Water: In the wilderness, if you're out of water---and not in a desert or similar---find the lowest point and dig a hole. It should start filling with water at the bottom of it in a half hour or so. It will be muddy and yucky, but it will keep you alive.
I disagree with the earlier advice about bleaching or dyeing clothes. I can't think of a better way to get caught before you run---except confiding in some other kid who you know would never rat you out.
Wear grays, browns, or blacks. Wear the drabbest clothes you can find--nothing brightly colored. It's awfully hard to describe dark or drab clothing in a way that makes you findable.
Look, I can describe this imaginary runner: White male, 16, 5'10", short brown hair, brown eyes, medium build, last seen wearing gray sweat pants, a gray sweat shirt, and sneakers with no shoelaces.
Of that description, only the last bit is useful to anyone looking for you.
So don't be seen in the daytime anywhere by anybody until you've been able to steal or otherwise aquire some shoes. Does counselor Joe-bob fatass have feet your size? To hell with stealing his car keys, steal his *shoes*---on a day when he's wearing drab or common, old shoes. Old shoes get dingy. You don't really notice them when you look at someone---you're eyes just kind of slide over them without focusing. Same with drab clothes.
Don't bother trying to change the appearance of the clothes and shoes, drab is enough. Nothing stands out in the woods like brightly colored clothing. Okay, if you're wearing white, get dirty unless you're in snow. Don't run in snow unless you're experienced at camping in inclement weather.
In cold weather, after your golden hour and all that---after you've taken care of the immediate problem of getting away and you're three or four days into your escape, working on staying gone---travelling at night is good because it keeps you out of sight, and keeps you moving (and thus generating heat) in the coldest hours of each day. DO NOT push yourself so hard that you sweat. The sweat wil either try to freeze on your body, or get your clothes wet and they'll try to freeze on you. Either way, it's a good way to lose body heat, go into hypothermia, and die.
The Discovery Channel has a great show--Survivorman, I think it's called. If you're worried about this ever happening to you, you might want to make a habit of watching it.
Similarly, don't try a desert escape, or a dry-country escape in a drought, if you don't know what you're doing outdoors. If you're going to escape in dry (but never desert) country, do it with plenty of water and in the rainy season, or with plenty of water and after a good rain.
Looking like a vagrant gets you questioned and noticed in rural areas--if you're seen, small towns, very small cities, or "nice" parts of town in more urban places. Looking like a vagrant in the rundown parts of cities makes you invisible. If you can't help looking like a vagrant, then make darned sure you just aren't seen until you get to a moderate-sized city.
ID to travel and day labor jobs: Illegal aliens can get fake ID, so can you. Do the jobs the illegals take, be nice, respectful, and polite to them---get in good with them. To get in good with them, work very hard at the job---most latino illegals have little respect for lazy gringos. Once you're in good with those folks, get their help getting fake ID. The rapist stepfather is always a good line for what you're getting away from---works for both sexes. Do not use it unless you have to, and if you do, just say, "Yeah. My stepfather...liked me too much. I don't wanna talk about it. Let's just say he liked me too much and leave it at that." If you're a hard worker and never try to scam anybody for money, ever, and you aren't trying to get alcohol or drugs and use them, and you aren't trying to charm your way into people's pants, people will not suspect you of trying to run another scam on you---they'll sense you're running from something, but if you're a hard worker without unsavory habits, they're going to presume that whatever you're running from is the other guy's fault.
Fake ID won't get you a good job, but it will let you travel on a bus after a few months to get farther away. Don't go back anywhere near your home town. Fake ID will help you out, if you lay low and don't use it except for that one crucial bus trip, until you get legal adulthood. Then you can see about getting your real ID. You may not have to take that bus trip, and should avoid it if you can---if you get in good with the illegals, then if some of them are going from the city you're in to another one, they may let you ride along if you chip in on gas.
Again, street smarts and being too smart to burn the people around you are at a premium.
The biggest thing of all is being smart enough to keep your mouth shut, before and after you run.
You can get away with all kinds of stuff if you know how to absolutely keep your mouth shut. If you run off at the mouth, if you confide in people, you'll get caught at everything.
In a healthy, functional, sane life, confiding in people is good. When you're doing something you ain't s'posed to, confiding in people is *s*t*u*p*i*d*. Big, flashing neon letters kind of stupid.
Maybe you are the one fantastic, shining individual who would never rat anyone out. If so, you're just about the only one. Do not make the mistake of thinking anybody around you is like you and won't rat you out the same way you wouldn't rat them out. I know this---I'm too stupidly stubborn and idealistic to rat people out. And I've learned from hard experience that the odds are that good old friend/relative/lover so-and-so WILL RAT.
Maybe you aren't that individual. If you'd rat, don't think whoever you'd confide in wouldn't.
Either way---dear friend/family/lover you can confide in = RAT.
Everybody you trusted who rats you out always does it with the best of intentions, for your own good, because they love you and want to help you. When they finally admit, twenty years later, that their "help" effed you over but good, their refrain is always the same, "How was I supposed to know? I only wanted to help. I love you so much. I really thought I was doing the right thing. How was I supposed to know? Believe me, if I could do it over again, I would."
The authorities and whoever else you're running from try to scare anyone they think you'd run to. They're very effective at scaring them, because most of the time the folks you're running from really could seriously hurt--through legal means--the folks they think you might confide in or run to. At the same time, the folks you're running from are very effective at convincing the folks you might confide in that it's all for your own good.
Virtually everybody you might run to, including 90% of the people you think would never narc you out, will believe the "it's for your own good" line because they want to believe it---because believing it and going along gets the pressure and threats off them.
And, after all, if it turns out to be disastrous for you, then they can always say, "How was I supposed to know? I love you and just wanted to help you and do what was best."
Everybody in this world, including you, has boundless capacity for self-deception.
In a normal, healthy, sane life, you confiding in those folks and them confiding in you is not only good, it's essential.
When you're on the run from something, confiding in people is stupid. Confiding in people who like you or love you is even dumber, because they will always be easy prey for the argument that they're doing what's best for you.
Even if they think the Program is Evil Incarnate, the authorities will argue--quite convincingly--to anyone who cares about you even a little bit that you're in horrible deadly danger on the street and that the Evil Incarnate Program is at least a little less bad for you than the street.
After all, would people be paying all that money to get you the special help that you so desperately need--considering how much they love you (and your folks will be able to convince your confidant that they love you, because they almost certainly do)--if it was a more dangerous place than the street for God's sake?! Of course they wouldn't!
Except that the kids that have died in the Programs obviously wouldn't have been in more danger on the street, now would they?
Whether I think the street is more dangerous or not is one thing. If you want to make the choice that you think it's less dangerous, you better understand that anybody who cares about you can be easily persuaded that the street is the absolute worst, most dangerous thing for you and that they're horribly, criminally betraying you if they don't narc you out.
I'm 40. In my life I've seen more people caught for more stuff----huge numbers of folks caught doing huge numbers of things---that they'd never have been caught for if they'd had the brains to just keep their mouths shut.
This applies to bad people doing bad things that they genuinely shouldn't have done---sometimes very horrible, evil things.
This also applies to good people trying to evade the harm of somebody doing something to them "for their own good" as well. In spades.
Julie
