I started reading Into the Wild this week, mostly because I insisted I had to read it before I saw the movie. I knew a little about Chris McCandless from what I vaguely remembered from when the story originally came out and my dad had a subscription to Outside, and then from the release of the movie and catching Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder on Charlie Rose, but I had no idea that I would enjoy the book so much or that it would have such an odd impact on me.I really haven't read a book this fast in a while. Since the summer, when I read three books in a couple months: The Dark Tower III (which I actually read camping, a lot of it alone for the day on Powell Plateau), The Time Traveler's Wife, and House of Leaves, I haven't really read anything but comic books that really grabbed me. But I couldn't put Into the Wild down. In fact, I still have about 30 pages left while I write this, because I want it to last and I want something to look forward to for my commute tomorrow morning. I just hope that there isn't something that makes me tear up in those last 30 pages considering I have already gotten choked up three times reading so far.
I imagine it's not much of a strange reaction, but although it is about someone who dies on a trek through nature, my god do I want to go camping, NOW! I mean, I am already looking at camp sites for my post-Bar exam vacation. I figure that's a pretty basic and standard reaction to the book.
With much of what I did know of the book, I really expected to be overtly challenged to question the choices Chris made. Either that, or be frustrated by Krakauer seemingly championing someone who could be considered to have made selfish, unwise, or even insane decisions, but I found I didn't feel that way at all. Instead, in that respect, the book sort of just made me look inward. I'm 24, not much older than Chris was when he gave away his savings and trekked across the country before going to Alaska, and I respect his idealism. It's hard not to sometimes think how great it would be to just run away and not be concerned with societal standards of money and achievement. I mean, Chris McCandless's parents wanted him to go to law school after college, something I did and sometimes still regret.
But besides looking inward, it's looking outward that really sort of shook me up. I don't know if everyone that reads Into the Wild finds that Chris McCandless reminds them of someone in their lives (Comment, please, I'd love to know) but I couldn't help but think of my dad while I read. Maybe that should seem obvious as he rides his bike everywhere and goes camping every chance he gets, but I think it's more than that.
When Chris McCandless left to start his new life he was 23. My dad decided it was time to start a new life when he was in his early 40s. I'd love to ask him, because I don't really know when it was that he really decided that he was so disappointed with the typical white collar suburban lifestyle that he had, but just as I was reaching adolescence I know that something just sort of changed. I didn't really know it until years later, when he was preaching to me about how pointless the jewelry business was, which in turn seemed to be him saying how pointless everything else in his life was, but all I do know is that he was severely disappointed and looking for change. He quit his job, left my mom, and moved out to the city.
Like Chris McCandless was in high school, my dad is, and for as long as I can remember, has been a runner. Again, I don't really know if he thinks of it as a spiritual endeavor, but it must be more than just exercise, because my dad can run. 100 mile trail runs and ultra-marathons that would leave him in bed and then limping for days, cuts and scrapes from tree branches up and down his body.
Then there's the camping and hiking. The risky and dangerous endeavors to be one with nature. Even when my dad was still in the jewelry business (he's in computer security now and absolutely loves it) with a car full of jewelry samples, he would go camping. One of the odd perks of being a traveling salesman and probably frowned upon by his superiors. Two days of sales trips, then several days on his own alone in a tent. Trans-state bike trips with a backpack and small bike trailer filled with a tent or bivvy sack. When we went camping and hiking in the Grand Canyon this past summer, my dad even told me about some of his "near death" experiences hiking and camping taking the trail in the valley of Powell Plateau down to the Colorado River and not being able to find a water source, having to boost himself over rock ledges because he was so dehydrated and fatigued, just trying to make it back to a jug of water he had stashed miles back in some bushes.
But it's not just the danger and the outdoors, but even the accounts of the people that Chris McCandless met on the way that make me think of my dad. It can be embarrassing, and I mean really embarrassing, but despite his social awkwardness, my dad is pretty personable. Even if it might sometimes seem he's bothering people, any time I go out with him, he knows people, and it's quite clear that in his own strange way, he has made an impression on them, and they remember him, and probably many times after only one time meeting. When my dad moved out when I was 15, and since, he has developed a cadre of random friends and acquaintances, people that he has met so very randomly at concerts, on camping trips, at work, and some other random place.
And then there's the last part of the story that struck me, and this isn't even mentioning Franz or anything with Carine, because those are the parts that got me particularly choked up. Turning inward again, I can't help but recognize the stubbornness that Chris showed to his family in myself. The self-righteous path that Chris took when he found out about the fact that Walt maintained a relationship with his first wife and basically had a second family. Some people seem to think that somehow Krakauer (and maybe moreso the film) paints the picture that Walt's parents were assholes, but I find that hard to justify. Instead, I see a major fault in Chris, and maybe part of what got him killed, and something I fortunately feel that I have been able to grow out of even if ever so slightly. It's not worth it to be so self-righteous and moralistic and hold everyone to impossible standards. My dad never had two families, but I did know he was cheating on my mom when I was 15. Back then, I was so angry, and because of it, I had nothing to do with him. We hardly spoke for over 5 years. Part of it was because I dumbly felt I had to choose sides, but mostly, it was because I held him to an unrealistic standard. I expected moral perfection and sincerity, instead of just simple humanity, and because I could never get that, because we are all simply human.
I guess in some ways that wasn't really much about the book itself, but just a lot of what it made me think about while reading and after I put it down, and I hope not too personal, but now I really can't wait to see how the movie is.
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