Into the Wild

In the fall of 1992 the story of Chris McCandless broke nationwide. I was finishing up college in Atlanta at the time and it seemed amazing to me that a kid only one year older than myself, who graduated from Emory no less, could seek such a different life than the one that society and my culture seemed to be funneling the young towards at that time. What I remember most though was the People magazine article that appeared in 1993 about McCandless, detailing his life and death. My boyfriend at the time, never one to break a sweat, came over in a bit of a huff, slapping the magazine down on my kitchen counter with one sentence, "Why would he do such a thing?" to which I could only smile. I remember telling him that McCandless has lived and died under his own terms. My boyfriend did not understand and later I had the thought that you either 'got' what Chris was doing or you didn't.



Since the opening of Sean Penn's movie based upon Jon Krakauer's book about McCandless, Into the Wild, many people have posted all over the Internet about the movie, the book, and Chris McCandless. Usually the posts fall into one of two categories: 1) McCandless was an unprepared kook who did not respect nature and got killed or 2) Chris was exceptional and was attempting to earn his manhood and place in society rather than float along on what society had tried to condition him for.

While I do not believe Chris was without fault and certainly not someone we should romanticize, I do understand what he was trying to do and I respect that quest a great deal. Most of us live lives that are very prescribed by society, culture, our careers, and economic expectations that will reflect whether or not we have been "successful". To break away from that and attempt to create a first-person life is commendable and I have great difficulty with those who cannot seem to grasp that. While not everyone needs to live the way McCandless did the last two years of his life (nor does everyone want to!), I believe Sean Penn was correct in his assessment that U.S. culture is addicted to comfort and McCandless' quest was not about how much equipment he could buy at Patagonia, but about testing his own character to see that he had earned his place in society and found out who he was.


Sometimes I look at my students, most of them between the ages of 18-21, and I see them sitting there with their ipods, iphones, mp3 players, cell phones, and laptops talking about the latest show they Tivo'ed or downloaded from Netflix, adjusting their fine fleece jackets from the North Face or Patagonia, their climbing boots from REI and their $150 jeans and think: You know, you guys should head out on a camping trip, walk cross country and actually meet some of the people in our country that you have only read about in this class. Rather than dressing to seem like you climb Everest on weekends, why don't you at least get to know the country knolls, nooks and crannies of your own back country. I suspect that many of them really do want adventure, something untamed, unsuspected, unmanageable, something that cannot be captured and watched over and over on Tivo. Statistics tell me that over half my students are $7000 in credit card debt. And by the time they graduate there won't be any room in their minds, hearts, or souls for adventure that does not lead to career advancement. Which is a shame. Sometimes I want to tell them to have at least one adventure before getting out into the world where our dreams are tamed and harnessed too quickly.