Into the Wild- Thoughts on Nature, Man, and Whatever Else Comes Out of My Fingers

There is, I believe, a most intimate relationship between nature and humans. There is something about nature that inspires us, that calms us. It has an unmistakable effect on our bodies and souls. Nature, oddly enough, is a great revealer of the humanity of a person. In nature, we find ourselves as we can in no other setting.

I recently finished reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. For everyone who hasn't read it, it details the journey of a young man named Chris McCandless. The journey, as you might expect, ends with him dying of starvation in the wilderness (or maybe you didn't expect it. now you know.). He abandoned his family, friends, and civilization to live on his own, surviving by the land. And he did so, until he got trapped by a flooded river and got sick and starved to death.

Chris was driven into the wild by many things: his rocky relationship with his parents, his stubborn independent streak, and his love of nature. Like the title of a book he idolized, he indeed felt the "call of the wild".

Many people have judged Chris' character because of this journey. Some admire him for his courage and ability to follow his dream and actually survive in the wild for over 100 days. Some despise him, to the point of pure vitriolic hatred. They call him selfish, say that his journey was comprised of using people, letting them help him and care about him, then running off and leaving them in the dust. They also say he had no respect for the land, and he died because of that, and he deserved it.

While I personally do not believe that he deserved death (to quote one of my favorite books: "Will you butcher them for stupidity? Stupidity is unfortunate, but it hardly deserves that kind of punishment.") I don't exactly condone what he did either. I can neither praise him nor condemn his actions. How can one condemn a man for following a dream, something he feels like he has to do to make his life worth living? But then again, how can you praise it when it caused so much grief and left permanent marks on the lives of those who loved you?

His own mother said, "Many people have told me that they admire Chris for what he was trying to do. If he'd lived, I would agree with them. But he didn't, and there's no way to bring him back. You can't fix it. Most things you can fix, but not that."

The words of one of my classmates also sends a message: "We're sitting here, decades later, analyzing,  judging this guy, deciding if the decisions he made were right or wrong. He's dead. We're judging a dead guy."

We all have our own journeys, our own wild to go to and confront. And this book, I think, illustrates well the danger of confronting life, and the need we all have to live our dreams and see life on our own terms.

Chris' wild literally was the wilderness... but what is your own? Would you survive your own encounter with your personal wild? Does death mean that you weren't victorious?

Think about it.