Late August vacations span warm days and cool nights. It is a time when both mosquito and tourist populations are beginning to dwindle. It’s a good time to take my son on a road trip.

My car is the only one in the dirt parking lot surrounded by tall pine trees. I can hear the cars on the nearby highway where the entrance to the campground is. I’m carrying the firewood while my son clutches the map of the campground that will help us find our site. I open the hatch of my car and drop the wood inside. I’m about to close the hatch again when I see her.

She walks out into the parking lot from a line of trees, a baby in a summer outfit with a cotton sun hat and a white pair of sandals. She’s a little bit wobbly and probably only learned how to walk recently. She stumbles and puts her hands down to catch her fall. She’s only down for two seconds, and then she’s back to wobbling her way across the parking lot.

I look around. Nobody else is here, nobody followed her from behind the trees. I completely forget about closing the hatch of my car and walk towards her, my son trailing behind me.

The baby looks a bit nervous when I pick her up. She half-heartedly tries to escape before settling into my arms. My son says, “Are you sure we should be doing this?”

We walk towards the trees where she came from. There’s a small road lined with campsites. The first campsite has an older couple sitting on lawn chairs. I say, “Excusez-moi, avez-vous perdu ce bébé?”*

“Non!” they say, shaking their heads vigorously. They looked scandalized, but I now have their rapt attention as I go to the campsite across from them. I feel like the little girl in Robert Munsch’s Murmel, Murmel, Murmel.

The next campsite has a young guy grilling steaks on a portable charcoal barbecue. He looks up at me casually when I ask my question, and then looks down at the steaks again. Then his head snaps back up to look at the baby that I’m holding. He rushes forward to claim her.

“Je suis désolé!” he exclaims. “C’est ma blonde qui devrait la garder.”**

His girlfriend yells from the camper that she’s in the bathroom. They start to bicker.

As I turn to leave, I get two enthusiastic thumbs up from the first campsite I visited. My son says, “That went a lot better than I thought it would.”

I think about that baby all the time. My son doesn’t remember her. When I tell him the story, he says, “Did you find its owners?” and I say, “You mean her parents?”

*Excuse me, did you lose this baby?

**I’m sorry! It’s my girlfriend who should be watching her.