Durham, N.C. - Donald Meeks set out with bow and arrow in hand to hunt for carp on Falls Lake. He almost didn't return. The retired landscaper from Durham went one foot out on the lake because the drought had left the water level so low.
Friend David Minshew came along for the ride and waited for Meeks at the car, expecting him to return in a few hours. Darkness began to fall and still no sign of the 68-year-old Meeks.
A motorist stopped around 7 p.m. and asked if they were stranded. Minshew used the driver's cell phone to report his friend was missing. Sheriff's deputies responded, using boats to search the grassy area to no avail.
It was now midnight. Sheriff's deputies asked for a Highway Patrol helicopter. Using thermal-imaging equipment, the helicopter crew found Meeks at 2:11 a.m. about 300 yards north of Interstate 85.
He was surrounded by tall grass and buried up to his chest in some mud, quicksand-type matter.
He says he was simply walking when he fell in a hole, and that he began hallucinating while he was cold and wet and stuck in the mud.
"I thought about being in my warm bed and not out here shivering," he said. "I asked Jesus what in the world I had done to deserve this."
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