Swagger
This is an essay about the positive and negative aspects of living deliberately
Unit 6 Essay: Living Deliberately
In August of 1854, abolitionist, philosopher, and author Henry David Thoreau published a book titled Walden. In this book, Thoreau documents his experience about when he “went into the woods because [Thoreau] wished to live deliberately” (Thoreau). To live deliberately means to live with intention, purpose, and conscious choice instead of being on autopilot, and that’s what Thoreau did — he purposefully trekked there to escape the consequences of social life. There’s care and time put into every action, thought, and reaction. To be mindful and think of the present instead of worrying about the past or fretting about the future. It also means to live life to the fullest. That’s the advice that a man named Chris McCandless took to heart: to live like there’s no tomorrow. And for him, at some point, there was no tomorrow.
Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer from Massachusetts. He was asked by “an editor of Outside magazine to report on the puzzling circumstances of [Chris McCandless’] death” (Author’s Note). He wrote a nine-thousand word article for the magazine, but when he was done, he developed a “fascination” with Chris that later “bordered on obsession” (Author’s Note). In 1992, Krakauer retraced Chris’s steps, all the way to the bus that his body was found in, and in doing so he discovered more about Chris than was previously known. This led to Krakauer writing his nationally bestselling book Into the Wild, which is an expansion of his article and was published in 1996.
Chris McCandless was born in 1968 and grew up in Annandale, Virginia with his mother and father, Billie and Walt, and his sister, Carine. They were a wealthy, upper-middle class family, and Chris attended an Ivy League University. They lived the typical American dream back then: they had money and lived in the suburbs. After Chris graduated from Emory University in May of 1990, he donated $24,000 of his college money to charity (Krakauer, 20) and sold most of his belongings. He idolized Henry David Thoreau and Jack London (Penn), specifically Thoreau’s book and experience in the wild and London’s tales of Alaska. With these two wild enthusiasts combined, McCandless began a several month long voyage into the wilderness that eventually led to his demise.
McCandless met a man named Jim Gallien in April of 1992, when he was hitchhiking just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. Gallien was “an accomplished hunter and woodsman” (Krakauer 4), so when McCandless climbed into his vehicle, Gallien noticed that “‘He wasn’t carrying anywhere near as much food and gear as you’d expect a guy to be carrying for that kind of trip’” (4). Chris was heavily underprepared for the Alaskan wilderness, which held a large part in his demise. On the positive side, Chris was driven over 1,000 miles by a man named Gaylord Stuckey to the University of Alaska where Chris wanted to “‘study up on what kind of plants he could eat. Berries and things like that’” (158). This shows that Chris took some initiative to prepare himself to be without food.
McCandless met many people — some were inspired by him, others were dumbfounded by him. Insane, foolish, and entitled had crossed many minds as well. But I found a pattern in the behaviors and thoughts of those fortunate enough to cross paths with him: they were genuinely concerned about his decisions, especially those who drove him where he wanted to go. Several people had pleaded with him to call his parents to tell them where he was. Every time, he politely refused. But people like Jim Gallien, Gaylord Stuckey, Jan Burres, and especially Ronald Franz (a pseudonym) grew attached to him and cared for him. As Krakauer writes, “McCandless made an indelible impression on a number of people during the course of his [journey] … Nobody, however, was affected more … than Ronald Franz, who was eighty years old when their paths intersected in January 1992” (Krakauer 48). Franz asked McCandless “if [Franz] could adopt him, if he would be my grandson” (55). Chris replied with “‘We’ll talk about it when I get back from Alaska, Ron’” (55).
A few months later, Chris wrote Franz a letter, saying “And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I fear that you will ignore my advice … Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience” (57). Franz took Chris’s advice to heart; “Franz placed his furniture and most of his other possessions in a storage locker, bought a GMC Duravan, and outfitted it with bunks and camping gear. Then he moved out of his apartment and set up camp on the bajada” (58). (A bajada is a gently sloping plain of sediment formed at the base of a mountain range.)
When Chris’s body was discovered in a bus a few hundred yards from a river that ran through Stampede Trail in Alaska, his “remains weighed sixty-seven pounds” (Krakauer 14). The autopsy could not confirm a cause of death because his remains were extremely decomposed, but the reason was more-than-likely starvation, as there was “[v]irtually no subcutaneous fat remained on the body, and the muscles had withered significantly in the days or weeks prior to death” (14). Chris had been living in the bus for approximately 112 days before his death. But Chris was at peace with himself and the world when he died, for he wrote “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL” (199).
Chris McCandless’ adventure is both damning and damned, inspirational and uninspiring, and wise and foolish. He treated nature like a once-in-a-lifetime escape, but forgot to pack a “return” button and a sandwich. It ultimately cost him his life, and while I wouldn’t follow his path step for step, I understand the urge to step away from everything and reset. He was brave in a way where most people aren’t, even if that bravery came with devastating consequences. I would definitely spend some quality time in a little cabin in a populated area with me, myself, and I to escape the busy life of a high school student. For me, the lesson isn’t to disappear into the wild, but to find balance — taking the time to disconnect, reflect, and ground myself before returning to the chaos of everyday life.
Works Cited
Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. Anchor Books, 1996.
Penn, Sean, director. Into the Wild. Paramount Pictures, 2007.
Thoreau, Henry David. “Where I Lived and What I Lived For.” Walden; or, Life in the Woods, 9 August 1854, https://www.commonlit.org/texts/where-i-lived-and-what-i-lived-for?authuser=0.