Into the Wild

Into the Wild The wilderness holds a ferocity and beauty that refuses to go unnoticed. Man who is bored with his fellow peers and their long sought after work will often look to nature for help. The peace and enlightenment that only the wild can invoke inside a person is done through man’s desire to survive the savage conditions nature throws at them. From Christopher McCandless from “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, to the Wilderness Women of Wyoming, to Gene Rossellini, to everyday people, the wild has a knack for helping individuals find themselves. The wilderness has invested itself into a part of everyone’s hearts and allows for an idyllic setting for healing and a renewed sense of self away from the rest of man. In “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer, the beauty of nature is reiterated multiple times. When recounting his personal experience in climbing the Devils Thumb, Krakauer described a picture he had seen of the mountain as having, “held an almost pornographic fascination for me(135).” Christopher McCandless was one of the many who was so drawn to the wild that whenever the chance arose he whisked himself away from his family and embraced the wilderness. The year upon his graduation of high school, McCandless went on an extended camping trip by himself, and did not return until just a day or two before school started for the next year. This however was just one of Chris’s trips. Since he was a young boy he had always been drawn to nature. His family worked nearly nonstop, but when the chance arose the family would take to the road and camp out of the back of the truck. Christopher’s father Walt recounted, “Chris loved those trips, the longer the better (108).” These lengthy trips must have given McCandless a taste of the glamour nature held, because he carried on with the adventures all through high school and college. While a necessity for healing was unclear for the earlier years of his life, when he was older, he saw flaws in people and in himself that he did not know how to forgive. Namely it was his father’s flaw that Chris couldn’t deal with. Walt did not cleanly split from his first wife and had a secret relationship with her while he was married to his new wife. However, Chris was born two years before this came to light, and upon the discovery of this he felt like his “entire childhood was a fiction (123).” It may have been this bit of information that caused Chris to seek out the healing powers of nature in the Alaskan bush. The healing power of nature quickly worked it’s magic and within a couple months of heading into the brush McCandless was ready to leave the bush. After his close connection with nature, Krakauer believed that, “Maybe he was prepared to forgive their imperfections [his parents]; maybe he was even prepared to forgive some of his own.” This is not the only time someone has isolated themselves in the wild for healing. The Wilderness Women of Wyoming embarked on a journey to find themselves again and get their feet back on solid ground. As victims of sexual assault and domestic violence the women feel afraid and condemning. So, with an appropriate amount of irony and as a way to rediscover themselves they venture into the wild and use the isolation in the wild to break through the isolation they feel after their relationships gone sour. From the Women’s Wilderness Institute Jody Radtke the leader of this expedition believes that by first connecting with nature, the women can then reconnect with themselves, and only then can they begin to connect with other people again. Radtke feels that after the relationship trauma the women feel like they are “on hold,” and the serene wilderness will help the women move forward and work toward closure and forgiveness. A man who lived in the wilderness for over a decade was less concerned about healing himself than he was interested in finding the solution to an experiment that required living primitively without technology or artifacts of civilization. This man in name was Gene Rosellini, and while he intended to spend only a decade in the wild, his experiment stretched out of its own accord. While Roselini was not in need of the healing power of nature, he found it in the serenity and peace in the twigs and leaves that adorned the trees. When he finally emerged from the wild accepting defeat in light of his experiment he redirected his goals to live out of a backpack. Incidentally, this never happened because he was found dead from a self inflicted knife through his heart. Whether his suicide was due to the failure of his experiment that so much of his life was invested in, or possibly because he left the peace and medical properties of nature behind and the few days he spent in mankind’s world was too much for him after such a simple ‘survive’ lifestyle. Whatever the reason, not everyone who threw themselves into natures clutches had a sad ending. While complete envelopment in nature seems to help in extreme cases, it is certainly not the only way nature can heal you. In fact, the most frequent use of the healing power of nature comes from the average person. When people are stressed and just need to think many will go for a walk outside to help sort out their thoughts, and it works. Others will go camping which can be seen as a stress free vacation where you only need to shake loose and embrace a tree. Gardening or caring for household plants is another example of natures healing properties. Caring for the plants day after day grants an individual a daily dose of peace as well as time to reflect upon their own lives. The bit of everyone’s hearts that sees the lure and beauty of nature is open to be filled with the serenity that nature offers. From Christopher McCandless, to the Wilderness Women of Wyoming, to Gene Rossellini, to everyday people, the wild has a knack for helping individuals find themselves. The enlightenment that can be achieved in the wild comes from the wilderness’s power to heal a battered soul. The lure of nature is not just for men who are bored with civilization, but for everyone. Furthermore, everyone has that little bit of themselves drawn to the beauty and ferocity of the wild.