A Modern Parable–Oregon Family Robinson: Last month an Australian cross-country runner was doing his thing in Portland, Oregon’s Forest Park, when he came across a man with bushy, white hair, a 12-year old girl, and an elaborate hillside camp. Soon the police were out on a manhunt, thinking Elizabeth Smart redux, and here is what they found: a man and his daughter, living and surviving in the wild, with a tarp-covered wood frame for shelter, and a few basic tools. They drank and bathed in a nearby stream, and kept a vegetable garden. Also in the camp was a rope swing, a Bible, and a stack of old World Book Encyclopedias. Naturally, the police assumed there might be all kinds of evil occurring under the conifers, and that at a minimum keeping a young girl in the wild was equivalent to child abuse. So it was a triumph for the Wetass way of life, and a blow against the twisted assumptions of modernism when they discovered: 1) that both the man and the girl (his daughter) were clean and healthy (no cavities even!); 2) that the man and his daughter demonstrated a remarkable closeness and affection that is rare today between parents and video-dazed children; and 3) the young girl–educated almost entirely with the World Books–was about 5 years ahead of all the “civilized” girls in town in both her education, speaking ability, and general maturity. Why were they in the forest? The man, a Vietnam vet and college grad, was down on his luck. So instead of exposing his daughter to the alcohol, drugs and abuse that comes with a life on the street, he hiked deep into the forest and chose an entirely novel lifestyle. To their credit, the police did not just hand the pair over to social services. But they did talk them into moving out of the forest. Now the guy and his daughter live in a crappy mobile home (hey, don’t you know you can’t live without running water and electricity?) while he cuts lawns. Some improvement. Hope he and the girl ditch their better life and hightail it for the forest again before the producers of Dateline track them down…



“Damn, I’m trying to remember why I moved here…”