A long-distance runner gave us ten weeks of internship lending a hand with our research in the wilderness. Young and pretty she took off after work each day to put in a half-dozen miles or so.

But on this night, she missed the sunset, supper, the moon and bedtime, and just thus, forty-six young students and staff entered the world of mass hysteria.

It was their tears of fear that I might remember most if it weren’t for the testosterone driven young’uns I heard had just left to search the quarter million acres of wilderness in the dark.

It was all one could do to run them down and threaten them with dismissal if they did not return to the lodge, instantly.

Local search and rescue, some 26 miles away refused to respond until first light, “too dangerous” they said.

There would be no way on a freezing night to hold back a one of us, including me.

Trail maps were printed out, assignments were made with ridged timelines to return and report.  I waited till midnight before making that most miserable of calls back east and woke up her parents.

Teams went out in threes and fours, each person in warm gear, a flashlight, water and most importantly whistles and a blanket should they find her. She jogged wearing only nylon shorts and a flimsy tank top.

The searches went on and on, each team reporting back and reassigned. Nothing. Not a hint, for miles around in any direction.

At first light, the lodge was full of the exhausted, and when I entered there wasn’t a dry eye, many sobbing uncontrollably. Sickened, I asked, “What was it? Did someone find her?”    “No,” “No,” “No,” came the responses. And then one of the sobbing said, “They said it was probably a Mountain Lion!”

Only then did I notice off in the corner that the local volunteers from Search and Rescue had finally shown up.  That is when my emotions overwhelmed my good sense.  I went ballistic and demanded that the locals get out and stop talking to my young staff.

The morning crept on and on, then at exactly 10 am, “Boo Boo” walked in the front door with one of our search teams still looking for her. Before a single word was said, I had to excuse myself.  It was my time to cry.

They had found her walking on one of the back roads. Unknown to city dwellers, there are many roads in the wilderness not excavated by human hands. Turns out that deer, moose, elk don’t just wander aimlessly in the forest, they make roads most traveled, and it is one of those that “Boo Boo” took by mistake but petered out and got lost.

 “Boo Boo” and I first called her parents and then “Boo Boo” and I talked.

“Yes,” she said she was cold, but she remembered her older brother who was a Boy Scout had told her if you are ever lost in such circumstance, find the tallest tree and settle under it, it will cast your odor out the furthest so the dogs can find you, then gather all the leaves and twigs you can and bury yourself in them to stay warm.  When it was first light, she said, she just headed downhill to a creek and followed it till she found a road.

In reverence, I finally asked weren’t you ever scared?  She said that she was, when two bears came around in the middle of the night, but she just said, “BOO BOO” and they went away.

Richard Kimball

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