I thought I lost her.

One minute, my best friend and hiking partner was right there behind me, skipping along the trail with her usual bright eyes and smile. The next, she was gone, over an embankment, into a hopeless knot of vegetation.

My stomach lurched, and my heart sank.

The idea behind this trip — a weeklong winter sojourn to the Olympic Peninsula with my longtime friend, the Old Man — had been to get away from it all, escaping for some outdoor healing.

It's what a lot of us do, it seems, during those times in life when terra firma suddenly turns terra incognita, and deep breaths of clean air are required to reset the internal compass.

The thought of losing Mabel on top of it all made me come as close as I ever get to panic.

At the risk of spoiling this fine melodrama, it should be disclosed that Mabel is a dog — as splendid an example of the progeny of a yellow lab and golden retriever as you are ever likely to find. She's just a long, furry, happy animal, but over three years of joint cohabitation, mentoring, frustration and tennis-ball tossing, she has come to be my most loyal companion.

This gentle beast has not a mean bone in her body — one that houses the nose of a champion dope sniffer, the heart of a lion, and an uncanny ability to sense when something is amiss.

It is Mabel's custom, for example, to scoot ahead a few dozen yards on any trail, coming back every few minutes to peer around the corner and make sure you're still coming. Recently, however, she has taken this one step further: Sensing that I've been in a funk, she not only makes repeated visual check-ins, but actually comes right up and puts her nose in my hand, giving me some tactile assurance that she's right there for me. It's pretty endearing if you're a sucker for big yellow dogs, which I always have been.

Which is why it hit me so hard when she picked up a scent — likely a deer — off a fire road on state forest land near Joyce and shot like a rocket into the thicket. She was acting on instinct, following game-chasing bloodlines that forced her to block out any outside stimuli, including my frantic calls.

She never looked back, and within a few minutes, there was no more sound of crackling branches, no more tinkling of the rabies tag, nothing.

I looked at the Old Man, who was coming up behind me with his own excuse for a dog, a seasoned toy poodle named Tar.

"Oh, God," I said. "I think she's gone this time."

We waited. Nothing.

Finally, we started hiking back up the road. I hoped that Mabel would do what she always does — find her way back to the trail, pick up our scent, and come bounding up behind us. But a good half-hour passed, with no sign of her.

I kicked rocks off the road and cursed myself. How could I have been so stupid? She shouldn't have been off-leash in a place where deer are about. She'd never find her way out.

A lot of time passed. We eventually turned around and hiked back down to the spot she'd disappeared. We called her, blew a survival whistle, waited. Nothing.

Despondent, we headed back to the campground, a mile and a half below. Along the return route, I hoped for a miracle. Maybe she made it all the way up to the next switchback in the road and would follow it down. Maybe. Maybe I lost her, and would never, as long as I live, forgive myself.

A half-hour later, we came to the end of the road and entered the campground, in a large clearing near the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Several hundred yards to the north, I could see my camper, parked near a waterfront bluff.

And parked right behind it was a faint yellow spot — a big, muddy, contrite Labrador recliner.

"Look," I said to the Old Man, beaming like I have not beamed in nearly a year.

She had found her own way back home. Someone, I reasoned, must have found her roaming the camp and tied her up. Because Mabel, a busybody from the word go, never would sit that close to the camper off-leash.

But as we got closer, it became clear — she was free, but hugging her portable home because she knew she was in epic trouble. She didn't dare move until I dropped to one knee, 50 yards away, and called her name: "Mabes!"

Hearing no anger in my voice, she sprinted over the grass, leapt into my chest, and proceeded to lick my face.

It was the closest thing to an apology she could muster. And as close to a bear hug as you could ever get from a dog.

She smelled like a barnyard and looked like hell. For once, I didn't care. I did the only thing a guy could do.

Hugged her back.

Ron C. Judd's Trail Mix column appears here on Thursdays. To contact him: 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com.