Every kind of media is supplying loads of Thanksgiving week travel advice: The dangers of driving or of facing what is now either an unpleasant or barely tolerable experience of getting on an airplane. No one, however, is giving advice about keeping nature or the natural elements in mind when preparing for travel.
         
I thought of this lack of regard for nature as I flashed back exactly three years ago to the Kim family Thanksgiving week ordeal in the snowy Oregon backcountry, the tragic death of James Kim, and the fortunate rescue of his wife and two young daughters.
         
My friends and family, and people across the nation and around the world were gripped by the sequence of events that led the family from Interstate 5 in Roseburg Oregon to a dead-end spur road in the rugged coastal mountains near the Rogue River.
 
We could all imagine our own families taking such a drastic wrong turn, unprepared for inclement weather, marooned in the wilderness. We could imagine using the family car as a survival shelter, hoping, praying, for rescue, all the while questioning whether to stay put or hike-out.
         
In the end Kati Kim and her two daughters were rescued, and James Kim died of hypothermia and exposure while trying to walk out of the wilderness to seek help.
         
This isn’t the kind of thing that’s supposed to happen on a vacation drive, to a happy family bound for a coastal resort.
         
Sometimes these stories have a happy ending: the dad does hike out of the wilderness to find help and rescue the family. We hoped for that, prayed for that.
         
I’ve driven roads, very much like and very close to the one the Kim family took, on the edge of the Wild Rogue Wilderness. They’re rough, nasty and confusing. They’re used by people who want to get away from it all and to get access to the Rogue River for recreation.
       
The Rogue River National Recreation Trail is what brought me to the remote region. One of the Pacific Northwest’s most renowned rafting rivers has a superb hiking trail alongside it.
      
The rafters, kayakers, campers and hikers who venture into this wilderness area are expecting to travel through, even confront, Nature wild.
       
The Kim family was not expecting to face Nature in any form. The family had not planned for, prepared for or dressed for the terrain or weather they had to face.
 
In past years, after hikers have died on the trail, the media has asked me these questions: “Do we think we’ve conquered nature? Do people believe that even if they get into trouble in some remote area, they can just call for help on the cell phone? Is the level of outdoor skills so low these days that more people are getting into trouble? What can we do to safely travel outdoors?
       
As I recall, Search and Rescue and Backcountry Survival experts, as well as Law Enforcement officials did a fine job fielding questions from the various and very aggressive media, and helping us try to make some sense out of the Kim family tragedy. Most of the experts answered the questions with insight, and with compassion. I don’t know if I could do as well answering those questions, and was certainly glad I did not have to answer them.
       
One conclusion from the questions and answers was obvious: we are not as far removed from nature as we might think. Just as so many of us in recent years have strayed so far from regularly partaking of nature’s pleasures, we have at the same time grown unaware of nature’s potential dangers.
      
Nature has become irrelevant to our daily lives.
       
Until the day comes when it’s not.