January 10, 2004
CALL OF THE WILD:
Death of an Innocent: How Christopher McCandless lost his way in the wilds (Jon Krakauer, January 1993, Outside Magazine)
James Gallien had driven five miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaskan dawn. A rifle protruded from the young man's pack, but he looked friendly enough; a hitchhiker with a Remington semiautomatic isn't the sort of thing that gives motorists pause in the 49th state. Gallien steered his four-by-four onto the shoulder and told him to climb in.The hitchhiker introduced himself as Alex. "Alex?" Gallien responded, fishing for a last name.
"Just Alex," the young man replied, pointedly rejecting the bait. He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and "live off the land for a few months." Alex's backpack appeared to weigh only 25 or 30 pounds, which struck Gallien, an accomplished outdoorsman, as an improbably light load for a three-month sojourn in the backcountry, especially so early in the spring. Immediately Gallien began to wonder if he'd picked up one of those crackpots from the Lower 48 who come north to live out their ill-considered Jack London fantasies. Alaska has long been a magnet for unbalanced souls, often outfitted with little more than innocence and desire, who hope to find their footing in the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier. The bush, however, is a harsh place and cares nothing for hope or longing. More than a few such dreamers have met predictably unpleasant ends.
As they got to talking during the three-hour drive, though, Alex didn't strike Gallien as your typical misfit. He was congenial, seemed well educated, and peppered Gallien with sensible questions about "what kind of small game lived in the country, what kind of berries he could eat, that kind of thing."
Still, Gallien was concerned: Alex's gear seemed excessively slight for the rugged conditions of the interior bush, which in April still lay buried under the winter snowpack. He admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. He had no compass; the only navigational aid in his possession was a tattered road map he'd scrounged at a gas station, and when they arrived where Alex asked to be dropped off, he left the map in Gallien's truck, along with his watch, his comb, and all his money, which amounted to 85 cents. "I don't want to know what time it is," Alex declared cheerfully. "I don't want to know what day it is, or where I am. None of that matters."
During the drive south toward the mountains, Gallien had tried repeatedly to dissuade Alex from his plan, to no avail. He even offered to drive Alex all the way to Anchorage so he could at least buy the kid some decent gear. "No, thanks anyway," Alex replied. "I'll be fine with what I've got." When Gallien asked whether his parents or some friend knew what he was up to—anyone who could sound the alarm if he got into trouble and was overdue—Alex answered calmly that, no, nobody knew of his plans, that in fact he hadn't spoken to his family in nearly three years. "I'm absolutely positive," he assured Gallien, "I won't run into anything I can't deal with on my own."
"There was just no talking the guy out of it," Gallien recalls. "He was determined. He couldn't wait to head out there and get started." So Gallien drove Alex to the head of the Stampede Trail, an old mining track that begins ten miles west of the town of Healy, convinced him to accept a tuna melt and a pair of rubber boots to keep his feet dry, and wished him good luck. Alex pulled a camera from his backpack and asked Gallien to snap a picture of him. Then, smiling broadly, he disappeared down the snow-covered trail. The date was Tuesday, April 28, 1992.
Outside has the original story that become Into the Wild posted online. If you've never read it, there's a tragicomic nature to the tale, which doesn't quite achieve what the author intends. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2004 8:08 PM
Mr. Judd:
My husband and I read this book a couple of years ago. I had no sympathy for McCandless, and basically felt the world was better off without him.
My husband, who has a kinder and more romantic soul than me, thought it was a tragedy.
I was hoping a bear would eat him.
Posted by: Buttercup at January 10, 2004 10:06 PMI'm with Buttercup. We've come a long way since Petrarch was the first to climb a mountain and then scurried down, horrified by his sin.
By modern standards, he may have been all too sane. If you believe life has no purpose and we owe the highest duty to ourselves, then what possible objection could there be? The name of the game is to amass as many experiences as possible under your belt before the worms get you.
But, for an experience to count as an experience, it must challenge the senses, and so our culture pushes constantly for greater danger and novelty. Extreme sports, poisonous reptiles as pets, sexual "creativity", dangerous holidays, parents risking their lives to "fulfill" themselves by climbing Everest, etc. are all features of the collective mental illness our growing dissatisfaction with routine and duty is leading us to. But you'd be hard-pressed to find a shrink who would agree.
