Salvation Mountain

Just after the Salton Sea, northeast of Niland, CA, we arrive at Salvation Mountain, a "visionary environment" including a mountain of adobe and straw painted with murals, Bible verses, and Christian-oriented inspiration by local resident Leonard Knight (d. 2014). Fifty feet high and 150 feet wide, this outsider art installation was made with lots of love--and colorful paint. In the desolate desert environment, where temperatures sometimes reach 120 degrees in summer, it's an acid-trip vision a couple miles from Slab City. 

During his lifetime, Vermont-born Knight resided on the property for 26 years, with a gaggle of cats in the back of an ornately decorated 1939 fire truck. He lived without electricity, gas, running water, phone, heating, air conditioning, or any other "modern conveniences." He played himself in the movie Into the Wild, which featured a scene set here.

Books for Into the Wild Fans

Since Into the Wild is one of my favorite books of all time, I'm always on the lookout for related reading. Here's a list for Into the Wild fans, which includes several titles from Chris McCandless' personal library. Aside from Walden (of course!), my favorite among these is The Other, by David Guterson. But you can't go too far wrong with any of them.

Finding Everett Ruess: The Life and Unsolved Disappearance of a Legendary Wilderness Explorer, by David Roberts

With a foreword by Krakauer, this book traces the life of another rugged individualist, a writer and artist who mysteriously disappeared in the Utah desert in the 1930s.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed

A well-written account of an inexperienced hiker who undertakes the PCT to gain some perspective on her life. She's not Chris, but she does have an interesting story to tell. I've reviewed this at: http://utzling.blogspot.com/2012/05/cheryl-strayeds-walk-on-wild-side.html

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

An earlier book by the author of Eat, Pray, Love, this is the story of Eustace Conway, who moves out of suburbia and into the wilds of Appalachia as a teenager to live as a mountain man.

The Other, by David Guterson

From the author of Snow Falling on Cedars, this is a beautifully written fictional account of two best friends, one of whom is a quirky eccentric who leaves behind his wealthy family to live alone in a cabin in the back country of the Pacific Northwest.

More at:

http://utzling.blogspot.com/2011/07/je-est-un-autre-david-gutersons-other.html

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, by Bill Bryson

Amusing account of AT thru-hikers and history of the trail itself.

Walden or Life in the Woods (unabridged & annotated), by Henry David Thoreau

THE place to start reading, if you haven't already.

Wilderness and the American Mind, by Roderick Nash

Delving into Americans' attitudes about the idea of nature throughout history, this 1967 book influenced the environmental movement.

Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey

Three seasons as a park ranger in southern Utah. Abbey is feistier and more political than McCandless.

Coming into the Country, by John McPhee

Well-written, literary account of Alaska and Alaskans

Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout,  by Philip Connors

Poetically written book about a man who spent a decade as a fire lookout in NM and other "freaks on the peaks."

Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains, by Jon Krakauer

His first book. Articles and essays about mountaineers and rock-climbers, and what motivates them.

The Grizzly Maze: Timothy Treadwell's Fatal Obsession with Alaskan Bears, by Nick Jans

The controversial subject of the fascinating Werner Herzog documentary Grizzly Man, who lived beside grizzlies for 13 years...until he didn't...

The Man Who Quit Money, by Mark Sundeen

Excellent, thought-provoking bio of a man who's spent 12 years dwelling in a cave in Utah, reflecting deeply on life's big questions while living without coin.

More at:

http://utzling.blogspot.com/search/label/Mark%20Sundeen

Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak

The last book McCandless read. His highlighted passages appear in Into the Wild.

The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

McCandless was unquestionably influenced by Jack London. This classic is one of several London books he was known to have read.

Education of a Wandering Man, by Louis L'Amour

The famed Western writer's unfinished memoir of globetrotting during the 1930s. McCandless tore the final page from it, which quotes a Robinson Jeffers poem.

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey, by Sam Keith

Keith’s 1973 book about Richard Proenneke, who exited the rat race in 1968 to go live in the Alaska wilderness, in a cabin he made completely by hand, by himself, for $40. It's more descriptive than deep. I actually enjoyed the Alone in the Wilderness DVD version more.

On the Road / The Dharma Bums / The Subterraneans, by Jack Kerouac

McCandless was known to have read Kerouac. I'm going to take a not-so-wild guess that he polished off at least one of these in his voracious reading.

The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, by W.H. Davies

Another known influence on McCandless was this famed Welsh writer/poet, who tramped around the world for a significant portion of his life. This book covers his time hoboing in the UK and US in the 1890s.

Back to the Wild, by Christopher McCandless
Original photographs, postcards, and journal entries from his travels. I have not been able to get my hands on a copy of this (it's out of stock on Amazon), so can't vouch for it, but sounds great.

