Scout in the woods: That kid got lost just a half mile from camp and you ask yourself, how? It's the woods, stupid. You ain't never seen no woods until you see the East Coast type of woods. Foliage thicker by far than any tropical rain forest. I've been in South East Asia (old Borneo) and Central America and they are nothing when compared to our woods in the East. I grew up in a rain forest of redwoods and pine in the West and thought I knew what a woods was. To those of you unfamiliar with the East Coast woods: they are so thick from the ground up that you literally cannot see more than a foot or so in any direction. When you read about the Indians and the pioneers of the 16th century forward you can see how Indians could hide in the woods and not be seen until too late. During our Revolution The North Carolina woods were home to a ton of frontiersmen who finally rallied to the Revolution and conducted the fiercely successful guerrilla action against the Brits, hiding in the thick woods and picking off Brits one by one. The NC woods is also the area in which Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta bomber and anti-abortionist nut case, hid out for five years in spite of a literal army looking for him. NC has perhaps the most difficult forest in the world. It looks like that kid knew how to survive for a while in the woods and the cold due to his scout training.