Oct 02, 2008 - 03:43 PM

By Jeff Mitchell

BOWMANVILLE -- Lost and huddling together to ward off the dark and cold, the boys turned to Commander Blue Jay for help with their plight.

"Tell the police that we're lost," Andrew Connell mock-instructed the acorn he'd plucked from the forest floor as his friend Andy Zaraza looked on, laughing despite their predicament.

Andrew, 13, and 12-year-old Andy turned to humour as they endured a cold and rainy night in the depths of the Ganaraska Forest, lost and waiting for the light of day. The boys said in an interview Wednesday -- the day after they emerged from the forest to the relief of their parents and a search and rescue team hastily assembled after they went missing Monday evening -- they worked together to endure their ordeal, each encouraging the other not to succumb to fear and the elements.

"It was just, do what you have to do," Andy matter-of-factly stated as his and Andrew's parents looked on.

"It was easier than you'd think," Andrew chimed in.

But for 14 long, tense hours the boys' parents -- Joe and Liz Zaraza and Lee and Kari Connell -- could only wait and hope as a search team, led by Durham police and joined by OPP, a search and rescue team from Trenton and volunteers from the community, scoured the hundreds of acres that comprise the forest and the countryside around it.

"I was at wit's end," said Liz Zaraza, who with Joe was accompanying the boys for a walk near the forest when Andy and Andrew entered the woods about dinnertime Monday, then failed to return.

"It was just going to be a quick run in the bush and then back for supper -- the table was all set and everything."

The boys said they were tromping through an area of the forest Andy's familiar with and had turned to come back when they encountered thick brush and had to alter their path. It wasn't long before they realized they were lost.

Fighting back panic, the boys collaborated to address their situation.

"We sat down and tried to make a plan," Andrew said.

The boys chose to keep moving, following trails in an attempt to make their way to a road. But as night closed in the trails became harder to discern.

"It was pitch black," Andrew said. "You couldn't see your hand in front of your face."

They took shelter under a tree as the rains came, Andy sharing his hoodie sweatshirt with Andrew, who wore shorts and a T-shirt -- each of them threading an arm through and huddling together to share warmth -- and putting his legs over Andrew's bare legs. They endured the night, not talking much, waiting for the dawn.

"Every couple of seconds we'd whisper each other's name and say, 'You all right?'" Andy said.

"Then Andrew poked his head out of the sweater and he saw it was light."

The boys began to walk again, the movement chasing the cold and stiffness from their bodies. They found a road -- it turned out to be Carscadden Road -- and followed the sound of a chainsaw until they found a man cutting wood and told him about their ordeal.

"He was like, 'Whoa! You spent the night outside?'" Andy said.

The man gave the boys access to a phone and began fixing them something to eat. But they never got the bacon and eggs because soon police cruisers began to arrive. They were ferried back to the Young Aggregates pit on Boundary Road, where a police command centre had operated through the night and where their worried parents awaited them.

"It was a very happy moment," Andy said of setting eyes on his parents. "A moment I thought of the whole night.

"I hugged them and kissed them, hoping it was not a dream."

Back home in their west Bowmanville subdivision Wednesday, the boys -- friends since their families moved to the new neighbourhood five years ago -- were remarkably calm and poised a day after their ordeal ended.

"It was a neat experience," Andrew said.

Their parents expressed gratitude to the police who searched for the boys and the community members who helped out by joining the effort or providing support in the from of encouraging words and things life coffee and snacks for the searchers.

Joe Zaraza said that as word of the missing boys spread people in the area searched their own properties and left on porch lights to beckon the boys in the event they emerged from the forest in the middle of the night.

"We have a long list of people to thank," he said.

"The people out there were phenomenal."