Throughout my childhood I was almost always out back in the woods behind my house. From the tall sweet scented pines, the thick & tilted oaks scattered across hills, the ivy of several variants laying across the valleys between those hills covering them like a blanket, and the murky ponds housing the chirps of frogs and the burbles of fish. This place had caught my curiosity and my free time in my childhood quite frequently. I often meandered around in these woods, usually ended with me getting lost and then finding my way back within a few hours or so most of the time. My parents being very lenient didn't care how long I was in the woods. They hardly noticed or cared if told them I had gotten lost and how i almost didn't find my way back. Although at the time i didn't think or ask twice why they didn't care and I just went along with it For the most part of my curious childhood though I kept my limits to the extent of my explorations to the parts of the woods I knew well. The exception to this is the time I got tired of  the places I've seen as often as I've seen my own hand, and my young mind wanting to see more of the world encompassing around me.
I was about seven or eight years old, and looking back on this moment from my childhood makes me realize I was pretty dumb to wander around alone in the deep and dark woods which captivated my time. I’m sure my younger self knew this as well. This one time my neighbors a good ways down the road I lived on, who were very snobby and uptight, were hosting a party and my parents decided they couldn't leave me at home for once for some unexplained reasons. I had refused to dress up in a tuxedo or a dress shirt and i would budge until they let me just wear so my hoodie which I had worn more holes into than there was fabric left, and I wore a pair of somewhat new jeans. When I got to the party I found a few of my friends who were dragged to the party as well and we started contemplating what to do because all of our minds were rotting out like decaying corpses from boredom. neighbors were hosting. Ryan the eldest of us all, he was three years older than me, suggested to us
“we should play flash light  hide and seek later in the evening when it would be darker because it’ll be more fun and it would be harder to find eachother.” he said. I thought to myself for a split second maybe we shouldn't do this, but before i could second guess myself, my mouth blurted out
“Yeah, sounds fun! Good idea!”.
We waited till the sky turned to an ambered bronze to match the dying trees to begin. Joey was designated to be the first counter since joey was the youngest being only six years old, three years younger than me at the time.
“One, two, three,.” we only had one-hundred seconds to hide, so we all bolted off in different directions, some running for the shed a good distance away, Ryan ran for the brush nearby Joey probably thinking he may over look his spot, and the rest of us ran for the woods.I slowed my pace down when nearing the edge of the woods and I was reluctant to enter the woods at the brink of night at first.I never had been in the woods at night before this occasion. At first I was a little scared, but the woods were reeling me into it as if it had hooked onto me, like as if I were a fish. I felt as helpless to the pull of the woods like how i had gone fishing with my Dad before, and I had caught a bass which gave up after such little effort to turn and run. Instead of a hook in my mouth pulling me into the woods it was my curiosity and sense of adventure making me pick up my pace again and entered the woods. Me being deathly curious about almost everything I laid my eyes on, I entered into the woods I thought I knew so well and I would come to find it would be more of  a wooden labyrinth.
I didn't know these neck of the woods very well and this is the fact which fueled my curiosity and also terrified me, so I decided to hide with my friend Dillon, Dillon being my exact age but only a few days older than me. I’d known Dillon practically my whole life and he always seemed wear blue jeans with a tear or two and this old beaten up navy blue hoodie which coincidentally enough smelled as old as it looked, and no matter how much his mother washed it it seemed like it forever smelled like a road-killed skunk which was ran over by a dump truck, but this didn't bother me for the most part if I kept a good distance. I wasn't really great friends with Dillon at this point and we didn't agree on everything, but the one thing we both had in common was curiosity and a sense for exploration.
After a good while of aimless and silent meandering around the woods with Dillon, a squirrel was startled by us and scuttled through some bushes then up into a nearby tree. This event had snapped me back to reality, but Dillon had seemed unphased from this and kept strolling along. Then it had occurred to me we had forgotten about the game of hide and seek. I stopped in my tracks. I called to Dillon ahead and exclaimed.
“Wait… weren't we supposed to be hiding?”
“Oh yeah!” Dillon said as I snapped him back to reality by breaking the silence.
Then the fear had hit me like a train hitting a cow at speed and obliterating it into hunks of beef. I started to panic a little and everything seem to slow down, the wind rustling through the woods became as loud as a semi truck going down the freeway in my ears, and everything blurred together a little bit i vividly remember. In my mind I tried to make sense of what was happening.Where was I? How did I get here, and how do I get back? What should I do? Where do I go? Should I stay put?
After I started to calm down a bit, I was exhilarated with the rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins from my small panic attack, and I was thrown a question of leadership by Dillon who was no doubt as scared as I was.
“What should we do? You know your way around the woods right? How do we get back home?”
I was stunned by the barrage of questions being thrown at me for a moment and then i came to my senses and responded to Dillon.
“OK, first we need to calm down, and then I’ll figure something out,OK?”
“OK.”
While Dillon sat down to take a breather I was trying to decide how to get us back home. After Dillon was more calm than he was before I had suggested that we should just walk in one direction to something until we could walk any longer. I didn't like the choice of stopping late at night in the woods because I would almost always hear the cries of coyotes at night in the woods back at my house and I didn't want to see if they were in the part we were lost in.
I don’t know what inside me made me chose to go in the direction I chose but I’m glad I did. Our stroll in the woods that night was actually quite peaceful except for the part of being lost and all. Dillon didn't say much while we were walking and I didn't feel the need to say anything either, I was just glad someone was with me and that I knew someone else knew exactly how I felt at the same time. After walking for an unknown time in the same direction we had been going, I saw a dim orange light ahead about twenty yards peering through the limbs of the trees.
“Light!” I yelled to Dillon who was right behind me.
“Over there, do you see it?” I asked him to be sure i wasn't hallucinating.
“Yeah, yeah I do!” he said with joy.
We bursted into a sprint to get to the mysterious beacon of hope. When we got there I saw that it was a street light overlooking a small portion of a dirt road. I knew where we were! My mental map of the interwoven roads that surrounded my house making the complex matrix of my neighborhood light up a path of clairvoyance leading back to my neighbor’s house the party was at.
“Come on, i know the way back now, follow me it shouldn't take that long!”  I said eagerly to Dillon.
“Lead the way.”
As I lead Dillon back to the party I realized something about myself.What I realized from this moment is  I like to take leadership in stressful situations because I like the rush of constant adrenaline knowing that there are people counting on me to do what is needed to be done to get a job done that they are to scared to do themselves.
After what only felt like a few seconds of walking, which was actually probably at least a half hour, I could see the house. Dillon sprinted ahead of me probably eager to see his anxious and worried parents while I thought to myself.
“While my parents even notice I was missing or care that I was?” But I still kept going towards the house. I didn't notice at first that there were bright red and blue lights spinning across every visible surface they could reach. When I was probably ten feet away I saw my parents and their backs were turned away from me and at that moment my heart sank to the bottom of my body thinking that they didn't even acknowledge me. But then someone pointed towards me as I grew closer with despair, and they shouted my name to signify what I could now tell my crying parents. As they turned around to see if it were true that instant I knew that they honestly were worried about me. I ran to them as they ran to me. They both picked me up at the same time holding me tighter than ever before still crying.I too now found myself crying not out of sadness but in pure happiness. They didn't say anything and they didn't need to because I knew then that they cared about me and I that's all I needed.