Other titles you'd like to add? Please leave comments. I'm always interested in eccentrics and iconoclasts who took to the wilds.

Looking for an Into the Wild tattoo? Check out some samples of skin art at http://utzling.blogspot.com/2011/03/into-wild-skin-art.html 

Daniel Suelo - The Man Who Quit Money

 A Review

“Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can’t have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man’s worth couldn’t be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorney or politicians, therefore we couldn’t cheat. 

We were in a really bad way before the white man came, and I don’t know how we managed to get along without the basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society.”

-- Lakota sage Lame Deer (from John Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions)

If you’re searching for a modern-day successor to Thoreau, Daniel Suelo could be your postmodern Transcendentalist. Known by author Mark Sundeen as “The Man Who Quit Money,” Suelo has spent the last 12 years living in a cave near Moab, Utah, foraging for food, working occasionally (but not for wages), reflecting deeply on life’s Big Questions, and somehow managing to keep himself off the hamster wheel of getting and spending. Suelo is the rare person who has actually been able to opt out of life’s pecuniary tangle, while still living an existence that appears full and unclouded by the desperation and despair that we tend to associate with homelessness.

He notes, “I’m employed by the universe. Since everywhere I go is the universe, I am always secure. Life has flourished for billions of years like this. I never knew such security before I gave up money. Wealth is what we are dependent upon for security. My wealth never leaves me. Do you think Bill Gates is more secure than I?”

50-year-old Suelo began life as Daniel Shellabarger, the fifth child of a pair of thoughtful evangelical Christians who was raised to take the Bible literally, and yet also, somehow, was permitted to question. A thread of the book traces his theological development, from a child forced to believe, to a deeply inquisitive college student, to someone who reads source texts from world religions, as well as Thoreau, Gandhi, and Tolstoy, and cobbles together a personal theology that reflects his own beliefs. In later years, Suelo even goes back and reviews texts that inspired his parents, such as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, and comes to understand Jesus’ more revolutionary aspects. He also conceives his own theological schema, such as the concept of “divine Chance,” which he develops as a penniless visitor to Alaska, who must test the phrase “God will provide.” He realizes that to experience true faith, he must accept that there’s nothing in the material world to fall back on.

Starting at age 26, Suelo spends several years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador. During that time, some of his religious convictions are tested, as when he visits the mansion of a fellow volunteer who has recruited Ecuadorian natives into helping him run his own cattle business, to the point at which they are “civilized” into being the richest Indians in the jungle. He notes, “There was no poverty in the jungle until they introduced money, and all the sudden there’s poverty. And all the diseases that come with it. And you look at people and they’re not happy. They have all these goods, and they’re unhappy.”

Suelo. Photo: Benjamin Lesage.

While battling his own demons (depression, sexuality), Suelo retains his sense of philosophical inquiry, as he spends more than a decade trying to make the switch to a life without money. Sundeen well-conveys how conscious and reflective Suelo is, as he takes great care to unravel the roots of so much suffering derived of our participation in a monetary system. Ironically Suelo emerges as deeply Christian, in the sense of living out what Christ actually taught: becoming spiritually enlightened through giving to the poor and living humbly. As Suelo asserts, “All this work, work, work and obligation we think is so righteous is really evil, destructive. The more I read the Sermon on the Mount, the more I see it is instructions for releasing ourselves from the Money System—the System of Debt & Obligation.”

Because he lives in a cave and thinks deeply, one might conclude that Suelo is a hermit. But this is actually not the case, as it wasn’t for Thoreau. Despite his comfort with alone time, Suelo is “a social butterfly” and enjoys the companionship of his many friends and family members. In fact, his vow to live without money often draws to him people who are curious about his life and principles. He readily acknowledges that, in a completely interconnected universe, no one is entirely self-sufficient—and his renunciation of money is not about attempting to break those ties.

I edited Sundeen’s work when I was an editor at Outside Magazine years ago. However, I don’t know him personally and have no investment in the book’s success, so can rave about it at will. Obviously, the writing quality is high, but what makes this volume so compelling is the number of questions it raises about the issues we all grapple with: money and greed, family, relationship, compensations of every stripe, trading quality of life for work, the definition of home, etc. Sundeen hews a direct path into Suelo’s mind, and it’s fascinating to watch him take clear-eyed looks at his own life and motivations. At one point, Suelo discusses why he’s not in a relationship, and Sundeen goes straight for it, asking, “How much of your life is just a reaction to not falling in love. Do you think you were driven into solitude by a broken heart?” Suelo’s measured response reveals just how deeply he has considered these questions—and his reflection compels the reader’s own soul-searching as well.

