Morgantown, W.Va. ? An autistic teen found underneath an umbrella of dense brush after four days in the wilderness was doing well at a hospital Friday, asking for food and smiling at relatives who came to visit him, his family said.

Jacob Allen, 18, was discovered Thursday sleeping under a thicket of laurel in the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area, part of the Monongahela National Forest. He had survived four cold days and four nearly freezing nights.

His mother, Karen Allen, spent the night in the hospital, keeping watch over her son.

“He was alert, asking for food and wanted to get out of bed and walk around,” she told NBC’s “Today” on Friday.

It was the wilderness – a cascade of mountain laurel and rhododendron flowing over loose rock and steep cliffs – that posed the greatest danger to Allen while he was lost. But in the end, it was the one thing that kept him safe.

Though Allen was less than a mile from the spot where searchers had found his hat Monday, the brush kept his location hidden until Thursday afternoon. State Police 1st Sgt. Jim Wise said he believes it also may have kept the teen from wandering toward 20- to 30-foot cliffs.

“It made sort of like an umbrella, but underneath it was bare and open,” Wise said. “It made some type of shelter.”

Allen was in good condition at Davis Memorial Hospital in Elkins, where officials said he remained under observation. His parents, 14-year-old brother, Micah, and 22-year-old sister, Brittany, were with him.