it to the road and then her trail disappeared — authorities brought in search dogs to track her — has she been kidnapped?

 

63 comments

  1. Considering that authorities haven’t found her, we are left to ponder the question …
    Did she find herself ?

  5. […] Stacy McCain has a post up a 19 year old woman who walked off into the woods wearing nothing but a fanny pack containing a compass and an knife. No clothes. Just the fanny pack. Into a forest that is home to bears, wolves, and mountain lions. […]

  7. “she described herself in her Facebook profile as employed as a “guru” at “Spreading the Love.””

    I’ve never heard that particular euphemism for prostitute.

  8. “How much dope do you need to smoke……..”
    Just like the wise old owl from the Tootsie Pop commercial:
    1,
    2,
    3,
    3 !!!

  10. “I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints,
    And then, I smoke two more!”

    Why do I think she probably liked that song?

  15. Skamania County is in Southern Washington so she probably did not get eaten by wolves (real wolves are along the Canadian border). There are far more dangerous predators than that in Washington (a lot of meth producers like to use public lands to set up their operations).

  18. To the update: Oh, dear.

    It’s one thing if her own stupidity did her in. This possibility is just awful!

  20. It occurs to me, too, but I turn headlines into novels.

    Though it does seem to me that the way to start running is not naked, in the dead of night, in a forest, compass be damned. Much too easy to get lost, and hurt.

  21. Wrong. The US Fish & Wildlife Service has been introducing (not “re-introducing”, as the original species was the timber wolf) the gray wolf into the PNW. In point of fact, wolves are present all over the state. I’ve not seen them personally, but reliable friends of mine have.

    The linked map is conservative, as the the tree huggers realize that wolf packs roaming the landscape isn’t a good thing for public relations.

    Although I expect, based on the updates, that the two legged species of wolf snagged the nekkid guru.

  22. That map is sort of cool. The population is still low. I have no problem with wolves being reintroduced–just like I have no problem with cougars repopulating the eastern states, provided that problem animals are allowed to be shot on sight (that means if wolves show up in your field harassing your cows you get to shoot them–I have a soft spot for cows). It is when you can’t shoot them that they loose their fear of men.

  24. Some thoughts about this, as a resident of Washington, and sort of familiar with Skamania County:

    1. The majority of urban residents along the I5 corridor really have no clue as what a howling wilderness which lies in the Cascades. And the area around Mount St Helens (which is the area in question) is deliberately so. Even forestry is limited, although that’s overall; I can’t say as to the location our meandering mystic vanished in. Urbanites get in trouble there all the time, and the search&rescue groups are well trained and experienced. I respect their reports, and that Twitter post is interesting indeed.

    2. Weather has been cooling off all week, and it would be cooler still in the Cascades. Hypothermia, for this bimbo in the buff, would be a certainty, and in short order. Certainly no more than a few hours, probably less.

    3. Predators are a possibility, but less of an issue. Animal attacks are relatively rare, unless this goofy gal tried to mate with one. And, no, I don’t put it past her, IYKWIMAITTYD.

    4. If a predator, including the two-legged species, didn’t snag her to fulfill their base desires, and the nude nitwit somehow avoided the onset of hypothermia (which includes irrational behavior, as opposed to simple stupidity), she may have had a pre-arranged pickup to avoid her legal entanglements. It wouldn’t be the first time someone faked their deaths to avoid their problems.

    In any event….a fine post, Stacy! And a grim reminder why I loath the California Colonists who effed up the Pacific Northwest.

  25. That’s the problem — wolves are a protected species. For now, anyway. And they are taking down livestock, which the envirotards view as a feature, not a bug.

    One conservative member of the state legislature offered a bill (in jest) to introduce wolves near the cities in Western Washington. And, yes, he represents a district east of the Cascades.

  27. Anyone who has flown into Seattle from the east (when the clouds are not there) might notice you cross a long uninterrupted wilderness of mountains in your decent. That strip of mountains runs from North Cascades National Park on the Canadian Border down to the Columbia River (separating Washington and Oregon).

    I agree mostly likely reasons this girl is missing is 1) hypothermia, 2) criminal attack, or 3) she faked it (I did not realize her legal issues were still pending). Animal attack is a very remote possibility.

  30. If you set off naked through the wilderness to find yourself or whatever, and you manage in the dark to penetrate the forest and get to a road, does that signal your quest is over?

    Second question: what the heck was she on?

  31. Buzzards track by smell first and no amount of trees is going to stop all that aroma from escaping upward. Give that a few more days.

  32. Failed drug test? A $500 fine (I think she’s unemployed, not a prostitute)? Also, her half-sister remarked that she had a “wild past” she was trying to leave behind her.

    What better way to leave the past behind than to disappear? (I’m novelizing, and I promised myself I wouldn’t do it, but here I go.) Further, disappearing leaves the possibility of re-appearing, at some point. And going naked could represent some kind of way to leave fewer clues, or representing a rebirth. I can come up with a great story, but I can’t say “That’s what happened!”

  33. Where Stacy has the “substance abuse” link – she flunked her drug test and was ordered to pay the $500 fine…though, really, that’s not very much money, even when you’re 19.

  36. Being male, and single, I personally am in favor of nude 19 year old girls.
    Some guys like to go to car dealerships and see cars they will never afford…….

  37. I’ll bet that she’s bailed off her old life to create a new one. That isn’t uncommon, we see it up here in Canada occasionally where a person “walks away” and is rediscovered later having assumed a new life. And I’ve read enough police reports to know it happens in the US as well.

  39. Self opt out selection in Nature’s drive for the evolution of the species through the survival instinct.

  44. There is no evidence she was eaten by wolves. As Terry Pratchett has pointed out “no one has ever stumbled out of a dark winter forest and complained they were attacked by wolves.”

  45. We have enough of a problem here in LA with hawks and coyotes eating their little puff dogs and chihuahuas that you think the problem would have registered. You would think incorrectly.

  46. Da GF and I got caught in a rainstorm/rockslide on PCH South of Big Sur over the Xmas holiday. Dead of night. No cell phone, no traffic, no lights, no neighbors. Nature gets close real fast if you let it.

  50. Reckon if she survives… Hell, it’s nigh on summer and she might even thrive! She’s got a knife and it’s ‘shroom season… There might be an uptick in Sasquatch sightings in the area…

Comments are closed.