Into the Wild mundane

Some years ago while searching through the magical amid the mundane in Boulder, CO at a university of seekers, a colleague loaned me the book Into the Wild.  The book by Jon Krakauer is a tale of a young man named Christopher McCandless who graduates Emory University with honors and donates his life savings to Oxfam, shunning his life of privilege to experience life in the wild.  McCandless cuts his credit cards, cuts contact with his family, discards almost all of his possessions and drives his Datsun west in search of himself.

With the seeker in me all but resigned to finding small micro moments of magic within the mundane, I came across the 2007 movie version of Into the Wild in Netflix last night.  Romantic nostalgia arose within my chest and head-- memories of reading Thoreau and Emerson as a disillusioned teenager and projecting  peace onto nature arose in my mind.  I remembered hours spent in the Palos forests searching for contentment within the wood, solace within nature.  Fortunately, when I got cold and hungry I only need cross one busy street to get to my neighborhood – Ishnala - which interestingly enough means “by itself alone” in Winnebago…

This week between Christmas and New Year’s is historically the toughest time of year for me.  With a slowdown or stoppage in the normal hectic work pace that keeps my mind occupied, troubled thoughts of isolation (by itself alone) usually surface after the holidays fall short in delivering the full promise of peace, bliss and contentment advertised by Kay Jewelers, Lexus and Apple.  But this year and for the last several, I'm much more tempered in my expectations and more fulfilled by the little seemingly mundane moments of magic with family and friends (or at least less haunted by and bored with existentialism).

So, I turned on Into the Wild half curious if the protagonist’s struggle would pick at the scars of past wounds, uncovering old longings to simultaneously connect to others and checkout of a chaotic, overwhelming world or if the story would be lost on me, skin having hardened to armor, romanticism replaced by practicality.

I felt very alone in high school even when among the popular kids.  I played sports, I partied and no one would have guessed as to the battle between the wild extrovert and the hurting introvert playing out inside my head and bedroom after practice, after parties after a normal day.  Maybe it was the red hair, maybe it was transferring from a Catholic School to a public school in sophomore year, or maybe it was my traumatic genetic inheritance that serves you well when surviving the “troubles” but spins a thick web of anxiety in privileged suburbia with few real threats to survival.  Together it was a different way of thinking and seeing (not as different as I thought) that was both my pride and my pain.  Loneliness amid the popular crowd, the burnouts too, alternating activities between the jocks, Catholic school kids and some wonderfully odd social combinations therein.

All of this circuitous rambling to say in some way, I remember relating to Christopher McCandless, though I was not as brave, not as courageous and he found much quicker than I that true happiness comes not in isolation as poetic and alluring as it seems, but from sharing moments with others.  Unfortunately for McCandless, this discovery cost him his life.

McCandless, all of 23 or 24, having adventured across the United States, spending time with other seekers, ends up trapped in the wild when a river he crossed 9 weeks earlier in Denali State Park Alaska swells and becomes impassable.  He returns to the abandoned “Magic Bus”, his temporary home sad and now aware of how random and cruel nature can be. 

He is seemingly ready to return to family and friends, to rejoin society, but trapped in the wild.  McCandless was unaware that a hand tram a ¼ mile down river would have allowed him to cross the swollen, violent river and walk out.  Instead, he returned to the magic bus that was now anything but magic and he attempted to resume living off the land, but he was increasingly weak and starving.  Toxicologists and naturalists debate whether he accidentally poisoned himself through ingesting a wild pea plant relative, a mold that can grow on it or if he just fell victim to “rabbit starvation” where increasing activity outpaces a lean diet unable to sustain someone in the wild.  Tragically ironic, McCandless’ Oxfam donation to end the hunger of others at the start of his journey foreshadows his own demise in the wild.

Many were angered by what they saw as his arrogance to think he could walk into the wild, ill prepared, ill equipped and survive.  I tend to side more with Sean Penn who directed the film and author John Krakauer who present a seeker driven to seek isolation by his inability to make peace with the worst of what he saw in humanity.  McCandless’ personal and spiritual ghosts led him afield, yet his apparent wisdom led to a massive personal transition across a two year journey and some three months in the wild.  Unfortunately, his epiphany came too late for his physical body to make it back to the world of people.  I’m not angered by his survival inexperience. I think he did pretty good. I don’t need to label him arrogant to distance myself from the discomfort of the wasting of a young life having some personal experience with the haunting within from the short comings of the human condition.  I’m just happy to have lived beyond the romantic reach of existentialism which in me makes good poems, but contributes to piss poor living.

If you haven’t seen the film or read the book – I suppose I’ve spoiled the ending, but you may still want to check it out if you have any part of you that struggles with feeling by itself alone amid the herd, lonely and at home amid the flock, or just curious as to the interplay between the magic and the mundane in the micro-momentary paradox of longing for connection while desiring some comfort in solitude.