Lost

On November 17, 2006, the Kim family left San Francisco to make a road trip to spend Thanksgiving in Seattle with family and friends. After spending a pleasant holiday weekend with loved ones, the Kims began their trip home. James Kim had his heart set on staying at the Tu Tu Tun Inn at Gold Beach in Oregon. Although it was already late and their two daughters, Penelope, age four years, and Sabine, age seven months, were asleep in the back seat, the Kims decided to make the five-hour drive to Gold Beach. Kati Kim called ahead for reservations.

After a quick meal at Denny’s, the Kims headed down I-5 to Gold Beach, but they soon made a wrong turn. Before long, they realized that they were on the wrong road, but they agreed that they had gone too far to turn back. Kati consulted the map and found what she thought was a short cut to Gold Beach. As a result, the Kims made another wrong turn. Satisfied that they would arrive at Gold Beach in record time, Kati went to sleep, and while she slumbered, James made yet another wrong turn that took them up Bear Camp Road—a road that should have been blocked by a gate to prevent motorists from entering during the fall and winter months.

Kati awoke to find that they were hopelessly lost on a precipitous mountain road that led to nowhere. Snow was falling, and black bear were patrolling the forest. Terrified, James and Kati agreed to spend the night in the clearing where James had parked the car. They tried to call 911 but were unable to find cell phone service in the forest. When daylight arrived, the Kims decided to stay where they were and wait to be rescued. They remained in their car for three days, huddled together for warmth, with the engine idling and the heater running, until they finally ran out of gas. In a desperate attempt to save his family, James then took the tires off their car and burned them in the hopes that someone would see the smoke and rescue them.

On day seven James left the car to try to find help. He began walking down the road on which they had come, but, once again, left the road to take a “short cut” through the woods. On day nine, Kati and the two girls were rescued and taken to the hospital where they recovered. James eventually died of hypothermia, and on day eleven rescuers found his body in Big Windy Creek lying on its back in a foot of icy water.

This horribly tragic story provides a good parallel for what is currently happening in our country. We are headed down a dangerous road, and if we continue on this course, it will soon be too late to turn around. When my children were young, I told them that everyone makes some bad choices, but when we realize that we are on the wrong path we must stop and immediately start making better choices. We may not be able to undo all the damage that has already been done, but, in most cases, if we stop as soon as we know that we are on the wrong road, the damage will be minimal.

I wish that all Americans would hear this message: Stop stressing about the current problems that we face as a nation. Stop saying that we have gone too far for things to get better. Stop predicting that everything will get worse and worse until all hope is gone. We have the power to turn the car around and go back to responsible fiscal policies that will revitalize our economy and allow Americans to go back to work. But if we are not willing to start making better decisions and get involved in our political process and rid both houses of Congress of the legislators who are accelerating the car forward into a wilderness of wrong choices America will not survive.

If James Kim had turned around when he and his wife first realized that they had made a wrong turn, they would have, at worst, lost an hour or so of driving time. By returning to the point where they had gone wrong and getting back on the proper highway, the family would have been spared days of trauma, and James would not have lost his life. As in driving, in political matters it sometimes seems more expedient to continue on a road to nowhere than to turn around. Even when we can no longer delude ourselves that our current road will get us where we want to go, we try to compensate by simply taking another wrong turn. If we take enough wrong turns, it may become impossible to find our way back to the highway.

The choice is ours. We can continue on our current road to disaster, or we can start making better choices. We can find strong Conservative candidates who will stand up to the Washington D.C. elite and refuse to allow more wrong choices; we can start paying attention to the 2014 elections that can enable us to take both houses of Congress; we can get behind the candidates who are willing to turn the car around and hold them accountable for their choices. Get informed. Know your candidates. Make your voice heard. Today is the day to begin. Tomorrow may be too late.

Joyce Swann is the author of Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother co-author of The Chosen, a dystopian novel about the battle of one U.S. family to restore the Constitution and stop the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act. For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net.