Into the Wild

When I first heard about the Amazon Kindle digital reader, I was a skeptic; there is such magic in holding a book close to you—smelling the musty pages of a worn favorite, the factory stench of a new release—running a finger along a crisp page, preparing to turn before finishing the sentence you’re reading—losing a post-it, a ticket stub, a receipt among the pages meant to mark a meaningful passage, and finding both the item and the meaning at a later date—falling asleep with an open spine across your chest, words seeping into your dreams, waking in the morning to a waiting story. How can you not love a book? So yes, when I first heard of the Kindle, I shunned the idea.

But now, I admit, I have fallen in love with my classy white digital book reader. The space for 10,000 books, but the weight of barely one, travels everywhere I go. The instantaneous satisfaction that comes when hearing of a new book and having it in your hands seconds later…is almost unimaginable. The freedom to choose books based on moods, yet to carry them all with you at once, is gratifying.

I still love my books. I love studying them on my bookshelf, quantifying all the words read. I love flipping, not clicking, to a desired page. But I love reading more. And that, I have learned, is not because of the smell, the weight, the feel of the pages, or the title on the shelf—it is because of the words.

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I recently finished reading Into the Wild by John Kraukauer. Into Thin Air has been sitting on my dad’s bookshelf for years, but I’ve never once thought to pick it up. I’ve seen Into the Wild dozens of times in the bookstore, but never really given it a second glance. So why I suddenly became interested in the story of Chris McCandless, I don’t really understand.

I found myself consumed by his life and death. His desire to rid himself of all that is meaningless, his frustration with superficial values and company, his simultaneous pursuit of grandeur and simplicity…these are all feelings I find familiar.

And yet, his curiosity, his naivety, his “fuck-you” to civilization led to his death—a death that was neither sought nor necessary. A death that, besides bringing his story to the forefront, did not change the world in any way. Nor did his end provide the salvation McCandless sought, for he died a long, painful, and extremely avoidable death.

Beyond the relatable story of Chris McCandless (except for the whole ‘live in the Alaskan Bush, eat moldy potato seeds and die’ thing), Kraukauer presented some noteworthy literary quotations throughout his book.

“Wilderness appealed to those bored or disgusted with man and his works. It not only offered an escape from society but also was an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his own soul. The solitude and total freedom of the wilderness created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation.”

--Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind

How true. How amazing it feels to sit on the summit of a mountain, to lay down in overgrown grass, to crack sticks beneath your steps in the woods…to be free from cars and buildings and money…to walk in silence among pictures that could have existed thousands of years before your existence, exactly as they appear before you. To take a deep breath and inhale nothing but fresh air. To yell at the top of your lungs and receive only an echo for an answer. To smile for the sake of smiling—to think for the purity of thought. To be a philosopher, no less important than those granted fame by the circumstance that they came first. The wilderness definitely appeals to the wandering mind. But it can also drown you in solemnity. Remind you of how alone you are in the world. Break your spirit as you try to match its power.

“McCandless was candid with Stuckey about his intent to spend the summer alone in the bush, living off the land. ‘He said it was something he’d wanted to do since he was little,’ says Stuckey. ‘Said he didn’t want to see a single person, no airplanes, no sign of civilization. He wanted to prove to himself that he could make it on his own, without anybody else’s help.’”

--John Kraukauer, Into the Wild

Here is where the connection is drawn between McCandless and every other human being. The strife of making it on our own, to prove not to them, but to ourselves, that we have what it takes. The tragedy of McCandless’s story is that he DID have what it took to make it in the most dire of circumstances. When he met his end, he was less than a mile from a camp where he could have found rescue. Unaware of this, he died alone, not because the harsh elements of an Alaskan summer did him in—but because he stupidly ingested an undetected toxin that stripped his body of all nutrition, rendering him weak and starved. Had he avoided that toxin, eaten seeds that were without it, he would most likely be alive today.

I, as stated in my last entry, dove head first into a challenge—not to impress others, but to impress myself. Sick of backing off out of fear, I ignored all warning signs, all thoughts of doubt, all indicators that I was not ready for the path I had chosen to follow. It cost me an entire year, most of my sanity, and a large part of my ego—but I made it out alive. I didn’t prove to myself that I could make it on my own. In fact, I proved the opposite. I proved the need for a support network, social time, friends and family. I proved that nothing is worth the pain I felt, no matter how prestigious, original, or philosophical it might seem.

“Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!

…And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness…And this was most vexing of all.”

--Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

The greatest lesson. For McCandless, it was too late learned. For myself, just in time. I found it utterly impossible to be happy without the happiness of others around me. I found it insanely frustrating to be happy without anyone to share with. I once thought grades, jobs, things, money, prestige, fame were ways to happiness. In the last two years I have discovered that while these things may accelerate celebrations, they are not the cause nor the sustainer of true bliss. People, friends, family, idols…these are what harbor happiness. These are what make life worth living.