The night-time dinner call sounded and the friend ran ahead, asking a staff member to help Brennan, Summit County Sheriff Dave Edmunds said. But when the staffer turned around to help the boy, the harness was on the ground and Brennan was nowhere to be found.

Brennan wandered for days and may have hiked as far as five miles from where he was last seen.

As of Tuesday night, Brennan hadn't explained anything about his ordeal to the sheriff's office, Edmunds said.

On a whim, Salt Lake house painter Forrest Nunley opted not to go to work Tuesday so he could help with the search effort. After driving his ATV around the rough terrain near Lily Lake, Nunley said he saw the boy standing in the middle of the trail ahead of him.

"It's the happiest I've ever been in my life, besides getting hitched and having kids," the 43-year-old Nunley told the Deseret Morning News.

He said Brennan had been crouching in the bushes, apparently hiding from other searchers, who had just passed on horseback, when Nunley appeared.

"He probably would have hidden from me had I not seen him first," Nunley said.

He said Brennan was wet and dirty, a little scraped up and hungry.

"He was out of it, pretty delirious and lucky he was even conscious," he said.

Nunley helped Brennan get out of his wet clothes and gave him some water and food — a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, beef jerky and licorice — which Brennan "gobbled up."

"I talked to him a little bit, but I wanted to get some help up there, that was my main worry," he said.

Nunley doesn't consider himself a hero. He insists he was inspired to be at the right place at the right time.

Brennan said the first thing he wanted to do was to "see his mom," Nunley said.

The boy also asked to play a game on one of the rescuer's cell phones, Edmunds said.

The sheriff said the reunion between Brennan and his parents was "one of the most touching things I've ever seen in my life."

Inside the hospital Tuesday afternoon, Brennan was alert and watching TV, said Bishop Don Showalter of the Hawkinses' LDS Church ward in Bountiful. The boy even made a cell phone call to a friend.

Clark said Brennan was talking to his family "like a little boy would talk to his family" but had not discussed how he survived.

"Children have a remarkable ability to bounce back," Bishop Clark said. "They have great reserves of energy."

Shortly after the news of the rescue broke, more than 100 neighbors and friends gathered at the Hawkins home to rejoice over the good news.