A Child Walks off Into the Woods

We lived in an idyllic but isolated place in the middle of a longleaf pine forest, half a mile from the nearest neighboring plantation house. Our house was known as the BBC which stood for “Big Barn Cottage”, where a dairy master brought over from the Isle of Jersey had once lived. I was managing a great plantation with its “Big House” and some 34 buildings, all part of a historic site. After visitors’ hours and the gates were closed, it became a ghost town in the middle of a forest. When our child suddenly disappeared, the setting turned menacing.

Anyone whose child has gone missing knows the terror I felt when my wife called to say our almost three- year- old son, Joseph, had disappeared.  I raced home on the dirt road that connected our home to the Main House and the complex of buildings that included my office.

Our house was a rambling two-story cottage but offered few places for a child to hide. I looked in the closets and behind every piece of furniture.  Joseph, “Little Joe” we called him, had almost certainly wandered off. We called at the top of our voices and blew the car horn. But there was no reply. He was simply gone.  The summer sun was already settling toward the horizon, so we would be searching in the dark in two hours or so. Little Joe was in real danger.

A child lost in these woods would face dark woods, briars, cypress swamps, rough terrain, stinging insects and poisonous snakes. In warmer weather, I often encountered a rattlesnake sunning on the sun-warmed concrete front stoop of my office or crossing one of the roads as I made my morning rounds. Usually three-or so feet long, they occasionally reached five or six feet. We fenced our yard and kept a vigilant Jack Russell terrier hoping he would raise ruckus if a snake came into the backyard. Turned out, he could not smell or see them and would walk over a coiled snake, taking no notice. Not especially aggressive, rattlers offered a warning when disturbed. They shook the rattles at the end of their tails. The real danger arose when they were stepped on. Their cousins, the water mocassins, offer no such warning and are more aggressive. I killed twenty- one of them near water in a single fall season

I even encountered alligators when Little Joe and I fished in the Cow Pond, as well as deeper in the woods where the owners had built a ten-acre duck pond in the 1920’s. They too were not seemingly aggressive, but they were surprisingly fast on their feet and known to eat dogs. I lost a prized West Highland terrier to one. They preferred white dogs.

Dangerous for all living things, fire ants arrived at Pebble Hill about the time I did, moving up from Florida and building huge mounds that were dangerous to disturb. We watched TV news reports of small children being so badly stung they were taken to the hospital emergency room. We all bore scars from encounters with these ants from hell. And, we could not let the kids play in their backyard unsuppervised.

  We fought fire ants constantly with gasoline, fire, home-made concoctions, and commercial poisons. The last of these caused them to move over a few feet, but they usually rebuilt thier mounds within a day or two. Thousands of stinging ants would swarm onto the legs of anyone careless or preoccupied enough to stand on one of their mounds. Children were especially vulnerable.

The dangers I learned to work around suddenly flooded my mind as I imagined my child facing them alone and unknowing.

There were other dangers, those presented by humans. The many owners of plantations in southwest Georgia and north Florida, known as the “Red Hills” region, became concerned about the growing of marijuana by users and sellers. And poaching could be a problem, especially during deer season. To walk up on a marijuana plot or a poacher while working alone in the woods exposed us to dangers, so I routinely kept a shotgun in the car beside me. Each of the plantations included thousands of acres, so it was fairly easy for poachers and marijuana growers to escape detection, despite our precautions.

Between the February burning season, when forests were maintained and undergrowth cleared by setting controlled ground fires, and the late fall and winter months when the owners returned to enjoy the mild climate, it was difficult to surveil the properties. A private security firm was engaged to patrol the 100 miles of roads on Pebble Hill Plantation. I called them asking their help in finding Little Joe. They promised to send an armed mobile officer who was already nearby in a four- wheel-drive vehicle. I called the local sheriff’s department. They also promised to send a four-wheel- drive truck and deputy to assist us. The sheriff in turn called the Georgia State Patrol. There were no cell phones at that time, but the sheriff’s patrol, the State Patrol and the plantation security firm could coordinate by radio. How long would it take them to arrive?

Meanwhile, I had to do something. “Think hard” I told myself. “Where would he go to find me?” He had once wandered off to my office, but he would have been seen by me or the nightwatchman if he walked along the road that led from the BBC to my office. We sometimes, drove one of the backroads to the duck pond to paddle about and fish. That was nearly two miles away! He was barefoot and wearing diapers and a t-shirt and sporting a great head of curly, honey-colored hair. Surely someone would have seen him along the road! The realization possibility raised new fears. I was responsible for millions of dollars’ worth of property, including a fine art collection. Thieves had broken into the Main House a year earlier. Might someone see a criminal opportunity if they came across my son?  Might he have been taken? I got in my car and cut through the open woods to nearby “Rattlesnake Road”, headed for the Duck Pond.

It was a solid road with pockets of deep sand in the bottoms and car-shaking ridges on the the clay hills. Stands of giant pines, some ninety feet in height, dominated the landscape. Looking into the setting sun as I started up a hill about a mile and a half from our home, I saw a figure at the top, hard to make out in the sun’s glare. I slowed as I approached it. Standing there, his back to the approaching car, stood Little Joe. Having heard the car approaching and perhaps fearful of encountering a stranger, he struck a confident pose, hands on hips, and starred up into the trees. He never looked in my direction.

My heart swelled with relief and joy. I stopped the car fifty feet or so below him and got out, walking the rest of the way, hoping not to frighten him. Surely, awareness of his situation had caught up with him. He was ten feet away when (trying to sound as calm as possible) I said, “Hi, Son. What are you doing?”  With a posture and gesture that would have befitted a confident adult going about his daily routine, Little Joe pointed to one of the tallest pines and said in an authoratative voice, “Looking at that Goddamned pine tree.” Not what I had expected.

 I picked Little Joe up and held him tightly, explaining how relieved I was as I carried him to the car. I asked him where he was headed on his long walk. “I thought you would be at the Duck Pond fishing. I wanted to ride in the boat.” That was the only explanation we ever received. Not for a moment did he express relief or recount a single fear he had entertained.

Our serious talk about the concerns he had caused us and the dangers he might have faced must have registered. He never again went AWOL. To the best of our ability, we never left him unsupervised for a moment. As a young man he would become one of that elite group of hikers who have found the opportunity and determination to through-hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Are these experiences connected in some way? I must ask him.