Published July 13, 2026 01:42PM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Another Black boy is dead. For the past nine days, the name Nolan Xavier Wells has been plastered all over my Threads feed. The chant-like repetition of his name in the news and across social media stirs up a strange mix of emotions in my body. Sadness swirls in my chest before sinking into my belly. My brain is foggy with exhaustion, and rage blurs my vision. Yet at the risk of sounding insensitive to some of you, I also feel a little proud. If you\u2019re not a Black person, that probably doesn\u2019t make any sense\u2014you might even think it sounds downright perverse. But that cacophony of feelings is all too familiar to people who look like me. The pride I feel comes from seeing my people\u2019s, and our allies\u2019, collective outrage. Knowing that people actually give a shit about us feels good. But still\u2026another Black boy is dead.<\/p>\n
A Boating Trip Ends in a Devastating Loss<\/h2>\n
Group adventures are supposed to be fun. But a boat trip bound for Horn Island, a barrier island off the Mississippi coast, over the Fourth of July weekend ended in tragedy.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, July 4, 18-year-old football player Nolan Xavier Wells<\/a> from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, a town in Jackson County, and three of his<\/a> friends, all of whom were white, traveled to the island to celebrate the holiday. Wells was the only one who didn\u2019t come home.<\/p>\n On Saturday around 11 P.M., one of Wells\u2019 friends reported him missing. At approximately midnight, his mother, Christine Wonsley<\/a>, contacted the Jackson County Sheriff\u2019s Office and said the same. A search ensued. On Monday, July 6, a U.S. Park Service ranger found Wells\u2019 body<\/a> on the northwestern tip of the island, and his family identified him. On Tuesday, July 7, Jackson County Coroner Bruce Lynd confirmed Wells\u2019 identity using dental records.<\/p>\n Jackson County Sheriff John Ledbetter said Wells\u2019 friends left Horn Island without him. \u201cFrom what we understand, he chose to stay there,\u201d he said in a statement to ABC News<\/i><\/a>. On Monday, July 13, one of Wells\u2019 friends, Tracestin Shepherd,\u00a0told ABC<\/em> News<\/em><\/a> that Wells stayed behind because he met a girl and planned to return home on another boat.<\/p>\n Authorities believe that Wells drowned and \u201cdon\u2019t suspect foul play.\u201d However, the full account of what happened on the trip is still under investigation.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve followed the Wells saga as it has progressed from a breaking news piece to a national news story to a topic of intense debate on social platforms. I\u2019ve read multiple posts on social media that speculate that racism or foul play contributed to his death. While law enforcement authorities have not revealed any details that hint at racially motivated wrongdoing, I understand why people intrinsically assume this.<\/p>\n Mississippi\u2019s history is fraught with racial inequality<\/a> brought about by chattel slavery and bolstered by Jim Crow laws, decades of redlining, racial zoning, segregation, and the insidious\u2014and often disturbingly overt\u2014pervasiveness of anti-Black stereotypes<\/a>.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a history that created an environment that\u2019s not unfamiliar to me. As a kid, my dad\u2019s favorite cautionary phrase that he\u2019d say in response to any news of a Black person being harmed at the hands of, or in the presence of, a white person echoes in my brain: \u201cThey will always screw you.\u201d<\/p>\n On July 7<\/a>, the Wells\u2019 family retained renowned civil rights attorney Ben Crump<\/a> to conduct an independent investigation and autopsy. Crump has represented families in several high-profile cases, including that of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.<\/p>\n Crump recently shared three pieces of information<\/a>. The first is that video footage of an altercation between someone believed to be Wells and another person has surfaced. (Shepherd told ABC<\/em> News<\/em> that it was he and another person yelling in the video, and that \u201cWells is not in the video.\u201d) The second: Wells\u2019 friends returned with the teen\u2019s phone, and messages have supposedly been deleted. And third, Wells\u2019 father, Elmore Wonsley, said his son was\u00a0an \u201celite athlete\u201d and can swim.<\/p>\n Whatever happened leading up to Wells\u2019 separation from his group proved deadly and serves as a reminder that the most dangerous moment in any flavor of group outdoor adventure is when people split up\u2014or when someone gets left behind.