I was looking for something on my blog and did a Google search (where else?) and stumbled across a paper someone had done for school about Christopher McCandless where my blog was quoted.
Quite a surprise. What was even more surprising was the "interpretation" of my post. Here is the piece (with my corrections in brackets):
Many people believed and looked at Chris as a hero and a person to look up to [they must've missed this quote of mine: "But he was not a hero. There was no glorifying his tale."]. In a blog [post, singular] written entirely about him, the author, an average man, lived and traveled the same as Chris McCandless throughout his entire life [it was a brief period of time in my life].
He graduated high school at the same time and his parents are the same as Chris'. He has all the things in the world that Chris did: a savings account, a new car and all the stuff he got he didn’t really want [while there were similarities there were also huge differences, especially familial].
"I have a soft spot for Christopher McCandless. Without being too sentimental, I can honestly say he may have saved my life. I was the typical suburban dreamer, longing of living in the mountains, or moving to Tibet, being free and on the road. As Christopher McCandless learned, too late, it is hard. And, in the end, what really matters is not being self-sufficient but being interdependent upon others" (“Into the Wild”).
This man lived the same teen years as Chris did, too. He was going through family struggles, and wanting to move on and get away. The guy traveled with his wife [ex-girlfriend, mostly solo], meeting new people in Colorado, Montana and South Dakota. He loved Chris McCandless [captivated is not the same as loved] and his story and he wanted to live like him [it wasn't until Krakauer's book was published that I realized the details of the journey he had taken] in order to also be freed of his previous existence.
He gives Chris credit for saving his life, and by following his Chris’ story [I didn't follow his story; everything in the post was in retrospect], he made it through life without failing [he must've missed the other blog posts about how my downward spiral came after my journey...].
"The book is a great read (though it is as much about the author as it is about McCandless) and the movie is stunning. I cried several times during the film, something quite rare, though it had more to do with my process of healing, film as mirror, than it did a concern for the character in the film. It comes highly recommended" (“Into the Wild”).
By reading this book when going through life like Chris did [my story took place up until 1994; the book was published in 1997], it helped the author take a risk he had been previously unwilling to take [it was a calculated risk; the drugs were probably the greatest impetus to getting me on the road].
It helped him get through his negative feelings by relating to what Chris had done [I was aware of the end result of his journey; I knew nothing about his personal life until I read the book many years later].
Chris McCandless's story of following his ideals makes him an inspiration because he convinced other people to go pursue the lives that they had always dreamed of [we had parallel paths with different outcomes].
I did not find in him inspiration; I found in him a cautionary tale.
It's kind of cool to be quoted, I have to admit.
It's also interesting to see how one's meaning can be interpreted in a completely different fashion than the one intended.
Y'know how we often talk about getting out, going, just being free?
It's a regular conversation in small towns, suburban towns, where culture is, well, isn't. I vowed to get out. I didn't know what that meant. All I knew was the small town thing, the high school clique thing, the pursuit of the traditional career path thing wasn't my thing.
Never did prom. Did two Sadie's Hawkins dance (what the hell is that anyhow?) and one homecoming dance. It was pretty stupid. I suppose being drunk or stealing street signs instead of participating in anything else in high school wasn't very bright either.
All I knew was I hated it. It seemed stupid, pointless, stale, cliche. So I couldn't wait to leave. By the time I was 25 I had a fat bank account, was a recovering alcoholic (though was in reality simply trading alcohol for the mellower haze of being a pothead) and was running headlong into madness. Ah, the good ol' days.
So I left. I had a semi-plan, a list of friends to visit in a circuit throughout the southern route to the West. I really did have a good time. The freedom was intoxicating, invigorating. What I remember - and had difficulty handling - was the total and complete freedom to make my own choices. Driven by the demons of abuse, addiction and obligation, this freedom was a struggle. I felt as if I had to get somewhere, do something, gain approval from someone. In other words, I wasn't free.
But I left. I cut the ties. I quit the job and left. The photo above shows some of the remnants. One of the best moves was becoming a member of Hosteling International. To stay in the heart of San Francisco for under $20. In the red light district of San Fransisco, anyhow. Maybe I do have a prostitute story. Sort of...
I had met a guy (can't remember his name...we were sick of each other by this time anyhow...) in a Hostel in Portland, Oregon and he needed a ride to San Fransisco. I was headed south anyhow...camped out overnight in the dunes on the coast of Oregon...couldn't find weed in Acadia, California and ended up sleeping on the side of the road somewhere...got to drive the entire stretch of Highway 101 along the coast...convenient company I suppose...but no pictures.
So out the door of the Hostel is, quite literally, hooker alley. I had never seen so many prostitutes congregated in one place with car after car driving up, girl getting in, car driving off. And these girls were stunning...in a done up, plastic kind of way. These were not the crack cocaine kind I was familiar with in Youngstown. So we sat out on the street for hours, just watching. It was at once fascinating and sad, on so many levels. No conversation with the prostitutes, just observations. Not much of a story, but...
