BOY BREEZES THROUGH 4-DAY SWAMP ORDEAL : FAMILY SAYS AUTISTIC CHILD NOT FEARFUL.

Byline: Rick Bragg The New York Times

Taylor Touchstone, a 10-year-old autistic boy who takes along a stuffed leopard and pink blanket when he goes to visit his grandmother, somehow survived for four days lost and alone in a swamp crawling with poisonous snakes and alligators.

He swam, floated, crawled and limped about 14 miles (his feet, legs and stomach covered with cuts from brush and briars) that rescuers believed to be impassable, his journey lighted at night by thunderstorms.

People in this resort town on the Gulf of Mexico say they believe that Taylor's survival is a miracle, and that may be as good an explanation as they will ever have. The answer, the key to the mystery that baffles rescue workers who have seen this swamp kill grown, tough men, may be forever lost behind the boy's calm blue eyes.

``I see fish, lots of fish,'' was all Taylor told his mother, Suzanne Touchstone, when she gently asked him what he remembered from his ordeal in the remote reservation on Eglin Air Force Base.

Over years, Taylor may tell her more, but most likely it will come piecemeal, a peek into a journey that ended Aug. 11 when a fisherman found Taylor floating naked in the East Bay River, bloody and hungry, but very much alive.

He may turn loose a few words as he sits in the living room, munching on the junk food that is about the only thing his mother can coax him to eat, or when they go for one of their drives to look at cows. He likes the cows, sometimes. Sometimes he does not see them at all, and they just ride, quiet.

Taylor's form of autism is considered moderate. The neurological disorder is characterized by speech and learning impairment and manifests itself in unusual responses to people and surroundings.

``I've heard stories of autistic people who suddenly just remember, and begin to talk'' of something in the far past, Suzanne Touchstone said. ``But we may never know'' what he lived through, or how he lived through it, she said.

His father, Ray, added, ``I don't know that it matters.'' Like his wife and their 12-year-old daughter, Jayne, Touchstone can live with the mystery. It is the ending of the story that matters.

Still, they have their theories. They say they believe that it is possible that he survived the horrors of the swamp not in spite of his autism, but because of it.

``He doesn't know how to panic,'' Jayne said. ``He doesn't know what fear is.''

Her brother is focused, she said. Suzanne Touchstone says Taylor will focus all his attention and energy on a simple thing - he will fixate on a knot in a bathing suit's draw string - and not be concerned about the broader realm of his life.

If that focus helped him survive, Suzanne Touchstone said, then ``it is a miracle'' that it was her son and not some otherwise normal child who went for a four-day swim in the black water of a region in which Army Rangers and sheriff's deputies could not fully penetrate. He may have paddled with the 'gators, and worried more about losing his trunks.

``Bullheaded,'' said Suzanne Touchstone, who is more prone to say what is on her mind than grope for pat answers. Instead of coddling and being overly protective of her child, she tried to let him enjoy a life as close to normal as common sense allowed.

Taylor's scramble and swim through the swamp, apparently without any direction or motive beyond the obvious fact that he wanted to keep in motion, left him with no permanent injuries. On Wednesday, he sat in his living room, the ugly, healing cuts crisscrossing his legs, and munched junk food.

``Cheetos,'' he said, when asked what he was eating.

But when he was asked about the swamp, he carefully put the plastic lid back on the container, and left the room. He did not appear upset, just uninterested.

Taylor has been swimming most of his life. In the water, his autism seems to disappear. He swims like a dolphin, untiring.

His journey began about 4 p.m. Aug. 7, a Wednesday, while he and his mother and sister were swimming with friends in Turtle Creek on the reservation lands of the Air Force base. Taylor walked into the water and floated downstream, disappearing from sight. He did not answer his mother's calls.

An extensive air, water and ground search followed. It involved Army Rangers, Green Berets, Marines, deputies with the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Department and volunteers, who conducted arm-to-arm searches in water that was at times neck-deep, making noise to scare off the alligators and rattlesnakes and water moccasins, and shouting Taylor's name.

He is only moderately autistic, Suzanne Touchstone said, but it is possible that he may not have responded to the calls of the searchers. At night, when it was nearly useless to search on foot, AC-130 helicopters crisscrossed the swamp, searching for Taylor with heat-seeking, infrared tracking systems.

In all, the air and ground searchers covered 36 square miles, but Taylor, barefoot, had somehow moved outside their range.

