Thursday, December 07, 2006

Stranded.


Many bloggers are talking about the Kim family right now, and their ordeal. I was so happy to hear that the Kims' little girls were safe, but it's terribly sad about their father. At first I was shocked that in the twenty-first century, a family could still get stranded and exposed to the elements for a week, and that a dad could die in the cold trying to get help...then I started thinking about the years we lived in Idaho.

Here in the east, being in such an isolated place seems almost unreal, but out there it's all too real. I started remembering the weekend day trips Todd and I would take into the hills, through mud and snow drifts, down dirt roads and up over ridges. If we'd gotten stuck, no one would have known where we were or where to look.

Todd would also head into the mountains to pan for gold, usually alone, and an accident could easily have been fatal since I wouldn't have been able to pinpoint exactly where he was.

And in our trips to and from Salt Lake City in the fall and winter, if we'd had to take back roads for any reason, we would have been just as isolated, and again, no one would know where we were. We used to just take off and never inform anyone where we were going or that we were leaving town.

It makes me shiver a little now, thinking about it. We manage to close Nature out most of the time, but it certainly doesn't take much to remind you how little control any of us have.

1 comment:

Jane said...

Beautiful post. I have always lived in the suburbs. Once when I was a teenager I had to pick up my cousins at a rural airport. I was terrified driving in the dark. When you live in a city area, you are keenly aware of the massive power of nature-even just darkness.

The Kim tragedy won't leave me anytime soon.