Isolation is Grand

There is a lot to be said for isolation in a world fed by the 24-hour news cycle. The isolation that has come for families in North Carolina, South Carolina, parts of Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Florida is a different matter.

Good intentions and expressions of concern from pundits who couldn't build a fire in the wild to save their own lives are not going to accomplish the job of rebuilding homes and lives. They will eventually stop reporting the story because they have never built anything themselves.

They are obviously useless in a crisis and the victims are not the right kind of people. The right kind of people have homes in Beverly Hills, the Long Island Sound, Martha's Vineyard. They attended the right schools and go to the right concerts.

Well, enough of their issues. I try to find some stories that you will not see on the evening news or "60 Minutes." Living near Portland, Oregon, the center of my Oregon universe is hundreds of miles from Portland. Some are a bit closer, like the Pacific Ocean and wine country.

I came across a video of some private pilots that fly over the Oregon Outback. Their joy and their photography on their trip to the Idaho Outback is sublime. At one time Idaho was part of the Oregon territory. It is refreshing to see a smaller expedition without some sort of message in the narration.