Edna Nadel stood in the middle of a grass-covered campsite surrounded by a dense forest near Elk Mountain, deep in the Santa Fe National Forest. Her 62-year-old husband, Mel, carrying only a bow and a pistol, disappeared a year ago from this place while on an elk-hunting trip.

Eric Roybal, a Pecos native who had spent his life exploring these mountains, drove Edna to this spot. He had helped search for her husband. But this was the first time they had met.

"Do you need some time alone?" he asked her.

"No. I'm all right," she said.

In the deepening shadows of a late August afternoon, Edna looked around at the place that had, somehow, swallowed her husband. This was her first time at the campsite. She had been reluctant to come here at first, afraid of the grief it might again pull from her. But part of her needed to see the site, to understand.

To the south, on the other side of the rocky dirt road winding past the campsite, the mountain sloped steeply into a canyon leading to Cow Creek. Hidden by trees to the north was a still steeper canyon filled with broken rock, cliffs and tangled vegetation dropping into Bear Creek and the Pecos Wilderness. It was the kind of unforgiving country where a person could vanish and never be found.

She wondered for the thousandth time what could have happened to her husband. She may never know.

In the wake of her husband's disappearance, however, Edna has gone through changes she never could have imagined and found one unexpected gift: a group of neighbors and friends who have helped her survive the unbearable.

Building a community

On a short dirt road in Eldorado, the housing development south of Santa Fe, a small group of neighbors over the years built a tight-knit community. They shared dinners, helped with each other's kids, held parties for every possible occasion. The hub was the Nadel house, a modest home and the first one on the street 17 years ago.

Edna grew up in the Philippines and moved to Canada when she was old enough to leave home. She and Mel met through mutual friends and dated by phone for a year. The weekend she flew to Florida to meet him, they got married. They moved to Eldorado for his jewelry business.

She was a social butterfly with a quick wit unleashed in what she calls her Filipino-Canadian accent. Mel was her rock, a quiet, easy-going guy with the irreverent, colorful vocabulary of his Brooklyn upbringing.

He was a self-made businessman who ran a jewelry store, then a computer store and later found his niche as a Pilates instructor in Santa Fe. His constantly revolving hobbies kept the neighbors entertained: motorcycles, kayaking, a horse, a pet tarantula. "The first time we saw Mel, there was snow, and he was outside the house with a Husky and an Iditerod-style sled trying to get the dog to mush," said Carlos Rael, who became Mel's frequent fishing and camping buddy.

The Nadels' daughter, Kristen, grew up with other kids in the neighborhood and was her father's sidekick. They took tae kwon do and hapkido together, hung out together.

Edna was a mother to everyone, taking care of the neighborhood children in the day-care center she and Mel set up in their home, and watching over her neighbors. As her young charges grew into teenagers, they still hung out at the Nadel house, hoping for some of Edna's beloved meat-and-rice dish that no other parent was able to replicate.

Glenda Hogan, a neighbor for 16 years, said her children, Toby and Brigette, grew up at Edna's day care. "They never wanted to go home," she said.

When newcomers moved into the neighborhood, the Nadels invited them into the community, people such as Jules and Karen Adelfang, who moved to Eldorado nine years ago. "They adopted us into their family," Jules said of the Nadels. "We noticed Edna was always watching out over everyone."

"I was very moved by Edna, Mel and Kristin because they were so warm and made you feel so much a part of their life," Karen Adelfang said.

"Mel and Edna have always been really great friends, a strong and stable influence for the neighborhood," Glenda Hogan said.

Then Mel vanished.

Rough terrain

Earlier that August evening, the big Chevy truck bounced along 15 miles of bone-jarring dirt road on the way to the Elk Mountain campsite where her husband had disappeared. Eric Roybal was driving; Edna set in the passenger seat. In the beginning, she thought the searchers would find him, she explained. Later, she didn't think she had the emotional strength to go to the campsite.

Roybal, a firefighter with Los Alamos County, had been an outfitter for years until he closed that business, and he taught his two sons to hunt in the mountains around Pecos. Roybal made six trips to help look for Mel after he disappeared, once with horses and the other times on foot. In part, Edna wanted to go on this trip to thank him in person for everything he had done.

Roybal told her the Bear Creek area near the campsite was possibly the roughest country in the Pecos Wilderness. It would be possible to get lost or injured there and never be found.

"I'm glad you're coming up," Roybal said. "Maybe it will make more sense to you. I know you think there was a lot of stones unturned. When you see the terrain, you'll know what the searchers were up against."

Disappeared

On Sept. 6, 2009, Mel Nadel drove to Elk Mountain to bow hunt with two buddies. It was the second day in a row he had made the drive. According to his friends, Mel preferred to stick close to camp ever since he had gotten lost while hunting in the Jemez Mountains. He had panicked, running through the woods, firing his gun, until his buddies found him.

On the afternoon he disappeared, Mel had remained behind while his friends went off to hunt on their own. His plan had been to set up a wildlife blind a short distance from camp and, once it was dark, hang out at the camp until they came back.

