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From Wendry, I'm Cassie Depeckle, and this is Against the Odds.

Today, we bring you the story of London-based writer Claire Nelson. In May of 2018, Claire was hiking alone in Southern California's Joshua Tree National Park.

With its spiky namesake Yucca trees and endless horizon, the park was a refuge for Claire from city life and the pressures of work.

But on a seven-mile hike, she slipped while scrambling across a boulder and dropped 25 feet to the earth below.

Here's Claire, reading from her memoir about that moment.

I remember the sound my body made as it hit the ground. A sharp crack. One that cut through the thump of my weight against the desert floor. Then the white heat of pain that stabbed through my body, escaping through my mouth and an almighty howl.

I tried to scramble to my feet, the instinct of reaction to falling. But I couldn't get up. Everything below the arms remained a dead weight. Get up.

I heaved my head and shoulders forward, trying to prize myself off the ground, but each time I crumpled, again and again and again. Something in my body was disconnected.

Urgent messages were being fired from the brain, but they weren't getting through. Only pain.

Unbearable indescribable pain, a scorching flame gun that set me alight with each attempt to move.

I lay there flat on my back, my breathing fast in my heart pounding. I cramed my neck to get a look at my legs. I couldn't lift them either, or bend my knees.

Oh God, oh God, please no. My feet were also immovable, weighted to the desert floor, but I found with intense concentration I could lean them slightly from side to side. I gently wiggled my toes inside my boots.

Okay, I wasn't paralyzed, that was something. I felt a strange flicker of hope through the pain and panic. A sense of, I'm gonna be alright, but my pelvis was broken, that much was clear.

Shattered was actually the word that kept coming to mind.

The fall was just the beginning of Claire's Odyssey.

Well friends and family pieced together clues that she was missing. Claire spent the next several days exposed to the park's punishing desert environment in a fight for her life.

On the special episode of Against the Odds, Claire Nelson is here to tell us her story. This is Stranded in Joshua Tree.

Well done. You've sorted through the embarrassment of riches that is the modern podcast landscape and found me Rob Briden on my podcast.

In this series of Briden and I talk to among others Harry Hill, Ben Elton, Charlotte Church, Steve Cougan and Dame Harriet Walter. And that's just a few.

We tend to chat for about 45 minutes to an hour, never longer. It's terrific conversation. Reminiscence where appropriate and exchange of anecdotes.

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