Found

                                                                 By Laura J. Graham

Much has been written about lost hikers. Most of them find their way out on their own; many are found safely by search parties. The most likely cause for getting lost, is that the hiker decides to take a short cut from one part of a marked trail to another, and gets turned around.

I know how easy it is to become disoriented in the woods on a cloudy day, because it happened to me as a teenager on the family farm. I found my own way out by finding a stream and following it to the river. My main concern was that I might not get back home before the search commenced, which would have been humiliating to me. My father chided me for that, when I arrived home torn up by brambles rather than having taken my time picking my way through them. The gold cross I always wore around my neck was missing too, and my mother thought that might have been a sacrifice for my safe return.

Many years later, family members met early one morning in the parking lot of Old Rag Mountain for a day hike. A woman who had been there all night approached us. She had been holding vigil while park rangers searched for her missing sister and her children. They had attempted a shortcut. We told the woman that if we found them first we would share what we carried with them. On the way up to the summit I noticed my son stopping at steep areas and looking casually but intently over each cliff. The family made it safely out of the woods.

My sister Evelyn has included stories in her blog “Right as Rain” that our father wrote of his rescue squad experiences. This reminds me of an episode he did not include in his book.

A young child in the neighborhood had wandered away from his home into the woods when his mother’s back was turned. (Similar things have happened to all parents.) The rescue squad was called out. Searchers convened at the house and spread out 360 degrees to begin covering as much territory as possible to find the little boy. Late that night one of the searchers found him deep in the woods. He had walked until night fell, then fell asleep under a tree. Before falling asleep he had removed his shoes and set them carefully beside his bed in the woods.

As the rescuer was carrying him out to the nearest road, he was met by a mob of reporters. (Someone always calls reporters.) The only statement he would make to them, was, “Get out of my way and let me get this child to his mother.”