“Your wrong if you think that the joy
of life comes principally from human relationships. Gods placed it all around
us, its in everything, its in anything we can experience. People just need to
change the way they look at those things.” – Christopher Johnson McCandless
If there’s
one thing in life I’ve always visualized myself doing, one thing I’ve always
spurred myself to do but know I never will; it is to lose touch with all things
material, look only to the unworldly and mission off ‘into the wild’.
Christopher
Mccandless did it.
A kid
follows his dream. His dream kills him…
I only
discovered the story of ‘Alexander Supertramp’ through the film “Into The
Wild”, a book turned movie flick, based on a young troubled soul “running
against the forces of darkness…all the evil in the world, all the hatred”, to
discover himself amongst the Alaskan wilderness and to be as far away from
civilization as he could get. Of course, with little experience or knowledge of
the wilderness, Chris only lasted four months, until his body was found in an
abandoned bus, weighing a disgusting thirty kg’s. Along with the mephitic body
odor, the boy lay next to a journal, documenting 113 days of his life in the
wild, many a cry for help.
The amount
of bravery one needs to pull from under their skin to commit. To actually get
up, and leave. Depart from everything secure and safe for a life of inadvertent
spontaneous surprise day after the next. Only a loony could do that. Chris was
a loony.
The film
itself plays to the exact recordings of Chris’ time spent out in Alaska. It’s
true to his journal, and accurate to the relationships he made along the way.
He truly was a ‘supertramp’ as he proudly nicknamed himself.
Emile Hirsch
who plays Christopher, plays his character to the exact expressions that Chris
had. He mirrors Chris and who he was. You see fearlessness in Emile’s eyes, and
cold black fear in those same eyes a while on. I was fooled into thinking that
life could be that simple if you were selfish enough to let it be. Why not? He
left his family with nothing but a worthless note. He burned his money, dumped
his car and guessed which wild berries were safe to eat. Couldn’t I too?
He had a
normal, if not better upbringing than I did. He finished school with top marks,
graduated with a degree and made his father proud. What made him different to
me?
“The
freedom and simple beauty is too good to pass up...”
– Christopher Johnson McCandless
I cant help
but fear the personal chill attached to my neck at the thought that while Chris
was discovering his weakness and crying himself to sleep in regret of his
decision, I was only two, playing outside in a splash pool in the summer of
April 1992.
“S.O.S. I need help. I am injured,
near death, and too weak to hike out. I am all alone, this is no joke. In the
name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and
shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless”.
While he was
dying, I was learning to walk.
“Two
years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate
freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped
from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best."
And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The
climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the
spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking
bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he
flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. - Alexander
Supertramp May 1992” – written in his journal.
Ps: If you’d like to know more, visit this website for pic’s
and the full story.
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