From My Own Kind of Wilderness

The past two weeks have been tough, health-wise. Lori and I are still coming out of a bout with a nasty respiratory virus. Viruses are nasty things. My friend told me at breakfast this morning that his 4-year-old son has a virus that causes a painful fluid on the hip. Weird. So these viruses, they're really not "living" things, right? I mean, they're genetic material. They determine certain things within the organisms that host them (cells), but they don't have a life of their own. What does that remind you of?

Anyway, I was going to tell you about the two latest books I've read. While coping with illness has been maddening (and I haven't let that escape without complaint to friends and family) it has afforded me the time (inclination?) to undertake some reading; Into the Wild, the narrative by Jon Krakauer, and Call of the Wild, the so-called classic by Jack London. The latter was by recommendation of the protagonist in the former.

Into the Wild tells the story of a fresh ivy league college grad who goes on a two-plus year nomadic adventure through the western US, culminating in a fatal bout with nature in the Alaskan wilderness. According to the journalist author who researched his fate, Christopher McCandless (a.k.a., Alex Supertramp), had recommended "Call of the Wild" to a number of those he encountered along the epic journey that ultimately took his life.

I read Into the Wild with a longing to be Christopher McCandless, or at least to be in his shoes. I experienced vicariously the thrill of being carefree, sans obligations of society. His was a break-through spirit manifested in the final years of his life, upon graduation, un-hypocritically rejecting the undeniably shallow ideals of modern society. That's a perspective, frankly, that I can relate to. Not that I would claim the purity with which Chris lived those years, in any regard. I suffer, however, from a growing insanity resulting from my observation (and interpretation) of the greed within and all around me. To the extent I also possess such greed is, perhaps, up for debate. Again, I'm not pure. So reading about Chris, ultimately, let me be Chris for just a while. It felt good. Is Chris' death supposed to be a warning that such pursuits are likely to end similarly tragically?

Call of the Wild took a different approach to telling the story of the viciousness of nature's wrath. Of course, while one might detect irony in McCandless' circumstances brought on by nature, that particular story was not all that important in Into the Wild; unless the reader fails to connect with the story on a deeper, personal level, which I suppose is entirely possible.

I continued my literary escape in the Yukon, the setting of the bulk of Jack London's Call of the Wild. London tells the story of a domestic dog's transformation from family pet to a full-fledged animal of the wild. The cool part is getting inside the head of this animal that experiences increasingly primitive desires over the course of months, climaxing in the need to kill. C'mon, now, the story wouldn't be as thrilling as it is unless there were a viciousness lurking deep within us all, would it? It's not a story for women, perhaps, but I can't imagine a guy not somehow identifying with the wildness of it all.

Sometimes I am stuck between a longing for freedom, a desire to go into the wild, and the belief that I am forbidden from it. At other times I embrace my domestic circumstance and find myself doing the very things that help solidify it. The trips in between the two ends of the spectrum are making me dizzy. I'd like to find a comfortable place to pull over and spend some time without that feeling that I need to be somewhere else. Somewhere where I can just be. I pray for peace and patience, anticipating my arrival.