Searching for James Kim

Have you been keeping up with the search for missing CNET executive James Kim (Kim's blog)? I subscribe to CNET's RSS news feed, and I was surprised this week to see articles about a missing person. It turns out that Kim and his family got lost in the Oregon wilderness while hiking over the Thanksgiving weekend. His family has been found, but he is still somewhere in the woods.

Several years ago, I got lost in the woods with my brother and stepsister in East Tennessee. We went hiking a couple of hours before sunset and get disoriented taking an alternate route back to our starting point. We were missing for three or four hours, but it was an eerie and frightening feeling--both for us and the rest of our group who were trying to track us down. The sense of isolation and despair was very real even in just a short time, especially as night fell. We were fortunate to stumble upon a group of Boy Scouts who had made camp for the night deep in the woods, and they had flashlights and enough trail knowledge to get us back to where we parked.

Here's hoping Kim is discovered soon in good health, and that this turns out merely to be a scary and intriguing story his family tells every now and then.