<\/p>\n Togetherness is the thread of a group trip. If someone notices the group headcount has dropped by one (or more), it prompts a question that alerts the remaining members to the fact that something has gone very, very wrong: Where did so-and-so go?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n When people are separated in dangerous situations, their chance of survival drops, experts say. Whether people become separated in the mountains, on the trails, or out on the water, the broader data outlined below on outdoor separations, particularly those that occur while hiking, tells a bone-chilling story that we can use as a proxy for the cost of splitting up anywhere\u2014such as on or near a barrier island.<\/p>\n That data culminates in one overarching conclusion: parting ways, no matter the reason that leads up to it, is statistically dangerous.<\/p>\n A well-known case in which separation cost someone their life is the one involving Michelle Vanek, a 35-year-old mother of four from Colorado, who went missing during a hike in 2005. Vanek separated from her hiking partner while trekking Mount of the Holy Cross, a nearly 14,000-foot summit located on the northern ridge of the Sawatch Mountain Range.<\/p>\n Outside<\/i> journalist Ted Katauskas, who helped find her remains and penned a story about the recovery of Vanek\u2019s body, revealed a few of those gnarly statistics after he spoke with Robert J. Koester<\/a>. Koester is a mission coordinator at the Virginia Department of Emergency Management who created the International Search and Rescue Incident Database (ISRID), which hosts data on over 145,000 search-and-rescue (SAR) incidents from across the globe, dating back to 2014.<\/p>\n After analyzing numbers regarding lost and missing hikers, Koester determined that out of more than 3,000 people who hiked solo or got separated from their group, roughly 91 percent were found alive; nearly nine percent were found dead. Predictably, the numbers are better for people who never separated: about 98 percent were found alive, and two percent were found dead. Katauskas summed up the math in one sobering sentence: hikers who separate from a group statistically are four times more likely to die than group hikers who become lost and never separate.<\/p>\n Those stats tell us what<\/i> happens when people leave or are left behind, but they don\u2019t explain why<\/i>. It turns out that there are a few answers to this question, some logistical and others psychological. I called up Koester and a psychotherapist for some insight.<\/p>\n Drawing on his personal experiences and his leadership of SAR missions, Koester identifies differences in capability among group members as one of the biggest causes of separation. \u201cSome people hike faster than other people. So, unless you\u2019re trying to control [not separating] for a pretty long time, the group will get strung out,\u201d he said. He also cites a few other relatable yet pretty benign causes of separation: not everyone wants to go the same route, most of us want to pee in private, or sometimes someone needs to fill their canteen with water.<\/p>\n Another cause is more nefarious. Some \u201cfriends\u201d\u2014even romantic partners\u2014purposely desert those they came with. For example, the act of abandoning someone in the woods or other outdoor landscape has occurred frequently enough that social media coined a term for it<\/a>: alpine divorce. The term\u2019s usage spread after a woman posted a TikTok<\/a> recounting how her partner left her alone in the mountains.<\/p>\n Incidents of separation might also be the result of carelessness or worsen if someone, or everyone, is under the influence of alcohol or another kind of mind-altering substance, Dr. Suzanne Wallach<\/a>, a psychotherapist and outdoor enthusiast with an obsession for wilderness disaster documentaries, based in Los Angeles, California, told me.<\/p>\n Interestingly, just because someone realizes that a group member has gone missing doesn\u2019t necessarily mean they\u2019ll do something about it. This is called the bystander effect. \u201cIt\u2019s just a part of human behavior that shows up in any sort of a group dynamic where it unintentionally reduces the likelihood that any one person is going to step forward and take action,\u201d Wallach said. As a group becomes larger, she said, \u201cthe easier it can become for each person to believe that someone else has taken action or someone else is taking charge.\u201d Two psychologists, John M. Darley and Bibb Latan\u00e9, described this phenomenon in a landmark paper in the sixties<\/a>, dubbing it \u201cthe diffusion of responsibility.\u201d And in some cases, the outcome is that no one does anything.<\/p>\n There is good news. Koester said it\u2019s rare for separation to lead to a serious incident requiring a SAR team. \u201cI\u2019m just thinking back to all of my hiking experiences, and we got separated all the time, and it never led to a search,\u201d Koester said.