When the screen door slammed that morning at 9:30 after breakfast, Gladys P. did not know what a painful, uncomfortable day her day would become. Neither did her husband.

It was just another weekend in their summer cabin in the pleasant, quiet community up on the hill in the central mountains. The lodgings were scattered sparsely among the mature ponderosas, with plenty of space between one cabin and the next for privacy, solitude, thinking space. The little hill community was busy in the summer, but empty in the winter. It was a place you came to, to get away from it all.

Gladys and Neil had brought their three children up to the family cabin on Friday. This morning, a sunny Sunday morning full of bright light and light breezes, started well enough. Gladys awoke before her husband and the kids and went to the kitchen and whipped up some buttermilk pancake batter. She then cut up and fried some sausage patties, and then some potato cakes, and then began to make the pancakes. When the pancakes were almost done, her freshly shaved husband came into the kitchen and kissed her on her robed shoulder and turned on the coffee maker he had prepped the night before. “Go ahead and get the kids up”, Gladys said warmly.

Soon, the three young children bound into the kitchen, mounted the little kitchen table chairs, and after the morning prayer, hungrily dove into and devoured their meals, debating all the way about the day’s plans. Little Anna was the youngest of the three, 5, and the most quiet, but she would nod her head eagerly with whatever her brother and sister suggested. Tag, horseshoes, a hike, a visit to the old timey dime store by the community center to get candy- they would do it all. It was exciting! They had so much to do today! Niel and Gladys looked at each other with understanding and pleasure at their children’s energy.

“We will start the fun”, Neil said, “but after you do your chores!” The kids had to make their beds and help with the dishes and collect the trash, which this morning was all over the kitchen, with te little can by the stove overflowing.

“I’ll take the trash out, Mom- can I?” Anna wanted to do big kid things like her siblings for once too. “Can I take the trash out to the trash box this morning?”
Gladys, busy scrubbing the skillet the sausages had fried in, unconsciously said, “Yes, dear”.

Anna looked at her older siblings with a big grin, and they screwed their mouths up at her. It was a challenging job, but it was fun to climb up on the step and unlock the tilting lid and slide it back and then lift the bag into the bin. It was like working a puzzle, unlocking the lock.

When the trash was collected and her dad had tied it closed, Anna lifted the bag which was a little shorter than her and then headed out the back door, which slammed with a loud crack.

Neil and Gladys and the two kids continued cleaning up in the kitchen, and ten the kids moved to the bedroom where they became engrossed about who was a better superhero, if they had real day jobs. While they argued, they also settled into coloring in their coloring books once their beds were made.

In an hour, Gladys came in the room and saw the two kids coloring on the floor talking about what foods the other planets would be made of if the moon was made of cheese, and she also saw Anna’s bed was not made. “Daniel, Mallory- where is Anna?” The two kids looked at each other with indifference, as if they were disclaiming their responsibilities to babysit her- and then they remembered they were in the woods.

Gladys yelled to Neil with the same question- at first sounding perturbed. “Haven’t seen her. She’s not with the other two?” In he stepped into the kid’s room, and she was not there.

And for moments, dark images flashed through each parent’s mind. There are bears up here. There are cougars. There are neighbors we don’t know.

Neil immediately went out the back door and walked down to the trash bin, which contained the bag Anna had carried out to throw away. He paced the area, looking for footprints in the shale gravel that xeriscaped behind their summer home twenty-five feet back. Beyond the gray stone flake, soil and shrub grass welcomed you into the forest, and Neil could not see where Anna’s feet had gone.

Gladys had gone out front and walked down the paved driveway, and looked around and in their car for her girl.

When a cursory search around their cabin yielded no clues, Gladys called the village office in a panic, but she was greeted with a message because it was a Sunday. Neil followed her call with a call to the state police who had an office in the next town over, 15 miles away.

20 minutes later, though, the head of the village council called Gladys back. “I’ve talked to the other two councilmen here- we’ll be right up.”

Soon, Anna had a search party of 17 looking for her, including three state troopers.

While one of the troopers asked the family questions, the search began in the forest by and behind the family cabin, and after wandering away and through the 30 or so lots in thelittle community, reached back over and behind the shallow ridge line behind the lot.

It was nearly 4 PM when a trooper called Mrs. P with good news- Anna was found, and she was okay. A little scratched up, but otherwise fine. Come on out to the junction of 16 and Furrier’s Road. “Furrier’s Road?” Neil replied, exploding in surprise. “That’s 7 miles away from here.”

The trooper and Mr. Voe, one of the councilman, had followed the ridgeline down west, following a sandy dry creek bed into the drainage that carved a long deep, gently falling channel running laterally down the back side of the hill.

When Gladys and Neil found their daughter sitting under a silver space blanket in the back seat of the trooper’s car, their incredulity and shock and fear rolled quickly into anger, and then immense relief. It was so unlike Anna to just runoff.

When they finished hugging and coddling kissing her, it was finally time to ask her what happened.

“When I took the trash out, I saw a little red dog out by the box. He was walking like his back leg hurt, and he looked at me, but when I tried to get by him, he’d run off. I tried to get near him more, but he would just get a little ahead of me and then look at me. I wanted to help him.”

The trooper corroborated the story.

“When we finally found her in one of the wadi beds, there was a maimed red fox about 30 yards ahead of her. She never got near enough to it to touch it. Game and Fish is on their way down to take care of the poor little fella.”

“Anna- do you know how much you scared us? We we’re afraid something had very bad had happened to you.”

“I’m sorry, Mama.”

“Well, we are just so thankful you are okay, rosebud.”, Neil piped in. “Yes, Anna- why did you do that? Why did you run off after that animal?”

“I know what love looks like, Papa.”

The trooper, standing to the side as Gladys and Neal attended to their daughter, still listened to the exchange, and after the little girl offered her defense, he looked away, up the brown state road, and then down at his black boots, pursed his lips in emotion and subtly nodded his head in a quiet approval.