Helen began her reading with astronomy textbooks. Celestial navigation would useful at this point in her journey. However, after plunging into Comstock's venerable A Text-book of Astronomy and a more recent text on Celestial Navigation, it was clear that it would take many weeks of reading such books to understand the variable positions of the stars.

On the shelves, she noticed a thin, luridly yellow-and-black-covered paperback that she was pretty sure had not been there before: Wilderness Survival for Dummies.