REVIEW: Into the Wild

Into the Wild
Author: Jon Krakauer

I've always been fascinated with mountains. Not sure why...maybe it's the beauty. Maybe it's that I grew up in Kansas and rarely got to see peaks. Or maybe it's because mountains are wild, free and natural places....places that are still uncontrolled and dangerous. Pretty....and possibly deadly. Whatever the reason, I devour books, documentaries and films about famous mountains -- K2, Mount Everest, etc -- and famous (and infamous) expeditions. Dyetlov pass. Deaths on Everest. Calamities on K2. Alaskan wilderness tales. I find it fascinating that some are brave enough to challenge the toughest, wildest places on earth. Sometimes they are triumphant and return home fulfilled until the next adventure....and sometimes they fail and never return home at all.

Chris McCandless was such a brave soul. He tramped around the western United States for a couple years before venturing up to Alaska. He wanted to live off the land, wanted to be free, wanted to find his spiritual peace. But, he was ill prepared, made mistakes, and the Alaskan wilderness is unforgiving. Chris McCandless died in an old abandoned bus near an old mining road called The Stampede Trail. Into the Wild is about his life and his death.

Having read Jon Krakauer's book about an ill-fated trip up Mount Everest that ended in the deaths of several climbers, I knew he would present an unbiased story about McCandless. And, I was not disappointed. Krakauer doesn't just talk about McCandless starving to death alone in the Alaskan bush. He shares information from the young man's journals, his life, his thoughts on humanity......

I  listened to the audio book version of this story. Narrated by Phillip Franklin, the audio is just over seven hours long. I listened slowly and paused often to let things sink in. I tried to understand McCandless and his motives. In the end, I believe he had a good heart....a pure heart...and wanted more from life than making money and accumulating "stuff.'' He wanted to live, love, exist on a higher plane than that....he wanted to prove he could be strong, could take care of himself, and that he could live without modern conveniences or money. He just came too early, stayed too long, made mistakes.....

Great book. It's definitely an emotional story. As a mother it was hard for me to listen to some of the details. If my son starved to death in an abandoned bus in the wilderness.....I'm not sure my sanity would remain intact. But it's also a tale of strength of conviction....a man who was willing to risk his life to live the way he wanted to live. But I think in the end, his undoing was reading too much into the writings of men who talked the talk but didn't entirely walk the walk ... Henry David Thoreau and Jack London specifically. McCandless truly believed he could walk into the wilderness and survive...that he had the strength and human spirit necessary to subsist on his own without anybody else. That is noble.....but very difficult to sustain for long periods of time without adequate supplies and more knowledge than Candless possessed.

I'm so glad I read this book! It's a bittersweet story, but McCandless lived and died by his own rules. And, despite his life being cut short, I feel he was successful. He became the type of man he wanted to be....and in the end, that's all anyone can really hope for.

Jon Krakauer has written two other books about mountain climbing: Into Thin Air and Eiger Dreams. I loved Into Thin Air. And Eiger Dreams is on my TBR list.