``The search area encompassed as much area as we could cover,'' said Rick Hord of the Sheriff's Department. ``He went farther.''

It was not just the distance that surprised the searchers. Taylor somehow went under, around or through brush that the searchers saw as impassible. Yet there is no evidence that anyone else was involved in his journey, or of foul play, investigators said.

Apparently, Taylor just felt compelled to keep moving. Members of his family say they believe that he spent a good part of his time swimming, which may have kept him away from snakes on land.

The nights brought pitch blackness to the swamp, and on two nights there were violent thunderstorms. Lightning would have penetrated his shell, Suzanne Touchstone said.

``I think it may have kept him moving,'' she said, and that might have been a blessing. Certainly, said his mother and doctors who treated the boy, he was exhausted.

``Do you realHly think God would strike him with lightning?'' she asked. ``Wouldn't that be redundant?''

Somewhere, somehow, he lost his bathing trunks. His parents said he might have torn them, and, concentrating on a single blemish, found them unacceptable. Suzanne Touchstone compared it to a talk she once heard by an autistic woman who had escaped her shell, who told the audience that most people in a forest see the vastness of trees, but she might fixate on a spider web.

On the third day of Taylor's journey, Suzanne Touchstone realized that her son might be dead. For reasons she could not fully explain, she did not want to see his body recovered. It would have been too hard to see him that way. Even though Taylor is physically fit and strong, friends and relatives knew that this was the same terrain that in February 1995 claimed the lives of four Rangers who died of hypothermia while training in swampland near here.

Instead, about 7 a.m. Aug. 11, a fisherman named Jimmy Potts spotted what seemed to be a child bobbing in the waters of the East Bay River. He hauled him into his small motorboat.

Later that day, Taylor told his momma that he really liked the boat ride. In the hospital, he sang, ``Row, Row, Row Your Boat.''

Suzanne Touchstone lost Taylor at a Wal-Mart, once. ``That was bad,'' she said.

He ran out of Cheetos once and hiked a few blocks, alone, to get some. The police found him and brought him home.

He decided once that the floor in the grocery store needed ``dusting'' - he likes to dust - and he got down on the floor and began dusting the grimy floor with his fingers.

But he has never lived in a prison of overprotectiveness. Even though his mother says there are limits to how much freedom he can realistically have and how much so-called normal behavior she can expect from him, she decided years ago that the only way he could have anything approaching a normal life - in some ways, the only way she herself could have one - was to let him go swimming, visit neighbors, Htake some normal, childlike risks.

He is prone, now and then, to just walk into a neighbor's house. Once, he went into the kitchen of a neighbor, opened the refrigerator, took out a carton of milk, slammed it down on the counter and stood there, expectantly. The woman called Suzanne Touchstone.

``What should I do?'' the woman asked.

``Well,'' Suzanne Touchstone said, ``I'd pour him a glass of milk.''

The fact that he is not completely dependent on his parents, that he is not treated like an overgrown infant, that he is allowed to swim on his own and roam the aisles of the Wal-Mart and raid the neighbors' refrigerators, may have helped him survive when he was all alone in the swamp, his family believes.

``That's all his mom,'' said Touchstone. ``I was overly protective.''

The phenomenon of his journey has prompted teachers at his school to consider changes in the study plan for autistic or handicapped students. One teacher told Suzanne Touchstone that they would stress more self-reliance.

Suzanne Touchstone, who jokingly calls herself ``Treasurer for Life'' for the Fort Walton chapter of the Autism Society of America, said her son's journey should clarify, in some people's minds, what autism is.

``I want every inch of that swamp he crossed to count for something,'' she said.

For now, life is back to normal. He screamed when he was forced to take his medicine, which is not so unusual for a 10-year-old. ``We've got a little autism in all of us,'' Suzanne Touchstone said.

Taylor has always been something of a celebrity in his neighborhood, so his mother does not expect much to change after his ordeal. There was a sign outside his school that just said, ``Welcome Home,'' and many people have called or written to tell her how relieved they are. One elderly neighbor wrote to tell Suzanne Touchstone how relieved she was that ``our child'' was home safe.

Suzanne Touchstone will not waste time wondering, at least not too much, about her son's strange trip. She cHan live with the notion of a miracle.

``I guess God was looking for something to do,'' she said. ``I guess he looked down and said, `Let's fix things up a little bit.' ''

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Photo: Taylor Touchstone, 10, somehow survived four days lo st in a swamp.

The New York Times