So the photo above is what's left of my journey. A couple of receipts and the Stamp Book from Hosteling International (with several other hostel destinations stamped inside, all of which are no longer in existence) and my journal.
The journal is a weird thing and says a lot. There is very little personal information, very little details on what I was doing. It is mostly musing, bad poetry and the ramblings of someone who is smoking way too much dope. There are little snippets here and again which are intriguing but they require more analysis. But there is much detachment, very little personal detail.
I do have Gilligan and The Professor's autographs, though. What a weird thing that was. At some beach festival on Pike Street where I worked there was a bunch of sand and Gilligan and The Professor sitting there signing autographs. It was a truly sad thing, these two old guys living off of a show thirty years in syndication, Bob Denver telling the promoter he was hungry and wanted something to eat. Just plain bizarre. Even then I sought irony...
...which explains the L.A. Coroner's receipt for two t-shirts. They were selling souvenirs. I met the woman who had started it up and she had informed me that it started as something of a fund raiser and it took off. They had mugs, towels, t-shirts and an assortment of stuff that people could buy.
I did find the impressions of my first, and only, Dead show in the journal and my first, though not last, time on acid. But that's another story...
In 1994, I was roaming the West, bogged down with way too much stuff and too much existential baggage. A friend of my father's, who was living in Seattle, had some property outside of Flathead Lake in Montana. He offered up his place prior to my visit to Seattle where I would stay with him for a few days. It's hard going back, so much has been forgotten in the haze of fifteen years gone by.
A pivotal period of time in my life yet so little has been recorded. It is a mystery I have yet to penetrate. Like Chris McCandless I so wanted freedom and space yet at the same time was desperately seeking love, not so much of others, though that was present, but love of self and, ultimately, peace with God, though at the time a notion of a 'personal' God was the God of wrath, punishing me for every sin. I sought freedom from the burden of God as well.
Pictures will follow (when I find them) but the 'home' on the property, of which a foundation had been built, was a school bus. Yep. A school bus. Cliche, perhaps. The property around the bus was littered with (bad) sculptures that looked like either a bunch of hippies on too much of something had built them, scratching their heads in the morning at what had been created, or the kind of things you would find at the home of a serial killer. Freaky either way.
I would stay there for three days. I rode my bike into town (not sure which town it was...Elmo I believe), sat by the lake during sunset (although I may be imagining this based off of a picture I've seen), and basically hung out. No earth shattering revelations came, nothing profound. I do remember the utter darkness and silence inside the bus.
I would venture that Chris had had his fill at some point. Being still, settling in one place, was difficult, especially when not in a state of constant motion "doing" something, anything.
In 1992, my addictions and subsequent wanderlust were beginning to manifest. Big time. I was making good money at a job I swore I'd never do and was living on the cheap and socking the excess money away (what was left after drinking anyhow...). It was during this time I began journeying West frequently. I'd been to Colorado in high school to ski with the family so had a taste of it and was drawn to the idea of space. Lots of it.
A drive from Ohio to Bozeman, Montana; a one-week tour of the four corners in a rented convertible Mustang; a job interview in Brooking, South Dakota. The itch was there.
The photo above shows actual copies of two Times articles where I first learned of his story. I've laminated them in order to preserve them. The first article appeared on September 12, 1992.
The header of Chapter 10, page 98, in Jon Krakaeur's Into The Wild contains the text of the column (if you click on the photo above you can read both articles). I remember the day it hit. It took hold of my soul and never let go.
A week later, the second article, the one above with the photo, appeared.
I have a day planner from 1992 (I was selling cell phones then...remember the bag phones?). On September 18 I have "Vacation" written (with a big arrow pointing through to September 27th).
On September 19th his body was identified.
This was my trip with girlfriend in tow driving to a bed and breakfast in Bozeman, Montana. Even then distance was a magnet. We went through South Dakota, visiting some roadside museum tribute showing where Dances With Wolves was filmed (another serendipitous moment), yes, Wall Drug, the Black Hills and making our way to Bozeman. I think it was this trip where I really became hooked on the open space via automobile.
Somewhere along this path I picked up the Sunday Times (probably outside of Chicago where we were staying with friends on the way) which contained the article on the identification of his body. That photo, which I've never seen anywhere else, is the image I have and will always have of Christopher McCandless.
I picked up a copy of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where we had stayed for a night that week, and found an article about Wayne Westerberg's assistance in identifying the body. Carthage, where Christoper spent time, was just north of the Interstate on which we were traveling to Montana. I was traveling along the same terrain, unknowingly, following in his footsteps as I would do Robert Pirsig's several years later. Below is the original copy of the South Dakota paper, preserved and guarded for seventeen years. The story resonated deep.