That night when the two men returned to camp, they found Mel's Jeep locked with his backpack and global positioning system unit inside. His bow, arrows and pistol were missing. And Mel was gone.

They looked for him through the night, and the next day, they called for help.

He was wearing a camouflage turtleneck, shirt and pants, a black Seiko watch and a Lucky 13 pendant he designed, celebrating his March 13 birthday. He had with him his driver's license, a Martin bow, black-and-white zebra-striped arrows and a .44 special.

For days, state police and volunteer search-and-rescue teams scoured the terrain. They brought search dogs, but rain hampered their efforts. After the official search was called off, Roybal and other local hunters continued to look for Mel whenever they were in the area. On June 16, Taos Search and Rescue conducted another search. To date, no trace of Mel has been found.

"We were really shocked when Mel disappeared," Glenda Hogan said. "We thought they would find him in a couple of days. As each day passed and there was no trace of him, it got more surreal. Your heart just ached. You wanted it to be OK."

Unanswered questions

At the campsite, Edna and Roybal discussed what might have happened the night Mel disappeared.

Searchers had found no signs of foul play, Roybal said, but they looked along the roadsides in case Mel had a run-in with someone at the camp, was killed and dumped there.

He might have left the Jeep for some reason after putting his backpack and GPS inside, become confused in the dark, panicked and run, as he had before. Perhaps he fell and was injured, unable to call for help.

He might have had a heart attack; they run in his family.

He might have seen an elk when he returned to the Jeep and chased it, then become lost or injured; Edna said he had hurt his knee a few days before.

Whatever happened, Roybal knows how easy it would be to lose someone dressed in camouflage in this rugged country. "He could fall behind that bush, and we could walk past him 20 times and never see him," Roybal told her.

After seeing the terrain, Edna understood as well.

"What surprised me is his bow wasn't found," Roybal said, "his gun wasn't found. If he was running through the woods in a panic, he would have lost the arrows and probably the bow."

Coming together

The Nadels' neighbors and friends took turns staying with Edna night after night so she wouldn't be alone. Week after week, they brought food to her house. They had Edna and Kristen over for dinners. Their kids, the ones Edna had helped raise, came over often, keeping an eye on her and Kristen. "They watched us like hawks," Edna said.

Kristen liked having a crowd of people around all the time, the community dinners.

Each neighbor and friend had skills Edna needed to sort out everything she suddenly had to do without Mel: pay bills, dissolve a business, keep books, maintain vehicles, mow the weeds.

"Everyone helps," said Jennifer Saladen, another neighbor. "Everyone steps in."

They helped Edna grocery shop, because it was one of the many things she and Mel did together. "Our dates used to be food shopping at Albertsons," Edna said.

"We were always on the receiving end of this family," Glenda Hogan said. "This was our chance to give back."

Until Mel's disappearance, Edna didn't know how many friends she had. "Without them behind me," she said, "I wouldn't still be standing."

Even Bandit, Mel's African gray parrot, who sports a sarcastic humor, watched over Edna. "He keeps asking me, 'Are you OK?' I tell him, 'I'll be fine.' Sometimes I feel like it's Mel."

Edna closed her day-care center for only one week after Mel disappeared, then reopened it. The sound of children's voices, their laughter bubbling from her home again, brought some sense of life continuing in the neighborhood. Jules Adelfang heard high-pitched screeching coming from the Nadel house recently. "I thought someone had an accident, but it was a kid who didn't want to leave," he said, chuckling as he reminisced one evening around the dining table in the Nadels' home.

But Mel's absence is still felt. "Mel was a real heart of this neighborhood," said Jennifer Saladen, beginning to cry. "It's never going to be the same. We've all been changed in good, positive ways, but in heartbroken ways."

Coming to terms

Kristen heard keys jingling the other day at the lock. "For a split second, I thought it was my dad," she said. It was, instead, her mother.

Kristen is finishing her degree at Santa Fe Community College, pulling straight A's despite the turmoil of the last year.

She and her mother have made it through the year of firsts without Mel: first holidays, first birthdays, first neighborhood get-togethers.

When Edna's mother died in the Philippines in January, it was one more blow. Still Edna endured.

The many daily things she used to do with Mel she now does alone. She's getting used to it. "She's learning to reconcile the two lives, the one with Mel and the one without," said her neighbor, Carlos Rael.

Edna and Kristin have leaned on each other and their neighbors.

"You finally go out again to the movies," Kristen noted.

Edna nodded. "I finally can smile again," she said.

Leaving

Eric Roybal stopped the truck at a fork in the road to Elk Mountain and got out to put up a laminated sign reminding people that Mel is still missing.

Edna's greatest hope, she told Roybal as they drove down the mountain, was that Mel didn't suffer when he disappeared.

"My goal was to help bring you and your daughter some closure (on this)." Roybal said. "I wish I could."

"You never know. There is always hope," Edna replied. "Maybe some day someone will stumble across something, and they'll find him.

"Do you feel a little more peaceful about this?" Eric asked.

"Yes," Edna said as the dark forest receded behind her. "It's hard, but I'm surviving."

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.