And this is Love... Lost Girl Style

My granddaughter Peyton and her mom Jenna came up to Metaline for a surprise visit to celebrate Mary's birthday. After dinner, Peyton, Jenna, and I went to the Metaline Park boat dock to sit, enjoy the late summer evening, and throw a line in the water. Before we even got the camp chairs out of the car, another vehicle drove up with a man standing on the top.

Circus act? Dare? Drunk?

Nope. Lost girl. The man was standing on the car so he could see over the foliage down to the river. He told us 'Lisa,' a teen with severe autism, had been at the park with friends celebrating a birthday. At some point it got too much for her, and she went to the car.

Except she never made it there.

Metaline Park isn't that big, but it has a lot of woods with lots of trails, lots of mud, lots of steep slopes, lots of bogs, and a really big river going through it all.

With no hesitation, Peyton and Jenna went one way, I went another, and the search was on. Before I made it to the first trail, and consequently the first bog, the first mud flat, and the first copse of thorn-laced trees, I noticed several other people behaving like kids on an Easter egg hunt. I asked the car-surfing dude, and he said they were all with us.

That right there is the part that impressed me the most. It wasn't him and me searching, but he and I were part of an us - an entire community that put their evening plans aside and set straight out to find the young lady. No hesitation, no re-evaluating of plans, no putting it off until later - just immediate selfless response to a potentially disastrous situation.

Oh, and the picture. When my first search turned up nothing and night was encroaching, I raced home, changed into better shoes, grabbed a powerful flashlight, and searched for a whistle. If I found Lisa, I'd want to draw attention with it. Turns out I have no referee's whistle, but my wife has a collection of these hand carved beauties. Grabbing the loudest one, I hustled back to the search, joining with every other person in the community who were actively and intensely demonstrating exactly what love looks like in a crisis.

PS - Lisa was found safe and well at a local woman's house where she had wandered when she lost her way to the car. Don't you love a happy ending?