Snippets from his diary were published in the Times and then the details soon followed. It was gripping. Horrifying. But I was captivated. Immediately. He went where I was longing to go. For years his story would haunt me. In my travels, he acted as cautionary tale. But he was not a hero. There was no glorifying his tale. He simply lived out where I was headed.
He was, quite simply, me. I think on some level he is a mirror for many who have dreams of going, getting out, wandering into the wild. What I was dabbling in, he acted out in full force. I understand where he was coming from; I understand the drive; I understand the longing for alone and for solitude and for Truth. We all struggle with this, some more overtly than others.
It was to my shock when Jon Krakauer's book was first published. And an even greater shock when the movie came out. Here was a private muse of mine, now made public, myth, legend. For those who know or knew me, to read the book was to read my story. No one could really figure out what it was that was driving me, why I couldn't find peace, why the longing to run, or numb myself. While the questions are never really answers in the case of Christopher McCandless, I, from what I have come to know, get it.
Both he and I graduated from high school and college in the same years. Like him, I too was, and still am, content to drive old cars with high miles. Like him, I too was becoming more and more disgusted with materialism and the "American" dream. I wanted out. As with him, it is perhaps ironic as both of us, though perhaps emotionally lacking, were, for all intensive purposes, well provided for materially. In other words, one might argue, we were both spoiled. Obviously we learned that the answers to life's bigger questions were not to be found in the world of 'stuff' but at least we had the 'stuff' we needed to survive.
It took me years before I was able to read the book and months to muster up the courage to watch the movie. There was something private about his story and I was afraid to relive this period of my life. I wasn't ready to heal as this part of my life had become, in my mind, quite mythical. The reality I wasn't ready to face was that I was just scared, emotionally scarred, a boyish man who wanted to hide from the fear.
Though there were genuine and sincere longings for truth, I don't know that I was running to anything as much as I was being driven by something, running from something.
By the time I left home in 1994, I had a much larger cushion than the one he had. I had a pretty sizeable savings account, a car and, as I would later learn (one of the best lessons I learned being on the road for almost a year), way too much stuff.
I have a soft spot for Christopher McCandless. Without being too sentimental, I can honestly say he may have saved my life. I was the typical suburban dreamer, longing of living in the mountains, or moving to Tibet, being free and on the road. As Christopher McCandless learned, too late, it is hard. And, in the end, what really matters is not being self-sufficient but being interdependent upon others.
For my year on the road I took four rolls of film. That's it. Of all the people I met, I am not in touch with any of them. This is perhaps one of the saddest reminisces of all. I met some amazing people, brilliant, beautiful, adventurous, yet made no connection with any of them. I got close to a few people but couldn't handle it and left. Longing for identity, I ran with a diverse crowd and experienced things I would never have otherwise experienced. But, in the end, all these experiences were mine. They were not shared with anyone.
The road of relationship is much more difficult, and rewarding, than that of the loner which, in the end, is a death sentence. We all die alone, certainly, but what matters is what we have deposited in those who remain when we die.
Christopher McCandless' story is bittersweet. Had he lived, it is likely no book would have been made about him as many have adventured much in the same way he did. It was his horrifying death, capturing a fear many - especially many a traveler - hold, that of dying alone, starving, in the middle of nowhere.
The book is a great read (though it is as much about the author as it is about McCandless) and the movie is stunning. I cried several times during the film, something quite rare, though it had more to do with my process of healing, film as mirror, than it did a concern for the character in the film. It comes highly recommended.
My only concern is that it tends to idolize him and his adventure. After all, he basically abandoned his family. It seems he realized this too late. And, as some have posited, perhaps he was more than just a little bit crazy, his disconnect and need for isolation signs of those who have mental illness.
As an aside note, the song "Big Hard Sun" performed by Eddie Vedder is a remake of an original by Indio whose CD containing the song is was out of print. It was karmic. I heard this song once on some independent channel in my hometown and was mesmerized and bought the CD new back then.
I still have it (love Vedder but the original is much better than the remake...). Here it is twenty years later and it's come full circle.
Here's the original from Indio's Big Harvest album:
As if these connections are not enough, L. Subramaniam play violin on this track. For those who aren't familiar with his work, his track 'Wandering Saint' appears on the Baraka soundtrack which, for those who may be interested, has a strong significance in my life as well.
I have always been led by signs, between points in time that confirm that I am where I am supposed to be. When these signs come I know that what has happened between those two points in time is complete and I can lay it behind me and move on. There have been several of them in my life, confirmations that speak "my" language and are too serendipitous to ignore. This was one of them.
Though I don't consider him to be a saint or hero, Christopher McCandless' life, though tragic in the end, was not in vain.
Faith is hard and faith is messy because faith changes us. If it doesn't change us, challenge us and cause us to look towards others, we need to question the faith to which we cling.