McCandless

Of course many parallels between the journeys of Suelo and Chris McCandless (subject of Into the Wild) exist. McCandless would have definitely agreed with Suelo that “the way of truth is the way of nonpossession,” as he donated his entire $25K savings to Oxfam before embarking on his cross-country adventure. Both young men realized that their experiences could be diminished by having money to fall back on if the going got tough. And both realized that money often prevents us from enjoying our lives in the deepest possible ways.

Unsurprisingly, there is no tradition of living without cash in the US. Most likely because money was so fetishized by our ancestors. Native American writer Vine Deloria (God is Red) notes, “In the centuries after the Protestant Reformation, poverty was considered indicative of sloth and other sins, and it was seen as proof of the individual’s degeneracy…As the white populace of Christian America has become more affluent, the concept of stewardship has been developed to explain the embarrassingly rapid growth of wealth of a substantial number of peoples. The theory goes that we are not really greedy, God has simply blessed us by giving us wealth over which we are to exercise good stewardship.”

This book's release has been particularly well timed, for an era in which we're realizing what "good stewardship" for a few has meant to the many, some of whom find themselves in Suelo's situation involuntarily and are forced to confront the very same questions he has addressed so eloquently. Suelo's philosophical journey should inspire all of us to wonder about the financial system we were born into and the alternatives that might just offer a happier existence to far more than the 1 percent.

###

Suelo produces a blog, “Moneyless World – Free World – Priceless World,” at http://zerocurrency.blogspot.com/ and a website with a lot of great answers to FAQs, “Living Without Money,” http://sites.google.com/site/livingwithoutmoney/. (Nope, no wi-fi in the cave; online life happens at the library.)

More about Chris McCandless: http://www.christophermccandless.info/.

Check it out! This review can also be read at the NY Journal of Books:
http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/review/man-who-quit-money

“Je est un autre”: David Guterson's The Other

David Guterson's novel The Other could well be this generation’s Narcissus and Goldmund, a beautifully written book that feels like a conversation between a man’s ego and his more rigid superego. It’s a conversation that perhaps most of us middle-agers have had, between imagining how things might have been had we followed our youthful ideals to their fulfillment, and reviewing the bargains with life we’ve made. Guterson has cited The Other as his most autobiographical novel, and his two characters do indeed reflect many of the details of his Pacific Northwest upbringing.

The first is John William Barry, a wealthy scion who’s drawn to esoteric philosophy and the natural world. To say that he is principled is to say that the Dalai Lama is a bit of a Buddhist. Fierce, stubborn, and brilliant, he harbors such strong resistance to American society (“hamburger world”) that he can relate to just about no one. Except his friend, Neil Countryman, who, while no ugly American, has opted to lead a more traditional life: wife, 2 kids, teaching job. These two first connect as teens at a track meet, becoming fast friends in their desire to explore the outdoors, play chess, discuss philosophy, and smoke weed. Neil, who comes from a blue-collar, public-school background, is somewhat awed by John William’s wealthy family and golden boy aura, which seems to predestine him for greatness.

But while Neil attends college, John William quickly drops out to hunker down in a remote patch of woods near Olympic National Park. Of traditional education, he remarks, “The stuff they teach you at school is just so they can own you.” Despite his intellectual prowess, he’s more keen to learn primitive survival skills and to practice his spiritual views. After spending months carving a cave from a large hunk of rock in the woods, he moves in. Neil frequently makes the arduous trip, visiting and providing food and comforts from the outer world.

While Neil often tells us that his life’s course sits more toward center, his superego remains a demanding taskmaster, goading him about the life he could have led in the woods. His deep feelings for his friend are mixed to no small degree with awe and envy. And of course, Into the Wild’s popularity has shown us that there’s something quite compelling about a person who can live out their principles to the nth degree in this culture that so often insists on compromise.

But while John William and Chris McCandless are soul brothers in their resistance of the mainstream, Guterson is clear that his character is not simply a fictionalization of Chris. He notes, “…McCandless is very much in what I would call the mainstream romantic tradition, which includes wanderlust—he wants to move around the world and meet people. [But] John William is a morbid Gnostic. He has no romantic impulse. He’s too much of a dark realist to embrace the world the way that Chris McCandless did.”

It’s striking that the two critics who wagged their fingers at Guterson for copying Chris’ character hailed from NY and LA—where obviously all young men who go live in the woods are alike, so foreign a concept is that to their urban sensibilities. Here in the Pacific Northwest, I encounter dozens of such young men every summer—and while they’re undoubtedly familiar with Krakauer’s book, they’re certainly not all trying to be Chris McCandless.

Guterson begins The Other with a fascinating quote by Rimbaud, “Je est un autre,” which translates as, “I is another.” Expounded on by philosophers including Hegel, Sartre, Lacan and Derrida, this concept posits that the self requires an other to define itself. (This notion will be clear to anyone who has shopped at any New Mexico Walmart, after which a bout of self-delineation spontaneously emerges.)