<\/p>\n Wells\u2019 disappearance and eventual death unfortunately were one of those rare and devastating occurrences.<\/p>\n When a tragedy such as the one in the Wells\u2019 case occurs, we\u2019re confronted with one question: How do we make sure this doesn\u2019t happen again?<\/i><\/p>\n \u201cThe real answer is don\u2019t get separated,\u201d Koester said. But that is easier said than done. For anyone with an affinity for group adventures, prevention is crucial.<\/p>\n According to Koester, everyone in the group should agree to stay together. He says this should take the form of a discussion before the trip, where people explicitly state their commitment to that goal. He advises that everyone agree on a meeting place to which people should return if they become separated. Other family members and friends who aren\u2019t on the trip should know where you\u2019re going and when they can expect your return. Additional pieces of advice include keeping children in sight, allowing stronger hikers to take up the rear and carry a heavier pack if there\u2019s group gear. Also, \u201can FRS radio isn\u2019t a bad tool to have,\u201d he said. An FRS device, which stands for family radio service, functions like a walkie-talkie<\/a>, and you don\u2019t need a special license to purchase one.<\/p>\n And according to Wallach, simply being aware of the bystander effect can help prevent it by offsetting \u201cpluralistic ignorance.\u201d In an outdoor adventure situation, she said, pluralistic ignorance could look like realizing someone is missing and making the grave assumption that everything is fine just because others haven\u2019t noticed or aren\u2019t panicking.<\/p>\n Alas, even if everyone takes all the above precautions, the unfortunate reality is that someone can still become separated from the group. So, what then?<\/p>\n The first thing to do if someone from your group goes missing, Koester recommends, is to follow the STOP mnemonic: s<\/b>top, literally; t<\/strong>hink about what\u2019s going on; o<\/b>bserve all the information you have (i.e., Where was the missing person last seen? Did they mention anything about leaving?); p<\/b>lan for what to do next. The plan could involve calling the missing person if cell service is available, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe counteraction to the bystander effect is for someone to actually start assigning people tasks,\u201d Wallach told me. One person can take charge, assign two or more people to return to where they last saw the missing person, and have two or more people stay put in case the missing person returns to that spot.<\/p>\n Near the end of our call, Koester shared the ultimate prevention tool everyone should have in their arsenal: not believing that separation can\u2019t happen to you.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth taking his words seriously.<\/p>\n With each passing day, more news about Wells\u2019 death becomes available to the public, and I can\u2019t imagine the depth of his family\u2019s grief as they cope with their loss while also navigating a winding legal system, making attempts to squash misinformation from spreading<\/a>, and being poked and prodded with questions. The racial tension in the discourse also weighs heavily on this case. I\u2019m heartbroken for them and for the Black community who have to grapple with yet another death. The pride I feel, stemming from the collective outrage I mentioned in the first paragraph, gives me hope that the family will receive answers.<\/p>\n Again, we don\u2019t know exactly what happened or why it happened, but something went very wrong on that boating trip. Three white boys and one Black boy went out for a day on the water, and only the Black boy didn\u2019t return. It\u2019s another situation that helps reinforce a perspective that myself and other Black outdoor lovers have had to grapple with: the outdoors is neither inherently neutral nor safe ground for Black people. I know I\u2019m always looking over my own shoulder when I\u2019m in predominantly white spaces; the skill of hypervigilance has been drilled into me since childhood. It\u2019s a skill not unfamiliar to any Black person on the planet.<\/p>\n About the author<\/strong>: Ayana Underwood is the senior health editor at <\/em>Outside. She previously wrote a personal essay detailing what it\u2019s like to be a Black person navigating outdoor spaces, which you can read here.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n <\/div>\nWells\u2019 Family Enlisted the Help of a Civil Rights Attorney<\/h2>\n
The High Cost of Separation in the Outdoors: What the Data Says<\/h2>\n
What Causes People to Get Separated?<\/h2>\n
Prevention Should Be the Baseline Standard of Safety on Any Group Adventure<\/h2>\n