Pure Being

Deeply moved by the story of Christopher Johnson McCandless, “Alexander Supertramp,” as related by John Krakauer. Enjoyed an episode of “Iconoclasts,” a documentary-style, intellectual pairing of the author Krakauer and Sean Penn, Into the Wild’s director, shot on location in Alaska. Also watched a Charlie Rose interview with Penn and Eddie Vedder who did the music for the film. Uber-publicity! All four men were touched by the unique story of this young man McCandless who both lost and found himself in the wilderness.

On the surface it’s easy to understand why a man would take to the road. It’s easy to see why a young man would want to test himself extremely, supremely. But beyond that, what would drive a man to discontinue any and all communication with his family? Or assume alternate identities? Going deeper, it’s a complex story, and it appears there are many complicated reasons. The mystery itself becomes part of the man, part of the enigma, even though, for the most part, McCandless documented most of his trip.

There is a photograph of Chris sitting by the bus in Alaska when he was healthy. He is happy and content. His smile reveals a devilish form of accomplishment. There is another a few months later, and this time he’s in trouble. He weighs 67 pounds, but again wears a devilish grin. Here is the superhuman attempt to achieve a pure form of freedom with the bare minimum; an exercise of magnificent proportions; an isolated and immediate existence; a demystification of the myth that we are better here in our safe society; that somewhere within ourselves exists the power to live a better, cleaner life, undestructive to ourselves and surroundings, unantagonistic to others. Dreams lived out conscientiously whose realities became something more in the end.

We create the world we inhabit. There is no system in place that controls our passions, decisions, lifestyles. Individually we control virtually nothing. Yet there resides in that miniscule amount we can control the potential for every possibility. Only the will to exercise this very real power remains. Sometimes that will is not enough. It was at least for McCandless.

What he envisioned, as modest as it was, came to life. Though a somewhat bizarre storyteller (he usually refers to himself in the third person – the only other chronicler I’ve come across to do this was Julius Caesar), he was a story-liver. Krakauer explores the many multi-faceted themes of the young man’s life and validates them, out of exasperation contemptuously with what critics have contemptuously deemed foolish, senseless, and incomprehensible. He refers to Chris as “boy” frequently and out of respect. The author sees him as a kindred spirit, a lost son, a brother, the younger mentor. More (if not most) importantly, Krakauer sees himself in Chris, the young man the author grew out of materialized in the Alaskan wilderness with one question on the lip of every self-photographed smile: “This is me. Who are you?”

The question that perseveres.

I vaguely remember when the story broke in 1992. I was 15. I remember thinking that some old hippy starved to death in an abandoned bus. It was portrayed that way. I laughed about it – it meant nothing to me. The story was splashed across the screen with incredulity. At the time, I think, authorities did not know the identity of McCandless, and they broke the story to locate the family. Even then the general consensus was, “What was he thinking,” “How dumb can you be,” “There was a town nearby,” “He didn’t know what he was doing.” Fifteen years later I watched Sean Penn explain himself to Charlie Rose and the author. This time, at this point in my life, this juncture of will and wish, dreams and possibilities, Chris McCandless’s story illuminated the quintessential vision for me of being and becoming.

What would lead a man to think he could live off the wilds of Alaska with hardly any resource? The answer is what offends most people. Krakauer explains in “Iconoclasts” that the whole world is mapped out and that the only way to get lost in it is to throw away the maps. To want to get lost may seem selfish, idealistic, beyond sensibility. For me it is larger and more significant; it is a Homeric spear crashing through the shields of life. Where most stories weave some dilemma between man and man, man and nature, or man and god, McCandless’s story weaves all three at once. Of being, becoming and overcoming. He almost made it, too. Almost. He accomplished what he wanted. Nothing is left but the tragedy.

The question perseveres.

What happened to that young man, that former self of a former self? Did he live up to expectations? Did he set any worth setting? Does the cost of experience outweigh the dream itself? Who are you? What have we become?