It's very sad that James Kim died, and his father's efforts are, of course, in part an expression of grief. But the only people to blame for his son's death are, to be brutally honest, James Kim and his wife. They made a series of extremely unwise decisions that got them into a dangerous predicament: turning onto a tertiary road in bad weather, traveling in winter without adequate supplies, failing to turn back when it became clear they were out of their depth, etc.

The world is so connected now that many people feel that as long as they have a cell phone, they cannot get into too much trouble. Ask park rangers at mountainous parks how many tired climbers call them to be rescued from slopes they never should have tackled in the first place. Technology is never a substitute for good sense. In winter driving, you always take supplies, you always travel major arteries where help passes by regularly, and when in doubt, you change your plans, hole up and wait out darkness or bad weather.

I have only condolences for the Kim family, and hope others can learn from their poor decision making.

This article was sad, but refreshing.

Yes, it's tragic what happened to James Kim. But *it was his fault.* He did it to himself by making all the wrong decisions detailed in the article. At some point, people have responsibility for the messes they get into. James Kim got himself into a fatal mess.

Even had he taken the left fork, and headed for the coast, he might not have made it. His whole family might not have made it. The whole thing was a clusterfuck and he was responsible.

His father is expressing his natural grief, but it's wrongheaded to blame the people who tried to save James Kim after the fact.

This is harsh, I suppose, but the truth is, we'd all be better off if we all took a little more responsibility for ourselves. Our pathological fear of the communist-state notwithstanding, we've all conspired to create a Mommy-State, and that's not a positive accomplishment.

This article highlights a facet of current American society that never ceases to amaze me: no tragic event (or even a simply unfortunate one) can occur without people lining up to dole out blame. Your kid broke his arm on the playground? It's the park management's/school's/negligent teacher's fault! Family member killed in a car accident? It's the fault of the car manufacturer/road maintenance crew/waiter who served him a glass of wine with dinner. You've got cancer? It's because you didn't eat organic/meditate/put on enough sunscreen. And so on. Nothing even remotely unhappy can happen without people slinging blame around, either at the victim of misfortune or some big, bad external actor.

Truth is, there are certain crappy things that happen, and there is no one person/thing to blame. It may not be fair, or just, but it happens, and there is no point in sitting around looking for whose fault it is. But of course, Americans refuse to believe that there is anything that they (or someone else in a position of power) CAN'T control. Evidently it's more comforting to people to believe that there are incompetent and/or nefarious forces out there trying to do them harm, than to believe that sometimes the universe just shits on you. And so the blame game goes on.

One thing that Sarah Keech didn't mention in her article - as far as the news reports I read indicated - was that once James Kim left his family in their car to look for help, he did not stay on the road.

Instead, he opted to go into the forest. This was a HUGE mistake. Reports said that there was a resort closed for the winter somewhere along the road that would've afforded him shelter and food had he come upon it. I can't say how Kim would've fared on the road. I don't know how deep the snow was, etcetera.

And, it's entirely possible one could walk for miles on these backroads and come upon nothing. Still, no matter what, if you are lost in the wilderness ALWAYS stay on the path in the forest or always stay on the road through that forest. (There are even chances in these areas that one will stay on a path and find it to be a dead-end: old logging roads, etcetera.)

I learned this in the High Sierra of California when I was in my mid-20s. I was from the city but I was no fool and I wasn't arrogant. An old man said to me, "Stay on the path." I didn't listen to him because I took what seemed to be a logical shortcut and that was to follow a stream that I was sure led to the mountain reservoir that was my goal.

What I didn't expect was that I'd find forest in the temperate climate of Northern California as dense and impenetrable as tropical jungle. My progress was constantly blocked. I stepped over a sleeping rattlesnake. I was relegated to crouching in the stream-bed with my backpack, myself practically on my knees. And I found myself on dead-end logging roads too...

It was high summer, however, and I luckily heard trucks on the road I should've stayed on from the beginning. I never sought-out a so-called "shortcut" in the wilderness ever again. I rejoined my friends by the reservoir just before sunset having walked far more than the 11 miles I could've if I had listened to that old man.

FOR YOUR LIFE'S SAKE STAY ON THE PATH OR STAY ON THE ROAD. DON'T IMPROVISE IN THE WILDERNESS.

AND ALWAYS HAVE A GOOD MAP IN YOUR CAR. INTERNET DIRECTIONS CAN BE WRONG: OUT-OF-DATE. INNACURACIES, ETCETERA.

I just feel so sorry for Mrs. Kim. I'm a wife myself, and I can easily picture my husband and myself in their situation. Just last weekend my husband and I drove an hour's drive to visit a friend in an unfamiliar part of Mississippi. The road we were supposed to take wasn't on the map we had; it turns out "Old Goodman Road" is the road with the signs saying "Goodman" and the REAL Goodman road is the one with the signs saying 302. "This can't be right," I said, as we drove deeper and deeper south when we were supposed to be heading east. "Goodman Road" deadended into a subdivision, and we struck out vaguely east, getting more and more lost. I finally lost my temper. "Turn around and go back and ask somebody."

Well, we did that, and in the end it only took us forty minutes longer than it should have taken. The temperature was a cozy 60 degrees, and the tank was full of gas, and we were never out of walking distance of civilization anyway. But damn it was frustrating! And there were moments when I swore that if I could get to the Mississippi legislator responsible for putting up those roadsigns, I'd make him eat his teeth.

I have to wonder if Kati Kim - days into the ordeal, when the food was gone and she was breastfeeding both children - had the strength of character not to say to her husband, "You know, if we had just turned around when we missed the exit, we'd be there now." I imagine in her place I would have said it often enough to be tiresome. If I were in her place, I'd be suffering intense guilt now that my last hours with my husband were spent wishing bitterly that men ever asked for directions or admitted mistakes. If you happen to be a man who readily asks for directions, I apologize. I don't know what happened in that car; maybe she was the one who wouldn't turn back. But in my family, that's the way it would have been. I hope for her sake that it wasn't like that at all, that they spoke only kind words to one another in James Kim's last hours, that she remembers him as a hero and not as a big fat jerk.

It's true that people need to be more aware that not all places are like home. The Kims should have had better supplies. My husband and I should have had a better map, and maybe talked to someone other than my flaky mother about directions. But people do stupid things; they don't always know what they're getting into. Education can help, but there's no surefire way of preventing people from making dumb mistakes. But it seems to me that lives would be saved if people ADMITTED their mistakes instead of compounding error with error. It's okay to say, "Rats, we'll have to backtrack to the exit. You know, I'm getting pretty tired, maybe we should cancel our reservation and sleep here." You don't have to pretend you meant to do that and this tertiary road is a shortcut. Maybe James Kim is a hero because he set out into the snow to save his family. But he'd be ALIVE if they had just admitted they were on the wrong road while there was still time to turn around.

Just turn around.