A New View, A New Vision

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A New View

It’s a wet, cold, rainy morning on the Oregon coast, just like I remember it.

We love Astoria, something about it reminds me of an Oregon of a long time ago.

When I was a kid Astoria was a rough town.

Families didn’t really vacation here but that’s changed.

Lewis & Clark stories begin and end here.

Explorers risking everything to come here in search of a new life and prosperity.

I read a book about those times a few years ago.

I could never do what they did but what many today forget is they opened up this territory for you and me.

As I sit here looking out the windows of the place we rented one can’t help but see or maybe it’s just a feeling, of how much the pioneer mentality has changed in Oregon.

This is the place where some will feel the need to point out the missteps of our forefathers, and conveniently forget they benefit today from those mistakes as well as their successes.

People were tough back in those days. Nothing came for free. In my business I get to do stories about rugged Oregonians who put down roots in places like this. A few decades ago I did a video series called Graveyard of the Pacific, the name given to the waters between Astoria and the ocean because of all those who perished trying to cross its path.

Sea captains, lumber barons, shipping companies, all people who came here, like many of you, to create and find a better life. Today we tend to forget what we’ve learned and put those expectations on people who did not live in the same time.

We criticize the way they did things based on the limited knowledge they had at the time and on standards today that would seem very foreign to them back then.

We criticize and benefit at the same time.

As I look out the window I believe a resurgance of that pioneer spirit is coming.

The struggle will not be discovering a new land but undoing the damage done to the one that was already created for us.

What took muscle to build, this time will take a persuverance of spirit to unwind.

What was a more physical stamina then, this time will be a mental fortitude.

Ideology will be the weapon of choice, the battlefield the internet, politics and the legacy media.

I think we are on the right coarse. People are awakening to the madness, laziness and hypocrisy of the culture we live in. But complaining will do little, speaking out about it is part of the answer….and then doing something about it.

You can only go with the flow for so long.

Perhaps it’s time to swim against the current.

Perhaps it’s time for a new vision.