Posted by: Peter B at January 11, 2004 12:49 PMPeter:
People with "thrill issues" have been with us since time immemorial. The degree to which people in general believe life has purpose doesn't appear to change that at all.
Jeff:
Well, that one rolled off pretty easily. Care to elaborate?
Posted by: Peter B at January 11, 2004 1:05 PMPeter:
Sure. By your reasoning, this kind of pointless thrill seeking comes hand-in-hand with life's loss of meaning. However, men (and it has nearly always been men) have been always been seeking greater danger and novelty.
Magellan, the original polar expeditions, Everest, the Wright Brothers. The entire Jack Aubrey/Steven Maturin series is about people for whom life has meaning, but also have serious thrill issues.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at January 11, 2004 4:55 PMBut, Jeff, I didn't say anything new and dangerous, which would include all exploration. That has a variety of collective purposes and motives. Did the Wright brothers invent the airplane to express themselves? Did Magellan undertake his voyages to see what the terror of the unknown would feel like? Cool.
Your closer with Everest, but that was a quasi-sport with a long tradition and was linked to exploration. Anyway, I'm not condemning all thrill-seeking and trying to have roller coasters banned. I'm questionning the growing popular view that these activities are the sine qua non of rich, fulfilled lives.
Posted by: Peter B at January 11, 2004 6:02 PMThe difference being, Jeff, that they were trying to achieve things that involved thrills--not stalking thrills for thrill sake. The latter is a function of empty lives.
Posted by: oj at January 11, 2004 6:22 PMOJ:
So you mean to tell me that all people without empty lives are timid, or only seek thrills that also achieve things?
Human nature includes people who love thrills for the sheer excitement of it, without any regard as to how empty you might find their lives.
I'll bet you might find the odd race car driver who would contest your assertion their lives are empty.
Peter:
Surely you don't think all these people didn't have a different take on excitement than most?
Jeff:
This guy hit the wilds for no apparent purpose beyond hitting the wilds. He wasn't trying to discover anything, convert the natives, seek spiritual solice, make a fortune, find the source of a river or set a record. He prided hinself on being underequipped and refused all experienced advice. He seems to have studied or learned nothing in preparation. He was courting death with no apparent upside and no anticipated legacy. And people write long books about this "tragedy".
Please show me the evidence that the ancient Greeks, Victorian English or medieval Europeans were plagued by such narcissistic thrill-seeking.
Posted by: Peter B at January 11, 2004 8:37 PMPeter:
Please show me the evidence there weren't any suicidal Greeks, etc...
My take on the whole story was that the guy was suicidal or delusional, not a thrill seeker. He wasn't courting death, he intended to die.
OJ:
Lots of race car drivers do it purely for the thrill. You should hit the SCCA web page to find out how many.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at January 11, 2004 9:37 PMI don't think this guy was a "thrill-seeker" so much as he was in complete denial about who he was: an upper-middle class male who had no real skills, no friends, and no future. I didn't think he was suicidal, but he was certainly trying to erase his past. Read one way, his entire 'experience' was an attempt to purge himself, either from the usual guilts or from some sense of unbelonging. The Unabomber without hate and a political agenda. He was a drifter who did not know how to survive on his own. Had he stayed in small towns, working odd jobs, he probably would have been killed in some other kind of mishap, maybe even a bar fight over some petty slight. BTW, he didn't acutally starve to death - he ate local potatoes with toxic buds that incapacitated him. He would have starved anyway, but.....
Posted by: jim hamlen at January 11, 2004 11:10 PMJim:
"The Unabomber without hate and a political agenda."
Nice. Depressing, but nice.
Cut McCandless a break, he paid the price for
his mistake.
Peter, he doesn't represent anybody but himself.
Modern life doesn't offer much consolation for misfits. In the old days where I live, the plantation gave everybody a task. So everybody had that much to live for. But the suicide rates, especially among the teenagers, were very high.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at January 12, 2004 11:40 AM