It had started later than it should have.

Three o'clock in the afternoon seemed like plenty of time when you're a kid. The hills were familiar, the weather was good, and Tim and I had hiked the firebreak before. We never thought much about how long it would take to get back.

The firebreak ran along the spine of the hills behind our neighborhood. It was wider than the trails that crossed the slopes below and steep enough in places to make you work for every step. It wound through the brush just enough that you never really knew how much farther it went.

We had followed it before.

Just not this far.

Tim was a few years younger than I was, but that didn't seem important at the time. It rarely did. We climbed steadily, stopping now and then to catch our breath and look back toward home.

From the ridge, the entire neighborhood spread out below us. We could see the streets, the rows of houses, the bridge crossing the flood-control channel, and even the traffic signal at La Crescenta Boulevard. Everything looked close from up there. Close enough that it seemed impossible to get into trouble.

As the afternoon wore on, the air began to cool. The sun slipped behind the ridge across the canyon, and the light changed almost without warning. It wasn't dark yet, but the bright confidence of the afternoon had disappeared.

"We should head back," Tim said.

There was an obvious way to do that. We could simply retrace our steps along the firebreak. It would be longer, but it was familiar.

Instead, we noticed several openings in the brush below us. They weren't really trails, just breaks in the vegetation that appeared to angle down toward the neighborhood.

Shortcuts.

At least they looked that way from above.

"Let's go this way," I said.

For a while it worked. The slope was steeper than the firebreak, but manageable. The ground was loose in places, yet we continued making progress downhill.

Then everything changed.

The brush grew thicker. The openings narrowed. What had looked like a clear route from above dissolved into scattered patches of dirt and tangled chaparral. The footing became uncertain, and every step seemed to push us farther into terrain we couldn't easily leave.

We stopped and looked back uphill.

There was no clear way to climb back.

We looked down.

The slope appeared much steeper than it had from above.

And the light was still fading.

"We can keep going," Tim said.

Maybe we could have.

We didn't.

Instead, we found a narrow ledge and settled in for the night. It wasn't comfortable. It wasn't safe. It was simply the only place that seemed possible.

As darkness arrived, the neighborhood below us began to glow.

One light appeared.

Then another.

Then dozens more.

From where we sat, we could still see the traffic signal at the bridge. Red. Then green. Then red again. Cars moved through the intersection. People went home for dinner. Life continued as though nothing unusual had happened.

Up on the hillside, nothing moved at all.

The temperature dropped steadily. I had a jacket and a cap with ear flaps. Tim wasn't dressed as warmly. We shifted positions from time to time, trying to stay comfortable, trying to stay warm.

At first we hardly talked.

Later, a few words were exchanged.

Some of them were directed at me.

I was the older one. It had been my idea to take the shortcut.

I didn't argue.

There wasn't much to say.

At one point I told him, "We're not lost."

And it was true.

I knew exactly where we were.

The firebreak was above us. The neighborhood was below us. The bridge and the traffic signal were visible the entire time.

We weren't lost.

We were stuck.

There's a difference.

The night felt longer than any night I could remember. There was no dinner. No sleeping, at least not much. Mostly there was waiting.

Waiting for daylight.

Waiting for warmth.

Waiting for a way down.

Sometime during the night, we began hearing voices.

At first they were distant. Faint enough that we weren't sure what we were hearing.

Then they became clearer.

People calling.

Searching.

Looking for us.

We heard them.

We just didn't answer right away.

By morning, the hills began to reappear. The darkness softened into gray, and the gray slowly became daylight. What had seemed impossible the night before suddenly looked manageable.

Not easy.

Just possible.

We started down.

There was no trail. We simply created one as we went, moving carefully through the brush. Branches pushed against us. Loose dirt slid beneath our feet. Every step required attention.

Eventually the slope eased.

The brush opened.

Ahead of us were the old horse corrals at Camp Max Straus.

For the first time since the previous afternoon, we were standing on level ground.

That's when we heard them clearly.

The Sheriff's Posse.

Voices calling from nearby.

This time there was no doubt.

We stepped out and let ourselves be seen.

Everything changed quickly after that.

People appeared. Questions were asked. We were taken home. Adults seemed relieved, excited, and concerned all at once.

Then came the newspaper.

Our picture appeared on the front page.

"Boys Found."

Found.

The word always struck me as odd.

We hadn't been wandering aimlessly through the wilderness. We hadn't forgotten where we were. We hadn't needed someone to tell us which direction home was.

But "Boys Stuck on a Hillside Overnight" probably wasn't much of a headline.

Later there was television coverage as well. Reporters asked questions. Stories were told. Somewhere along the way details began appearing that neither Tim nor I remembered.

At one point I heard a story involving an owl, a slingshot, and a quote I was supposedly responsible for.

I never corrected anyone.

The story had already become something larger than the actual experience.

That's what happens sometimes.

People take the rough edges off. They fill in the blanks. They make the story cleaner and more dramatic than it really was.

But what stayed with me wasn't the newspaper or the television coverage.

It was the view.

The lights scattered across the neighborhood below us.

The traffic signal cycling through red and green all night long.

The cold.

The waiting.

And the certainty that remained long after everything else had faded.

We hadn't been lost.