The season was late summer, beginning of fall 2009 and I was supposed to head into the wilds of North Idaho, where you have no idea what you might run into (human or critter) and find a 3 ac parcel. I kept putting it off until the client's irritation finally shoved me out the door. I told Jim, a realtor friend, where I was going in case I wasn't seen again and off I went. Eventually, I'm deep into forest service land, past the sign explaining what a grizzly looks like, and something runs across the road. My brain tells me it's an animal, but my eyes tell me another story. I'm in disbelief as it registers that I'm looking at a very young child in a diaper, t-shirt and barefoot. I sat there momentarily as surely there would be an older brother chasing after him.
He appeared to have come up from the river side of the road and huddled crying in the ditch against a steep hill, feeling cornered as this threatening stranger approached him. I picked him up and asked where mommy was and in sparse baby talk through tears, he pointed up river. I walked up and down the road trying to calm him enough to hear distant calls, but to no avail. I figured my only option at that point was to put him in the car and go to cell range. Of course, getting into a strangers car was a big no, no and brought even more crying. Once driving down the road, I flagged a passing pick up and the driver, whose mouth fell open even more than mine, said there were a few houses back up in the hills and he would knock on doors for me. We must have been a 1/4 of a mile past where I found him when a woman came running up from the river side of the road, sweating like a hog and in an obvious panic. She said they were camping by the river and distracted while working on their car when the baby must have tried to follow his dad. He was visably calmed as I put him into the arms of his aunt.
I never did find the property and ended up giving it to Jim. My procrastination put me in the right place at the right time and I figured the reason I was there was just to find that child....not the property.
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