By, Dana Ford (CNN)
Could you survive on your own for 19 days in the woods?
How would you do it?
Those are the questions that 72-year-old Gene Penaflor faced after he was separated from his hunting partner in California’s Mendocino National Forest.
He solved the second question with squirrels, leaves and water from a nearby drainage.
To the first, his survival shouts a resounding, “Yes!”
Penaflor was at home Sunday recovering from his unexpected jaunt in the woods.
“He’s good. He’s hanging in there,” Penaflor’s son, Jeremy, told CNN. “He looks like nothing changed except he grew a beard.”
His father is taking it slow, he said. “If he decides to hunt in a couple of years, that’s fine. But we joked around, and said let’s make it a camping trip. If he goes out again, I want to be with him.”
‘No words, just hugs’
Penaflor was reported missing to the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office on September 25. He separated from his hunting partner one day earlier and had not been seen since.
Authorities initiated a search.
But they found no clues and suspended it after a few days, ahead of an incoming storm.
The search resumed on Saturday.
Read the rest of the story here.