Welcome to the Overwhelming Desire to Run to the Wilderness

 Has anyone else felt like these last few weeks have felt more like years?

Well at least the Eagles made it to the Superbowl. I grew up rooting for the Eagles. Dad had a love/hate relationship with McNabb back in the 2000s until he was traded to DC. Sadly, he's not here to watch the game with me, but I do like to think that he's providing a little "divine intervention" for this game.

That being said, seeing the Eagles at the Superbowl is probably the only thing he'd be excited about. 

My dad was a civil servant and even worked on The Hill (that's Congress for people outside of the Washington DC area) for a long time before moving into Non-Governmental Organizational work. If he hated the administration between 2016-2020, he'd be absolutely livid over this one.

I'm personally very frustrated. My own work is taking things one day at a time, even though we aren't a government agent. My personal life isn't all sunshine and roses - mainly because my cat was diagnosed with kidney disease last fall. We had to make an emergency trip to the vet this morning. I miss my dad.

If I didn't know that I would not do well, I'd run off and become a mysteriously cranky old hermit in the wilderness.

But I've read Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. I know that the reality of living off the grid is far from the fictional romanizations that I've read in books and seen in movies.

You might recall that last year, I was on a Mount Everest kick. Specifically, I was hyper focused on the 1996 tragedy. I watched a ton of YouTube videos and read three books on the events that led to a group of climbers dying after reaching the top of the mountain. One of those books was Krakauer's Into Thin Air. It's his version of the disaster. He had been on one of the two expeditions that chose to climb. He'd been hired to write an article about the changing industry around tour groups climbing Everest. It was only a coincidence that disaster struck.

Prior to publishing Into Thin Air, Krakauer had famously written an article for "Outside" magazine and then the full length novel Into the Wild on one young man's ambition to leave civilization and live in the wilderness. 

On paper, I have a few similarities to Chris McCandless - the man who would become the focal point of Into the Wild. We both grew up in the Virginia suburbs right outside of Washington DC. Our dad's worked for the government. We both had/have a passion for the great outdoors. I honestly saw a bit of myself in McCandless. 

Except, I didn't leave after college to become a wanderer of the United States. I never loss touch with my parents or my sibling and I never spent much time off the East Coast.

But I wanted to. 

There was a time where I wasn't sure what I was going to do after college. Sure I was getting a good degree from a really good school, but I didn't have much in the way of grades and I was honestly a bit burnt out from academia.

Directionless, I applied to job about job after job until I managed to find one in a category I'd thought I'd like: market research. It would take almost another decade before I changed careers completely and started to find a passion. 

However, there was a part of me that just wanted to take off and see where I ended up. 

Unfortunately, I need a bit more stability than the wandering lifestyle allows. I like plans and routines. I budget and stick to it (when my life isn't out of balance). I research and crowd source (almost to my own determent) before making a decision. I don't like uncertainty.

McCandless knew what he wanted to do and he didn't mind not knowing what the future held. He enjoyed moving from one place to the next. He did do research (at least he bought books to use as references) and the chances he took were calculated. 

His downfall came from underestimating how river flows can change and bad information (though no one would know that until over a decade after he passed away). 

McCandless did well wandering up and down the West Coast. Some of Krakauer's research includes notes on his experiences in the Pacific Northwest that reminded me of my time spent on a road trip with my cousins, camping deep in Mt. Olympic National Forest. I could also easily picture his time in the Southwest after spending time in Arizona with my aunts - hiking Tucson, exploring Flagstaff, and seeing the Grand Canyon. 

His trip to Mexico in a canoe was my favorite part of the book. I've never tried to sneak into another country before (and I don't plan on doing so), but McCandless made it sound both dangerous and exciting. His tenacity in trying to canoe to the Pacific Ocean from the Colorado river basin was amazing.

I don't recommend anyone trying to recreate it in 2025.

It's no wonder McCandless though he could also conquer Alaska. He'd done well in the lower 48 and managed to travel a little around Mexico under the radar (again, I don't condone this action). He managed to hitchhike his way from the Dakotas to Alaska. It's unclear how he got into Canada without a passport or ID - he'd given himself a new name and there wasn't anyway for his parents to track him (they'd hired a private investigator). All of this in about two years.

Alaska should never be underestimated. The closest I have ever spent time somewhere like Alaska would be my trip to Iceland and I never left Reykjavík. I can't imagine trying to live out in the wilds of Iceland - they don't even have large animals that could kill you.

Around this point, Krakauer pauses his retelling of McCandless's adventures and recounts one of his own that nearly ended in disaster. In his early 20s, Krakauer attempted to climb one of the more famous mountains in Alaska solo. He wanted to try a more difficult route and planned to be away from civilization for a few weeks. Krakauer nearly died in his attempt (falling and bad weather), but he made it back to the small isolated town in the shadow of the mountain before he ran out of supplies. During much of his expedition, Krakauer could see the lights of the town, but they couldn't see him. Rescue would have been unthinkable. 

Similar circumstances surround McCandless's misadventure. He actually wasn't that far from civilization. The only reason not many people were around was because at that time of year, the melted glaciers cause the rivers to swell to the point where they are very difficult to cross. If he had opted to take a map - instead of explore at his leisure - he might have been able to find a safe crossing point. 

McCandless did actually try to leave his camp. He got a point in early summer where he felt he had accomplished his mission and wanted to return home - where ever he might have defined that. Except the river had swelled. There weren't any flight paths where he was, so no planes or helicopters overhead. He could have set a noticeable bushfire, but (as his family noted) he would have never wanted to light up the beautiful wilderness, even to save himself.

What likely happened to McCandless was that he started eating a plant (wild potatoes) that he thought was safe, but may have been moldy. The mold would have caused him to slowly become paralyzed and unable to digest any food properly. This is what led him to starve to death in an old bus that was used as a camp shelter.

McCandless died a few weeks before help would arrive. He was found in the bus he'd used as a shelter wrapped in his sleeping bag. The bus had been a shelter for hunters and overnight hikers. It remained in it's original location until 2020. Too many people were taking too many unnecessarily risks to get to it.

McCandless was a smart, kind, and unique person that seemed to be able to make friends where ever he went. He probably could have survived in Alaska and made it home with a little more preparation and humility when speaking with the locals. Who knows what he might have accomplished. 

Roughly two decades separates me and McCandless in age. While he was wandering around the lower 48, I was learning to walk and talk not too far from where he grew up. But his yearning to leave civilization and dive headfirst into the wild is a familiar one.

I feel bad for McCandless's family and a sense of loss of what might have become of his life. Krakauer includes other stories of people who left civilization to wander into the wilderness, but were never heard from again. It's likely that McCandless would have remained an unknown if his tragic death hadn't drawn so much media attention.

It's tempting to want to run away into the wild to get away from the overwhelming oppression that is our current state of affairs. It doesn't solve anything though. And it's still being romanticized. During the pandemic, cottage core (where people dressed up and pretended to live in a small cottage) and homesteading were popular escapes. There are YouTubers showing how they were able to make it living off the grid in tiny houses with vegetable patches and chickens. There are plenty of pictures on social media of women in cotton dresses happily tending to their flower patches and young men living out of their vans with a dog.

I think everyone has a small itch to escape the modernity of our modern society, especially when it feels so chaotic. But I have responsibilities and other interests to keep me occupied. As overwhelming as it all is, I know I'm needed where I currently am.

And lets be real, I would totally die trying to pet something that I shouldn't try to pet.

Until next week. 

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