Into the Wild

I rented Into the Wild this weekend on iTunes, and I have just watched it for the second time now. It is a story that speaks to me in many ways. For one, Christopher McCandless, the young man who trekked into the wild of Alaska after tramping his way across the United States, was a student at Emory while I was there. I did not teach him, but we were in the same space at the same time, so we must have literally crossed paths at some point. I also read the book many years ago when it first came out, and I was struck by the courage and beauty of this young man. I am sorry I did not get to know him because I think, like many others who met him, I would have liked him immensely. I remember reading the first versions of the story by Jon Krakauer in Outside Magazine and being impressed with the man and the story. There was a recent article in Outside about Sean Penn trying to get the film made, and the difficulties he had with the parents being willing to tell the story. I admire them too. They are depicted in a harsh but apparently realistic light in the film, and I would have been reluctant as well. The film also is shot beautifully and includes many scenes from California, some from nearby like Anza-Borrego and the Salton Sea.

But of course the main reason I like the film is that a twenty-three year old gave away his money, his car, and walked into the wild, earning money as he needed it and making friends all along the backroads and cities of America. The courage this takes can be seen in our initial reaction to the idea: we may think it romantic but unrealistic and even crazy. American literature is full of the longing to be free of the societal structures that imprison us, and we know we are complicit in our own slavery. But there’s rarely anyone who is willing to reject the security that our imprisonment affords us. Chris McCandless did, and whatever you might think of him and his parents, you cannot argue that he did not act on his beliefs and gave everything for them.

We have such a short life on this planet, and we are so lucky to be here. It seems a tragedy not to live our lives and to sell them to someone in exchange for knowing where our next meal comes from or where we are going to sleep tonight. One of Thoreau’s most famous lines is that we “live lives of quiet desperation,” and he knew that desperation was born of a desire for freedom and a lack of courage to fulfill that desire. I have been thinking a lot about freedom of late and how we exchange it for an idea that our lives relatively unchanging and predictable. But we are always surprised when we are reminded that life is anything but unchanging and predictable. Loss pervades our lives, and we deceive ourselves when we forget that. All the more reason to live while we are alive, here and now. That doesn’t mean we become hedonists and live for our own pleasure at the expense of others. It means that we live for ourselves and own our choices, recognizing that others live here as well, and it all is sacred and magical and short.

Today I sing the song of Chris McCandless, a fellow Emory graduate, a fellow traveler, and a man who lived his life well.