Into The Wild

 The most dangerous wilderness, may be the one inside ourselves. In the book, Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, the author takes you on a journey through Christopher McCandless' mind, and the deep, harsh Alaskan wilderness. McCandless grew up in a wealthy suburb of DC, excelled in school, was a star athlete and looked like he was headed in his father's footsteps of a successful business man, when all of a sudden, he "disappeared". Hitch-hiking around the entire country, including Mexico, he finally got to his destination, Alaska. He was so fascinated by Alaska because it was the most untouched by society, it was the most elemental wilderness in its pure state, and that is what he loved in life. Most people go looking to find adventure, he went looking to find himself within adventure.

Christopher McCandless went into the Alaskan wilderness unprepared. When he went into the wilderness, he wanted nothing to do with society, even if that meant something as little as a map, which in the end, could have saved his life. A quote from the book that tells this is when Chris is picked up in Anchorage, Alaska by a friendly man that was heading his direction. The man asked him if he had a hunting license, and he said, "How I feed myself is none of the governments business, f**k their stupid rules!" As you can see, Chris wanted nothing at all to do with the government/society. But in a way that was the wrong choice when you venture into uncharted territory, because he had no idea where he was, and when it came time for him to leave the bus, the stream he had crossed in the winter, was now a huge rapid river, and if he had a map, he would have found a way to go around the river, because a half a mile up, there had been a metal pole placed for people to climb across. Another way that he was unprepared was how sometimes he was outgoing, and other times he was intensely private, and what he mostly liked to do was be private and have the company of himself, he thought. But after he returned to the bus, when the river grew, and he was dying, he realized that life was meant to be shared with someone else, and no matter how special you think it is to be with yourself, it will never be as special then to share it. In the bus, Chris started writing words and entrys. When he returned the bus, you can tell that all the notes and things he wrote, started sounding more and more like fear and regret. Some words he wrote were, "scared" and "lonely". He started realizing things like, no matter how much he despised what his dad lived for- money, his dad loved him and he still loved his dad. He realized that a bond is better than being with yourself.

Overall, McCandless was not prepared for facing the truth and facing the wild. For him, his greatest wilderness to "overcome", was who he was as a person, did he want to keep going in the path of the person he was; alone, and needed no company but himself and an idealistic person, or a man who thinks that "happiness is only real when shared", and is realistic to life and society. I believe that this is everyone's greatest challenge in their life, finding out who they really are as a person and what they believe in/ what makes them happy. I, and hopefully others can relate to this because when I am older, I don't want to be the same as anyone else, I wanna have at least two different qualities and a different lifestyle, I, too, don't like the idea of normality. But we all know that when it comes time, we have to figure out who we want to be and who we want to spend the rest of our lives with, and that is probably the most difficult and also harsh challenge to face.