1 post tagged “alexander-suptertramp”

Alexander Supertramp!

I just watched the movie "Into the Wild" last night and I found myself crying throughout most of it. I am haunted by the story of Chris McCandless, AKA Alexander Supertramp. I am saddened by it. I am overjoyed at what he was able to do. I am jealous and I envy him because when all is said and done, he lived life exactly the way he wanted to, no compromises made against his conscience or with society.

I do not want to lionize the man, I do not want to turn him into some kind of larger than life hero, some kind of Christ figure. I also do not agree with those who have demonized him, made fun of him, said that he was just an ignorant, naive fool whose high ideals led to his death. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

I think the reason that his story touched me so deeply is because I see myself in Chris, I see Chris in me. I was touched so deeply by his story that I stayed up half the night last night reading his story on the internet and I am still crying about it today.

No, I do not think he was a prophet, but if one was inclined to see the world in such a way, he could be seen in the context of Jesus, or the Buddha or any number of prophets throughout history who have all basically said the same thing. He could be seen as a modern day Thoreau or Tolstoy.

People do not take this life seriously enough, I don't think. I think a mistake is that some people accuse others of taking life too seriously. People become complacent with all of the bad things happening in the world, all of the bloodshed, all of the inhumanity done to man. Even on a personal level, husbands and wives scream and yell at each other, totally oblivious to what they are doing to their children, they lead "lives of quiet desperation", mesmerized by their television screens and their iPods. Not too many people actually do something worthwhile with their lives and whatever one can say about Chris McCandless, at least he lived life EXACTLY the way he wanted to, on his own terms and he actually DID something with his short life and in the end, he has inspired millions.

I am assuming here that everyone pretty much knows this man's story but if not I will paraphrase. Growing up in an a fairly affluent family, in the suburbs of D.C. but emotionally scarred due to the way his parents treated each other and also the way he and sister were seen by the rest of the family as bastard children, he graduates from Emory University in Atlanta in 1990, and along with the $20,000 he has left in his college fund, his parents were willing to give him the rest of the money to go to law school. Instead he cuts all ties with his parents, gives his $20,000 to OXFAM and sets out to wander the western US, starting out in his old beat up Datsun. His ultimate plan is to go to Alaska and to just live off the land for awhile the way Thoreau did. His parents did not hear from him for over 2 years, until his emaciated body was found in an abandoned bus in the wilderness of Alaska.

Jon Krakauer, the author of the book "Into the Wild", said in his article in Outside magazine, entitled Death of an Innocent

"Alaska has long been a magnet for unbalanced souls, often outfitted with little more than innocence and desire, who hope to find their footing in the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier. The bush, however, is a harsh place and cares nothing for hope or longing. More than a few such dreamers have met predictably unpleasant ends. "

Alexander Supertramp was NOT an unbalanced soul, though, and if anything he was more balanced than most people would ever even know how to be, even if they wanted to. Yes, he was a dreamer, but he was much more than that.

"And although he wasn't burdened with a surfeit of common sense and possessed a streak of stubborn idealism that did not readily mesh with the realities of modern life, he was no psychopath. McCandless was in fact an honors graduate of Emory University, an accomplished athlete, and a veteran of several solo excursions into wild, inhospitable terrain."

I think he had a LOT of sense, a sense of who he was, what he wanted to do, how he wanted to live his life, and he was upset with the world he saw around him. He knew that he could not change the world, but he could change himself, so he decided to leave the world behind for awhile. He never intended his break from the world to be a permanent one.

What exactly is meant by "stubborn idealism"? Once again, he knew who he was and he was sure about his convictions. Was he stubborn because he didn't allow anyone or anything to change him? I praise him for that. If only more people in this world were "stubborn idealists", the world wouldn't be in the shape that it is. Only people who don't truly understand Chris would call him stubborn, only those who would have wished to change him would call him stubborn. Jon Krakauer understood a lot about Chris, but he got a few things wrong.

