Into The Wild

I've just finished reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. The book has been around for a while - it examines the circumstances around the death in 1992 of a young man alone in the Alaska wilderness. His ultimate experience. I found it incredibly thought provoking.

Into The Wild challenges many assumptions. Is it truly possible to go back to basics and to survive in the wilderness without the trappings of modern society?

I found this book to be a good read, well researched and well written. The glimpses of other people's wilderness experiences and of the books that Chris McCandless read up to his death are enlightening.

At the end of it you are still left asking “why?” It is unsettling. Here was a young man who had a comfortable upbringing, a high-achiever who opted out of the life path that already seemed to be mapped out for him.

I think part of his motivation was the negative. The need to move out from the shadow of an ultra-achieving parent, the need to assert your own personality, an almost 'I'll show you' attitude as he displayed his own independence, perhaps exacerbated by a late discovery of the skeleton in the family cupboard.

But there is also a degree of irresponsibility - covering his tracks, effectively penalising those who cared about him, and the episode where he drove his car illegally far into the parklands, abandoning it in the gulch after a flood.

After time spent tramping the country, trying to improve his skills along the way, he seemed to be looking for the ultimate 'back to the wild' experience. Just what is this ultimate experience? Is it driving a well-stocked 4x4 down the tracks, parking up where other people might pass, telling friends and family where you are, putting the steaks on the barbecue and opening a few beers, taking a radio, maps, a decent hunting rifle, all the paraphernalia that modern society can provide? Or is it something else? I think Chris McCandless wanted this ultimate experience on his own terms. It meant he had to put his life in danger, and this led him to ignore advice and to take more risks than he needed to. For the experience to be real there had to be a significant risk of death. This meant no comforts, no easy escape routes. And it meant he really could die.

Was Chris' behaviour just a proxy for some kind of long drawn out suicide? I don't think so. He accepted the risk of death, even embraced it. Perhaps death would be the ultimate 'I told you so', but true success would involve surviving the experience; and at the end he was hoping for rescue. If he had a better map, better local knowledge, better understanding of what foods to eat, maybe the outcome would have been different. If...

This book has inspired me to try to engage more with nature, but not to try to do what Chris McCandless did.

Find out more here: http://www.christophermccandless.info/intothewildbook.html