Today, I began reading the book “Into the wild” by Jon Krakauer.  I had previously seen the movie several years ago when it was released into theaters and I enjoyed it.  I found it to be a tragic story about a young kid who in his search for meaning got lost along the way. As you may know the story ends with young Alex being found by a group of Alaskan hunters, he is dead, in his sleeping bag, in an abandoned bus, in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, he dies of starvation. But, as often is the case, 6 chapters into the book and 130 minutes into my long commute back and forth from work I am finding new meaning in this story of Alex’s life.  Instead of a young kid lost in search for the essence of life, I am inspired by Alex, who in his youth seems to have found and rejoiced in a truth that most of us will spend a lifetime attempting to stomach. I have included an excerpt from the book that I find profound, it is a letter written by Alex to “Ron” an 80 year old man he befriends along the way. I am touched by it’s hard truth, and find the challenge he proposes to be  spot on. Why do so many of life’s unconventional thinkers die so tragically I wonder, and where in this truth of his words do we find the medium ground? I had to sit for a moment in my car and retrace these words,

“We just have to have the courage to turn against our

habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.”

Here is the letter written by Alex in the Spring of 1993 before he heads off to the backcountry of Alaska:

Alex here. I have been working up here in Carthage South Dakota for nearly
two weeks now. I arrived up here three days after we parted in Grand Junction,
Colorado. I hope that you made it back to Salton City without too many
problems. I enjoy working here and things are going well. The weather is not
very bad and many days are surprisingly mild. Some of the farmers are even
already going out into their fields. It must be getting rather hot down there in
Southern California by now. I wonder if you ever got a chance to get out and see
how many people showed up for the March 20 Rainbow gathering there at the
hot springs. It sounds like it might have been a lot of fun, but I don’t think you
really understand these kind of people very well.
I will not be here in South Dakota very much longer. My friend, Wayne, wants
me to stay working at the grain elevator through May and then go combining
with him the entire summer, but I have my soul set entirely on my Alaskan
Odyssey and hope to be on my way no later than April 15. That means I will be
leaving here before very long, so I need you to send any more mail I may have
received to the return address listed below.
Ron, I really enjoy all the help you have given me and the times that we
spent together. I hope that you will not be too depressed by our parting. It may
be a very long time before we see each other again. But providing that I get
through this Alaskan Deal in one piece you will be hearing from me again in the
future.

Here is my favorite part:

I’d like to repeat the advice I gave you before, in that I think you really
should make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things
which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to
attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not
take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a
life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give
one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous
spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living
spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters
with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an
endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you
want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for
monotonous security and adopt a helter-smelter style of life that will at first
appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you
will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out
of Salton City and hit the Road. I guarantee you will be very glad you did. But I
fear that you will ignore my advice. You think that I am stubborn, but you are
even more stubborn than me. You had a wonderful chance on your drive back to
see one of the greatest sights on earth, the Grand Canyon, something every
American should see at least once in his life. But for some reason
incomprehensible to me you wanted nothing but to bolt for home as quickly as
possible, right back to the same situation which you see day after day after day.
I fear you will follow this same inclination in the future and thus fail to discover
all the wonderful things that God has placed around us to discover. Don’t settle
down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new
horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if
you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an
entirely new realm of experience.
You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human
relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything
we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our
habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.
My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances. Ron, I really hope that as soon as you can you will get out of Salton City, put
a little camper on the back of your pickup, and start seeing some of the great
work that God has done here in the American West. You will see things and
meet people and there is much to learn from them. And you must do it economy
style, no motels, do your own cooking, as a general rule spend as little as
possible and you will enjoy it much more immensely. I hope that the next time I
see you, you will be a new man with a vast array of new adventures and
experiences behind you. Don’t hesitate or allow yourself to make excuses. Just
get out and do it. Just get out and do it. You will be very, very glad that you
did.TAKE CARE RON, ALEX