Into de Wild

                                    There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;
                                    There is a rapture on the lonely shore;
                                    There is society, where none intrudes,
                                    By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
                                    I love not man the less, but Nature more...
                                                                                   - Lord Byron



Alexander

Alexander
Alexander Supertramp April 1992

WAYNE.
GREETINGS FROM FAIR BANKS !

ARRIVED HERE TWO DAYS AGO. IT WAS VERY DIFFICULT TO CATCH RIDES IN THE YUKON TERRITORY,BUT I FINNALY GOT HERE PICKED UP A NEW BOOK ON THE LOCAL FLORA AND FAUNA. I'M PREPARED AND HAVE STOCKED ALL NECESSARY COMFORETS TO LIVE OFF THE LAND  FOR A FEW MONTHS. MIGHT BE A VERY LONG TIME BEFORE I RETURN SOUTH.

JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, YOU'RE A GREAT MAN.

I  NOW WALK  INTO THE WILD

He finds a bus, hunts a creature for dinner. Writes his experience.

"Two years he walk the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. So now, after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climatic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. No longer to be poisoned by civilization, he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become LOST IN THE WILD"

ALEXANDER SUPERTRAMP, MAY 1992.

He gets graduated from Emory college. Accepts a car as a gift from his parents. He burns his Social Security Card.

Chapter 1: My Own Birth

“It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. 
Absolute freedom.
And the road has always led west”.

He burns de cash left with him.

                        I understood what he was doing. That he had spent four years fulfilling the absurd and tedious duty of graduating from college, and now he was emancipated from that world of abstraction, false security, parents and material excess, the things that cut Chris off from the truth of his existence.

He is a leather tramp – the ones that hoof ti, go on foot. He meets rubbertramps – who have vehicle.

“I don’t need money. Makes people catious”

“I’m in paraphrase Thoreau here. Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness, "give me truth”.

“I’m afraid of water. Always have been.  Something I’ve gotta get over sometime though, huh? So I will swim in it”

“The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and, occasionally, the chance to feel strong. Now, I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind, deaf stone alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head”

One morning rubber tramps wake up to see – THANK YOU JAIN AND RAINEY

Chapter 2: Adolescence

“I mean, you're really good. I mean, you're like 100,000   better than, like, any apple I've ever had. I'm  not Superman, I'm Supertramp. You're Superapple. You're so tasty. You're so organic, so natural. You're the apple of my eye”

Supertramp: I'm going to Alaska.

Wayne:  Alaska, Alaska? Or city Alaska? Because they do have markets in Alaska. The city of Alaska. Not in Alaska. In the city of Alaska, they have markets.

Supertramp: No, man. Alaska, Alaska. I'm gonna be all the way out there, all the way fucking out there. Just on my own. You know, no fucking watch, no map, no ax, no nothing. No nothing. Just be out there. Just be out there in it. You know, big mountains, rivers, sky, game. Just be out there in it, you know? In the wild.

His parents hired a private investigator and notified law enforcement nationwide, determined to track him down.

He then paddle down de river and shouts I”M SUPERTRAMP.

"If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed”

Chris had always been driven, had always been an adventurer. When he was four years old, he once wandered six blocks away from home at 3:00 in the morning. He was found in a neighbour’s kitchen up on a chair, digging through their candy drawer. Whatever drawer he was opening now must have something pretty sweet in it.

WAYNE

HATE TO THINK OF A WILD MAN LIKE YOU IN A CAGE.

TRAMPING IS TOO EASY WITH ALL THIS MONEY YOU PAID ME. MY DAYS WERE MORE EXCITING WHEN I WAS PENNILESS. I’VE DECIDED I’M GOING TO LIVE THIS LIFE FOR SOME TIME TO COME. THE FREEDOM AND SIMPLE BEAYTY IS JUST TOO GOOD TO PASS UP...

"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them. And work which one hopes may be of some use. Then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbour. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps. What more can the heart of a man desire?”

FINAL CHAPTER: Getting of Wisdom

“I think careers are a 20th century invention, and I don't want one”

He explains his trip to an old man.

- I went to South Dakota. I worked at a grain elevator for this guy named Wayne. He was a really good guy. So I took the Colorado River all the way down through the Grand Canyon and did rapids, which is by far one of the scariest things I've ever done. And I took the Colorado down into Mexico, Golfo, where I got stuck. Salvation Mountain. The Slabs. Leading to North – Alaska

“You got to get back out in the world! Get out of that lonely house, that little workshop of yours. You're going to live a long time, Ron! You should make a radical change in your lifestyle! I mean, the core of man's spirit comes from new experiences”

“You're wrong if you think that the joy of life comes principally from human relationships. God's placed it all around us. It's in everything. It's in anything we can experience. People just need to change the way they look at those things”

Finally he eats a wild potato Root when he was hungry and he doesn’t find animals. He then reads wild potato alaska carrot as edible and wild potato roots as inedible poisonous. He cries. He shouts of starvation.

Made it ! But in weakest condition of Life. HAVE LITERRALY BECOME TRAPPED  IN THE WILD.

What did his voice sound like now? What would he tell about now?

I realized that the words to my thoughts were of less and less meaning. Chris was writing his story, and it had to be Chris who would tell it.

He  writes,

“HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED”

 “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOOD BYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL !                                                               – CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON MCCANDLESS”

“What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?”

In memory

Christopher Johnson McCandless

February 12. 1968 – August 18, 1992