I’m listening to the audio book of Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild” again.
I’ve read the magazine article in Outside, read the book that Jon Krakauer developed from his article, watched the movie that Sean Penn developed from the book, read other articles on the web (here’s a good one I haven’t seen before…a follow-up to the original story…)…and I’m still pretty fascinated with this story.
The thing that is most interesting to me is that, given more courage or resolve, or maybe just being willing to become estranged from my family and to live completely for the moment, that could have been me or any of my friends who have actually lived lives of quiet (and in my case, restrained) adventure.
I don’t identify with Chris McCandless…completely…but I remember feeling idealistic and craving adventure. I know how that feels.
I suppose that I still do crave adventure to some degree…now I’m just more nervous about keeping “all four wheels on the road” and making sure things are kind of stable for my family.
Here’s an interesting website…more pictures and information about Chris’ life.
Here’s a video of Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn talking about creativity, activism, the film Into the Wild…talking about a lot of stuff.
That last video has less to do with Chris McCandless than it does with some of the strong motivations that might have driven him to live the life he lived….and how these same emotions drive artistic pursuit and activism.
This story resonates with a lot of people. I haven’t tired of it…even though by now it’s old news.
There is something beautiful about someone living their life so aggressively. It’s inspiring to see idealism like that…even though some aspects of how he expressed that idealism seem pretty extreme.
Like Jon Krakauer says in the second video, if Chris had pulled off his Alaskan adventure and hiked out at the end of his experience, we never would have heard anything about it.
Chris McCandless would have carried it with him the rest of his life, though.
And for him, that would have been more than enough, I suppose.