Reflecting on In The Wild

If you ever feel the need to question the validity of your place in the world, now there are two versions of the same method. "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer, his small memoir-biography-novel (of great acclaim) has now become a film due to director Sean Penn's attention and devotion to bringing this screenplay into fruition for several years. The story of Christopher McCandless is a true one and one that will have you questioning where you want to hang your hat in life. It has put me into a moodiness that I haven't been able to shake yet this evening. The film is wonderful, inspiring and saddening. It provides the viewer with a certain kind of insight reticent of John Muir and Thoreau, all apparent heroes of McCandless or his pseudo self: Alexander Supertramp. This movie affected me. It made me crave wilderness and space in a way that I don't think I really know how to do. I spent a week in Oregon in August on the Rogue River winding through the Siskiyou wilderness, sleeping out under the stars, wary of bears and poison oak, but I feel like I -- in my usual fashion, didn't let myself really experience it and this makes me sad when I see a film about a boy/man who desired nothing else than to be made up of his experiences. It makes me wonder what I am wasting, what I am waiting for and why do I do it in the first place. Don't get me wrong, there are moments when I catch myself really smelling the air, really feeling the heat of the sun on my face… and those are the moments that seem beyond all else, the most real. If nothing else this film made me want to find ways to slow life, and time in general, down to a much smaller pace. Can you believe that we are half way through October? That in 5 weeks it will be Thanksgiving? Another month will bring us into the Winter Holidays; Chuanukah and Christmas, and then 6 days after that the year will come to and end? It just makes me wonder what moments have I added to my life experience that are worth rememebering, and if looking back I find my coffer is feeling more empty than I would like, then, what must I seek out to make my heart and life swell and feel full of its own substance. Tonight, all I can say is, Thank You for the life you lived and those you touched and the journey you took, Christopher McCandless, wherever you are.