A writer’s writer, Guterson understands that much of the story is in the details—and the details he chooses to include are pure genius. Of John William, Neil says, “With his head coarsely sheared, his foot-long beard, his buckskin shirt, and his rudimentary moccasins, he was so flagrantly absurd, so filthy, so post-apocalyptic, and at the same time so evocative of the early-nineteenth-century American West as portrayed in a bad museum diorama, that anyone with the poor luck to come across him could not be blamed for assuming he’d gone comically mad, or maybe dangerously mad, or, if seeing him distantly, through trees, say in mist—say while crouching fearfully behind a log—that he had to be a figment or a flashback.”

Anyone who’s had a dream has spent time chasing it to its denouement, wondering what it would turn into if lived purely and without compromise. Guterson offers us one version, though it’s ultimately a pessimistic one. As he aptly suggests, whenever principle becomes overly rigid, we set ourselves up for a fall. He later spends many postgame pages trying to deconstruct from multiple perspectives how Neil's friend became who he was, introducing a spate of developmental psychology and attachment theory in the process. This feels a bit tacked on to me, and the fact that the narrator suddenly becomes a very wealthy man also seems somewhat unnecessary. It’s the kind of detail that makes for compelling jacket copy, but doesn’t seem to really matter within the context of the book.

Guterson interjects a fair bit of Gnostic philosophy into the story of “the Hermit of the Hoh.” But this may be lost on the average reader, and required me to do a little admittedly superficial Internet research. Gnosticism is a path of transcendence through interior means. It encourages nonattachment and nonconformity to the world, a “being in the world, but not of the world.” But it acknowledges that not all humans are ready for Gnosis and liberation. Some are earthbound, materialistic beings (hyletics), who recognize only physical reality. Others, such as Guterson’s hermit, live largely in their psyche (psychics). Interestingly enough, Gnostics believe that the world is flawed because it was created by a flawed creator. This correlates directly with John William’s personal history, growing up with an insane mother, whose deep flaws seriously impact his development.

Whether to live out one's ideals as a hermit or to learn how to compromise in order to live within the world we inhabit is a longstanding debate. In Asian cultures, long periods of hermitry are accepted for those who feel drawn to an introspective path. It’s unfortunate that in American culture following such a path is discouraged in us from an early age, and there is no real mechanism in place to accommodate such a desire, other than completely dropping out. With few available options, we can end up as Neil and John William, at either end of a spectrum that seems to lack a middle ground of integration.

Books and More Books

After being on the road for 7 weeks, I’m now settled down in Ashland, Oregon, where I’m renting a fabulous house with huge vegetable gardens and plenty of fruit trees. It’s a bit like the Garden of Eden, without the fig leaf or that nasty little rib. Not to say that ribs don’t come in handy—I’m quite attached to all of mine.

My current fascinations are Facebook, a highly addictive site that my friend Rachel was nice enough to turn me on to, and bookselling, which is at a peak right now with the academic ingress. I love putting books in mailers and thinking of all the great classes people are taking. Education is such a miracle. Without it, we end up with phenomena such as…well, George W. Bush, for starters…

My biblophilia was piqued recently on the plane rides to and from NM (details about the United Airlines debacle when I’m in a more savage mood). There I polished off most of an amazing book, entitled Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. You can pick it up today on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Outwitting-History-Amazing-Adventures-Rescued/dp/1565125134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220046149&sr=1-1) for 88 cents, which is the screamingest of deals, as this book is an awesome tale about a young guy’s attempt at literally saving a huge part of a culture. While I was in NM, I kept reading pages of it to Margot, and we both found ourselves tearing up at the passages about elderly Jews handing down their entire lives to the younger generation via these books. My friend Tori taught me most of the Yiddish I know (and it’s stuck!), but even if you’re more than ein bisl goyische, it’s still fascinating.

The other fun site I've happened upon in my quest to find book sales was Bookcrossing.com. This is a community (of 703,000 members!) who leave books in random places so that other people may find them. Each book is tagged with a tracking sticker, so that the leaver can find out in whose hands the book ends up. This reminds me a bit of balloon launches our grade school used to have, when we’d tie tags to each balloon requesting info about how far the balloon had traveled. Bookcrossing is an international effort, so it’s exciting to think that someone from Medford, Oregon, could pick up your book and take it on a plane with them to, say, Thailand, and you could get a hit back from Bangkok. So, my new meditation is…what books most need to be released into the world for the betterment of society? And of course, an answer that springs to mind is one of my very favorites, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer. But where to leave it? I’m thinking the front porch of the Ashland Hostel, where so many Pacific Crest Trail hikers congregate. I’m sure it could find a happy home in a backpack, all covered in dirt, gorp, and bug spray, as it should be. I’ll keep you posted on where it ends up…

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.