Fourth of July: The After Party

Shop window, Morro Bay, CA, 

July 5, 2008

Today's Patriot

Resistol, Petaluma, CA, June 2008

Self-portrait, Chris McCandless, Alaska, 1992

When I think of heroes embodying the American spirit, California native Christopher McCandless springs to mind. Chris is the hero of Jon Krakauer’s book (and Sean Penn’s film) Into the Wild, one of the most compelling volumes I’ve ever read, much because of its recounting of Chris’ spirit and that of several of his predecessors like Everett Ruess. I’m sure most people are familiar with Chris’ story at this point, so I don’t need to recount it in great detail, but by his admirers, Chris is sometimes likened to a modern-day Thoreau, a young man who set his philosophical principles to action as he wandered throughout the North American continent in his early 20s, looking for ever-greater challenges.

My own journey this past year and a half has taught me much about just how much stripping away one must to do in order to truly travel at all, both physically and mentally. Living in the modern world involves layers and layers of not only conditioning, but stuff. We have possessions and routines, habits and attachments, friendly encounters and deep personal connections, careers and business interests, family ties and people we’ve grown up with, paths we take to grab our coffee, media we can’t live without, gym routines, online websites, even shopping brands we take comfort in, no matter how “off the grid” or “nonmaterialistic” we proclaim ourselves. Yes, even those of us patting ourselves on the back for living away from the mainstream in NM do and have these things.

I had my own layers: a corporate job, a house in the country I loved, a  burgeoning 401K, walls of books, CDs and films, a history of living in the same town for 16 years, friends and acquaintances I bumped into nearly  every time I left home, a 14-year-old dog, respect in my profession... And I wasn't a rash, drop-it-all, go-live-in-a-commune type. Getting to the place I live now was a gradual unfolding over many months. I knew I needed to let go of what I did and live where I was not feeling angry, depressed, disappointed, and stifled by the oppressive status quo. Little did I know when I started how everything would change.

Saying goodbye to such familiarity is a bold step. It’s scary and must be done gradually. It’s not for the faint of heart. The pilgrims did it when they sailed away from their proper, comfy lives in England and landed on this wild continent without their soy chai lattes and their streaming podcasts. They had little but square-toed shoes, funny hats, and simple muskets like the kind Elmer Fudd used to pursue Bugs Bunny with. After taking a long look in the mirror, they realized they were set up for celebrating Halloween and not much else. But seriously, the pilgrims sacrificed a great deal, as Chris sacrificed a great deal, in pursuit of certain freedoms they simply could not find in the lives they’d grown up in.

I think many people come to realize the hollowness of life but then rein themselves in. They get depressed, angry, frustrated. They settle for tokens of supposed success, like Beamers and houses with too-high mortgages and SUVs and closets in suburbia loaded down with sporting equipment. Even if Chris had lived, I don’t see him ever having gone in that direction. Having rejected such trappings early on, he donated $24,000 of his savings to Oxfam. He then set off on an adventure both physical and psychological, gradually stripping away the layers he’d grown up with: an upper-middle-class family life, an Ivy League education, a large, comfortable house, friends and girlfriends--all the affluent trappings of a bright, young male in 1990s America.

And when those layers had come off and he found that he still had a few dollars in cash and a car, he tore up the bills and abandoned the Datsun in the desert. His challenge would then be to walk the country. And when he had succeeded in that, he gave himself an even greater mission: to live off the earth in the backwoods of Alaska. Had it not been for an honest mistake (and, OK, a distinct lack of preparation, which clearly wasn’t his style), he might well have succeeded.

I'd like to think that choosing NOT to live as an American is very American. I'd like to think that anything one can do to challenge the status quo and shake things up a bit is a gift to those around you. The huge reaction that Chris' life story has generated shows just how powerful choosing to live differently can be. 

People tend to regret that Chris died as young as he did and in the way he did (accidentally eating poisonous seeds and/or starvation). And I do too, from the selfish perspective of wishing he’d lived longer and given us more of his adventurous tales and philosophical musings. But in actuality, I believe that Chris would say that he had done exactly what he wanted to do in life, and he was OK dying in a place he loved. He had roamed farther physically, philosophically, and spiritually—had read more, examined the questions more, and connected with more strangers—than most people ever do, and at the age of 24, was simply done with walking the earth.

America is about dreaming big and exploring wilderness and taking bold chances. It's about finding what you want and where you fit. For Chris, it was more important to have engaged with the questions fully--even if it meant paying the price for eating a bad seed or berry--than it was to have sat at a dead-end job not being fed at all.

Chris's sister, Carine, has said, "I think that Chris was someone who didn't waste his life wondering what other people would think of him. He lived his life wondering what he would think about himself.”

She denies that he went out trying to find himself. "Chris knew exactly who he was," she says. "He was searching for a place in this world that he fit into, where he could be true to himself. He was searching for truth, purity, honesty. He was searching for the things that he didn't experience in his childhood."

I like to think of Chris celebrating the Fourth of July in his bus outside Denali National Park. And I like to think we all potentially have within us small vehicles set up in the Alaskan wilderness. And it feels good to be outside walking around in the glory of the natural world, then come home and huddle down with ourselves and our thoughts, a good book, a candle, a small meal. It's pretty amazing, this fact of residing. Having only a few possessions with you can make it easier to see where you're living.