Into the Wild

So I just finished reading a fantastic book. I had actually given this to my dad as a Christmas present, he read it quickly and recommended it so enthusiastically that I borrowed it and read it myself. I started Sunday around midnight and stayed up until nearly 3:00a reading it. I finished it last night.

You can read a synopsis of the book right there on the cover, but obviously there is a lot more to the story than that. The protagonist, Chris McCandless, essentially disappeared from his family after he graduated from college. He drove across the country from Atlanta to Arizona until his car failed him, then hitch-hiked and boated in a zig zag pattern around the western United States before concluding his grand adventure on the Stampede Trail in Alaska.

It's a fantastic read, although I have to think it would appeal more to men than to women. It struck a cord with me, and I think it would with most men, because I believe that it speaks to the inherent male desire to explore and seek adventure.

We all go about it in different ways and some obviously seek (or define) adventure to a much larger degree than others. You won't soon catch me hitchhiking through the Yukon Territory or living for weeks on end alone in a tent. But I think that it's every man's inherent desire to explore and test himself and his resiliency.

Scanning through my blog last night it occurred to me how often I write about that period of time when I lived in the Northwest. Though I said when I left that I would close that chapter of my life, I guess I never really did. After finishing "Into the Wild", I got to thinking about how that chapter was to date my greatest "adventure" and that's likely why I hold onto it the way I have.

In another sense, I felt connected to Chris McCandless through his relentless search for an "outpost". Personally, I've always had a fascination with the remote, secluded places across America. I've always found myself fantasizing about what it would be like to live in such a place, a place like Forks Washington, Jackman Maine, or Three Points Arizona. To me, there is something incredibly romantic about finding significance in an insignificant map dot. A place with one stop light, one local pub, and a small lunchbox, a place that embodies that lyric from the John Prine song "Jesus, the Missing Years" that reads Things shut down at midnight. At least 'round here they do. Cause we all reside down the block inside, at 23 Skidoo.

I spent a night in Forks back in December 2006, completely unplanned. Exploring the Olympic Peninsula one Saturday, I found myself in Forks in the evening and figured I was too far to drive home that night, and I still had some things I wanted to see on Sunday. I got a cheap hotel room and walked to a small "American" style restaurant for dinner where I ate a shrimp basket and drank a couple of bottles of beer, by myself. The restaurant closed at 9:00pm, I was the last person in there. I paid my bill and walked back to the hotel. At this hour on a Saturday night shortly before Christmas, there was nothing going on in that town. It was quiet and felt deserted. It was an outpost, and I was strangely happy that I'd found it.

The next morning I drove to La Push, on the Pacific Coast, and walked a steep two mile trail that led to the ocean. Walking through the forest, I could not hear a sound to suggest any human presence anywhere in the world. It was pure solitude. Upon reaching the ocean, I noticed that there were no footprints on the beach. It was truly an awesome sight to see something so large and so undisturbed and I felt an immense happiness for being in the "middle of nowhere", if only for an hour or so.

I can imagine multiplying those feelings by one hundred thousand and that may be what Chris McCandless felt as he hiked into the Alaskan wilderness.

As for me, I guess my adventures lie in finding those new and far-away places, spots that are exotic to me and painfully common to the locals. We stayed in Guthrie Oklahoma for the UGA v. Oklahoma State game the past September. Guthrie is about 25 miles or so from Stillwater, where Oklahoma State is located. Guthrie is a small town, larger than Forks, but struck me as very quiet and low key. Pulling into town that Friday night and passing through the "downtown" area, I remembered again how much I enjoy these small, random towns that make up America and how I wished I could travel more to such "non-exotic" locales.

At any rate, I would highly recommend "Into the Wild" to anyone looking for an interesting read.