If By Camping You Mean a Cabin with a Hot Tub, Then Yes, I Like Camping

Some of you may have heard of a little book called “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, or as I like to think of it, “The Smelly Jerk’s Guide to Dying.”

Insensitive? Probably. I just know, somewhere out there, amongst my teeming hordes of faithful Steinho fans, there is likely to be one of you who hasn’t taken the message of my blog to heart, that message being that I know what is best for you, at least in terms of your opinion concerning all things in word form. Right now, that singular dissenter is reading this blog with a steadily clenching jaw, a furrowed brow, a small twitching of anxiety in the very pit of their stomach because deep down, they think I’m wrong and maybe even a little mean. Christopher McCandless was not a fool, they’re thinking. He was not flaunting his ignorance, blatantly disregarding the wishes of his family and friends that he keep himself safe and well. He was communing with nature! He was young and spirited, lovable, clever and various other vague, yet positive, adjectives!

No, dear fans. He was not. He was an idiot, who caused a lot of people who loved him a lot of pain. The Steinho cannot abide such insanely reckless behavior. I can only support moderately reckless behavior. Like sky diving, and eating questionable meat. I mean, is it really necessary to go try to survive in Alaska for a couple months? It’s gotta be really cold up there. I can barely stand in the freezer aisle at Ralphs without a long sleeve shirt.

I just don’t get it, but maybe it‘s a guy thing. Guys like testing their survival skills to prove that not only is their penis bigger, but it can also withstand colder temperatures and go longer without nourishment. Or something like that.

I don’t even really like sleeping in a tent, if we’re going to be completely honest with each other. What is the appeal to this lifestyle? What sort of spiritual awakening am I promised if I simply refuse to sleep in a bed and use soap? All this kid did was make himself homeless and suddenly he’s Gandhi and Buddha rolled into one?

Krakauer argues that this is the sort of thing most young men go through in some form or another. Throughout history, there have been writers, explorers, philosophers who pondered and ventured into nature, all for the sake of some kind of higher understanding of life and beauty. He argues that what happened to McCandless could have happened to any number of young men, could have even happened to himself.

Well, then, you’re ALL idiots! As far as I know, women don’t do things like this. We maybe be crazy, hysterical balls of emotion, but we do not die alone in the icy tundra, devoured by bears.

Now, I really do applaud Krakauer’s abilities as a writer. This is the second of his books I’ve read. The first, “Into Thin Air” literally left me anxious as I was reading it. Through his simple and honest descriptions, he captured all the intensity, fear and panic one could experience on a mountain climb gone dreadfully wrong. I think it was hard to capture that same tension in this book, because all Christopher “Supertramp” McCandless did was wander around being a hobo and thinking about nature. But he did successfully weave the details of his story in such a way that even though you knew from the start that McCandless was dead, you still wondered exactly what steps led from happy hippie to decomposing carcass.

Krakauer almost managed to even make McCandless somewhat sympathetic towards the end of the book, pointing out that perhaps the young man had learned his lesson in terms of avoiding relationships. If we take meaning form the specific literary passages he highlighted in the days before his death, he was beginning to shift his focus from finding meaning in nature to the importance of human contact.

It’s a moot point at this stage. McCandless’ was found dead almost ten years ago. I suppose the thing that fascinated me most about the book was how so many people adored him, everywhere he went, when in my mind he came off as so pretentious, elitist, clueless and at times even delusional. And no matter how many of these people begged him to be more careful, to stay out of danger, McCandless willingly balked at every single one of them. I really do wonder if in those final moments of his starvation, McCandless thought back to any one of those offers for extra help or protection with regret. Or maybe he died as he had lived for the past two years, alone, but at peace, in nature.