Into the wild...

"But there are men for whom the unattainable has a special attraction. Usually they are not experts: their ambitions and fantasies are strong enough to brush aside the doubts which more cautious men might have. Determination and faith are their strongest weapons. At best such men are regarded as eccentric; at worst, mad..." -
Walt Unsworth - Everest

So some books on the "I've read them lately list" are: Into the Wild and Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer) as well as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Nothing too "out of the ordinary" here because they're all best sellers.

Just thought that I'd get some thoughts down about the Krakauer books. I guess Into the Wild really spoke to me the most...if for nothing else...simply because the 24-year-old kid who leaves family and society to seek out "the wild" of Alaska ended up getting some pretty bad press for evidently being a nut job.

He abandons mom, dad, and sis and leaves for what would become 2 years of adventure around the midwest-western US. He meets some great people along the way and experiences what many of us would consider to be true freedom...then he gets his heart set on Alaska and stops at nothing to get there and prove it to himself that he can make it on his own. He dies after 113 of living in the Alaskan "bush" - in reality only about 30 miles from Healy Alaska. The cause of death was some poisonous fungus that grew on some seeds he collected...so he wasn't necesarily stupid to the point of death...he was simply unlucky.

Still in all...one trend that shows up in the story is that every time he gets close enough to someone to build a solid relationship...he bales out. Parents, close friend Wayne Westerberg, Ron Franz, Jan and Rainey, everyone. Is that normal? Does true freedom require isolation? Can happiness and freedom coexist in reality if "true happiness" requires someone to share it with?

I relate to this guy none-the-less. Not so much in his need to abandon his loved ones...but in the groaning deep within his belly that calls him to experience the unabridged, viceral world. At what point in my miniature adventures would people have called me crazy, mad, or even mildly eccentric for a need to escape from the safehouse geometric prison of modern society to the unpredictable organic of "the wild"?