POINT TO PONDER:
Freedom isn't free.
STORYLINE - by Rajiv Shah:
In the spirit of Independence Day (July 4th) here in the United States, we have chosen to reflect on the topic of freedom. Specifically, if some birds are meant to be caged or let out to spread their wings on mighty winds. It seems we would all like to be free birds, gracefully riding on the wind to far off destinations, determined to chase the summer no matter how far we must go. For a lot of us, our summer is a picture enshrined as our laptop screen saver. Perhaps that is enough.
Which brings me to the story of Christopher McCandless – a bright, Emory educated, twenty-two year old. Christopher had graduated with a degree in history and anthropology. Christopher had done very well and was well supported by his upper-middle class family and friends. Given $47,000 as a present by a family friend for his post graduate law degree, Christopher was motivated by something else. The life his family had given him, and what he believed to be an “empty materialism” left him wanting something more, often to the bafflement of his parents and friends.
He had read Thoreau and Jack London while in college and dreamed of the open road, the wilderness, and more specifically, the Alaskan frontier. In May of 1990, Christopher donated $24,000 of that $47,000 gift to a hunger organization and hit the road. The goal was to live in solitude, in peace amongst the wilderness in which he could reflect and contemplate. He left without ever telling his family or friends where he was going, just hit the road and never looked back.
Along the way he journeyed across Arizona, California, and South Dakota. He kayaked successfully down the Colorado river and worked in a grain elevator. He relied on himself for his food – foraging, hunting, and sometimes accepting a meal from a kind stranger. He kept a journey of his travels often noting the beauty he encountered in the wild, subsisting on minimal supplies and the peace he found in solitude. It was lonely but peaceful and McCandless hitchhiked across Canada, finally arriving at the one place he always dreamed of, Alaska. It was in Fairbanks on April 28th, 1992 that he was last seen and Christopher disappeared deep into the remote wilderness of the unforgiving Alaskan terrain.
His body was found by a local hunter wrapped in a sleeping bag in an abandoned bus on September 6, 1992. He weighed 67 pounds. He had finally found the freedom and solitude he had been seeking. For his last known journal entry before his death, McCandless tore out a page from Louis L'Amour's memoir, “Education of a Wandering Man,” containing a poem by Robinson Jeffers titled, “Wise Men in their Bad Hours.” The poem read:
Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made
Something more equal to centuries
Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.
The mountains are dead stone, the people
Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness,
The mountains are not softened or troubled
And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.
On the other side of the page Christopher McCandless wrote: "I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!"
REFLECTION:
I wrote this article not so we could judge Christopher McCandless (though I'm positive it's almost impossible not to considering his death) but not to celebrate him either. For Christopher McCandless pursued his freedom and paid the price for it – with the very ideals that built this country, an ideal for a better way of life, his way of life, even though the road there was paved with hardship and ultimately, his demise.
If we are to live the life we want, to live in our own freedom, we must pay the price. The price is often heavy, for ourselves as well as the ones we love. Christopher McCandless was portrayed as a hero in the book and respective film about his life, “Into the Wild,” but he is also seen as a selfish and foolish one as well. It all depends on your outlook, your own values. So is it worth it? That depends on how you look at this story – as an account of a man living life on his own terms or as a man who met a haunting, tragic death.