3V0997.01 Lost in the woods: a bad scare for all of us (10/13/80)

While Gretchen and I cut and hauled wood outback, Robby and Peggy
went into the basement to watch TV. A short time later, I went to the
front of the house to saw some sticks remaining from a brush pile.
Knocking on the basement window, I asked Robby to help haul the cut
wood inside when he and Peggy were finished with TV. Robby stayed
with Peggy, reading while she watched Tom and Jerry, so absorbed he
didn’t notice her leaving. Hearing my chain saw, she must have
supposed I was out back, for when Robby came upstairs fifteen minutes
later, Peggy was not with him and no where about. As we all started
drifting quickly into panic, Peggy came wandering onto the backyard
lawn from a trail in the woods. She was quietly crying and so
apparently terrified that she wouldn’t stop and wouldn’t talk. After
twenty minutes or so in my lap, she was calm enough to act more or
less normally.