Into The Wild

The older person does not realize the soul-flights of the adolescent.
a quote attributed to a father who's twenty year old son vanished in the desert

Last Sunday Patrick and Tim were discussing Into The Wild. They had read the book and suggested it was worth reading. Patrick's copy was in Aaron's room so Monday I started reading. By Wednesday I was over half way through and I wasn't liking the young man who the story was about. The guy,Chris McCandless, graduated college, packed his car, and left his family without warning to drift across the U.S. for two years, ending up dead on the Stampede Trail outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. A true story. It wasn't until I nearly finished that I understood why I was annoyed with young Chris through the first 100 pages.

At the time when he was at the top of his accademic life, Chris chose to turn his back on his family society. He dived into a life of rambling around the country exploring a life of freedom as he defined it. With an ability to make friends easily and welcomed anywhere, Aaro...I mean Chris lived on the edge. The longer he was away the more he embraced the life his parents would not approve. The deeper he went into the drifting life, the more the life owned his soul.

After two years on the road, the final three in the Alaskan wilderness, Chris writes that he is ready to return to civilization. He packs his few belongings and starts walking out of the wild. The stream he wadded thigh deep across in April was flowing deep, fast, and wild with summer runoff in July. Chris stood on the wild side ready to go back, but he couldn't cross. He was trapped. Cunning and baffling, nature owned Chris.

His body was on the wild side but his mind was ready to be back in society. After returning from the edge of the river to his camp to sit tight until the time would be right to venture out, a mistake no one could explain for certain and some concluded as intentional caused his death.

I know that story. Nature was Chris McCandless' drug of choice. What started as intoxicating freedom of the road grew into a dangerous concoction of a little knowledge and an overdose of wilderness.

Chris, his parents, and his sister, are not people I know yet they are a family I relate to. Nature coaxed Chris across the point of no return. If the story wasn't true it could have been a metaphorical account of the life and times of families affected by drug addiction. I wonder how they are today.