Eventually they got hungry and started heading for the food. I had labeled everyone's food and after passing out all the food realized that Henry's food was still left. I started to ask if anyone had seen him--and no one had. We all assumed he had been playing on the teeter totter but when I looked back at the picture I saw that Henry was missing from those pictures. This means he'd been missing for several minutes. Rich, Bob, Daniela, James, and William started searching for him. I felt so helpless standing at the picnic table... but someone needed to stay with the other children so that we didn't have any others wander off. I could hear William yelling for Henry and then he began to sob, "He's lost!! We'll never find him! He's gone forever!" Ben said a prayer that we'd find Henry and eventually William headed back and told us that he'd said several prayers as well during his search. Once William was back I knew it was safe for me to go looking because he would keep the kids from leaving.
There was another family picnicking nearby and I had the impression to go ask them if they had seen Henry. (Daniela later told me that she thought the same thing.) Luckily I had a picture from that day on my phone that I could show them. They immediately started searching with us and enlisted a third family to search. We tried calling 911 several times but no one had cell reception. We checked bathrooms and everyone was searching. (I'm sure this says something bad about me... but there was a man who appeared to be homeless that was setting up camp nearby who overheard and asked to help. I got a weird feeling about him but couldn't figure out where he would be able to hide a little boy... but I checked in the dumpster just in case.) Just a few minutes after I had talked to these families one of the ladies came running back yelling, "They found him! They found him!" She explained to me that she was yelling Henry's name and heard someone shout back "I found him!" She shouted a few times back, "You found Henry?" and only came back when she had heard a confirmation several times. A minute later I saw Rich and Henry walking back toward us! What a relief!
As we passed these families on our way back to the picnic table they all expressed how happy they were to see Henry. I think he thought he was famous with all the shouts of "Henry!!" I could tell he had been crying but other than that he didn't seem too shaken up by the whole thing. He kept explaining that he was just trying to come back to us but he couldn't find us. That he saw footprints in the dirt... but they were his own. Rich said that he found him pretty far away... so we had a nice talk about staying put when you are lost. Henry continues to tell us about his little "adventure".
Daniela captured these photos when we were headed back to our picnic area.
This doesn't look like a boy who was lost for 20-30 minutes in the woods.
The rest of the evening was uneventful... thank goodness!
We are so grateful that we were able to find Henry before the sunset and that we were able to enjoy the rest of our evening in the mountains!