"An extremely intense young man, McCandless had been captivated by the writing of Leo Tolstoy. He particularly admired the fact that the great novelist had forsaken a life of wealth and privilege to wander among the destitute. For several years he had been emulating the count's asceticism and moral rigor to a degree that astonished and occasionally alarmed those who knew him well. When he took leave of James Gallien, McCandless entertained no illusions that he was trekking into Club Med; peril, adversity, and Tolstoyan renunciation were what he was seeking. And that is precisely what he found on the Stampede Trail, in spades. "

This is what people do not understand when they wonder why he didn't go into the wild more prepared. That was the point, he did not want to be prepared, he wanted to take things one day at a time, to face nature and God head on, to see if he could survive. And survive he actually did, for over 100 days. But maybe because he was lost within his own self and his ideals, he failed to take into consideration that the river he originally crossed on ice at the end of winter would be a raging river of water come summer time. He literally got stuck in the wild. There have been those who have pointed out how close he was actually to civilization, that there was a manual tram just a 1/4 mile from where he tried to cross. All of this is hindsight and for whatever reason, Chris did not know this and did not search down the river a bit to find it out.

But really, I do not want to talk so much about the particulars of his physical ordeal. Anyone can read the book, or watch the movie, or read his story online. I want instead, to talk about his spiritual ordeal, his idealism, what he knew about himself and how he was different from most people and how it relates to myself. Because, as I said, I see a lot of myself in Chris.

I have never done anything close to what Chris has done, but that is because he was a much braver man that I. I do understand him though, as if he were a brother of mine. I feel myself in his story.

I, too, came from a family where my parents fought and yelled at each other constantly, more so in the later years of their marriage. When I was only 11 and my sister 6, they split up for good. I will always remember my father, who was a Harley Davidson riding tough guy, at least in my eyes, come into the living room to tell my sister and I goodbye, and as he got down on bended knee to give us a hug goodbye he had tears streaming down his face. Up until that point I had never seen my father cry. I remember that day now like it was yesterday and I am now 35. I will remember that day for the rest of my life.

During the scenes in the movie where Chris' parents were yelling and screaming at each other and getting a little physical, I looked at my girlfriend and I said, "Oh my God, that was my childhood...exactly!" I am a 35 year old man with 2 kids of my own and I was crying. I am crying right now as I write this.

I have an Aunt on my father's side who has said that she doesn't understand why my parent's divorce affected me as much as it did. After all, her own parents were divorced (when she was almost a grown woman) and she wasn't affected so much by it. I want to strangle her by the neck!! My childhood affected me tremendously, but it wasn't just the divorce itself. It was all the fighting my sister and I witnessed prior to the divorce. My sister was only 6 and doesn't remember a lot of it, but I was 11 and remember every bit. I remember them fighting one afternoon prior to when we were supposed to be going over to my Aunt's to swim in her pool. What they were fighting about I'm not sure, but my Mom says it was because she was going to leave the house with a dirty pot in the sink. They started yelling at each other and my Mom would just not stop. She has NEVER known when to just stop. My father runs over to her and has her up against the wall with his hand over her mouth yelling at her to shut the hell up. My sister and I are screaming at him not to hurt our mother and he yells back, "Oh, I am not hurting your mother, stop it!!" She falls to the ground crying hysterically saying that he was trying to kill her, that his hand was over her mouth and nose and she could not breathe. He swears to this day that he was not trying to kill her and I believe him, but it makes no difference whether he was or not. My 11 year old eyes witnessed all of this, and I had no idea what was going on. Eventually, we made it over to my Aunt's house and as soon as we walked in the back yard and saw our Aunt, my sister and I started balling our eyes out. And she chewed them out for doing this to the "kids."

But it wasn't just them fighting before the divorce either. They got divorced and CONTINUED to fight and yell and scream at each other. The only difference now is that they both started to put my sister and I in the middle of things, between the two of them. They used us as pawns in their game of chess, in order to get back at each other, to get one over on the other. My father, in the beginning, would ask me to spy on my mother, I was only fucking 11 years old. He wanted me to listen to her phone conversations, to find out the name of the new guy she was now seeing. He wanted me to call him as soon as my mom dropped us off at our grandparents house so that he could follow her to see where she was going.

Before the divorce, I can remember my mom waking us up in the middle of a school night to go try to find my father. We went to the parking lot of night club after night club looking for his Mustang. Eventually, we found it and she sat outside for hours,waiting on him to walk out with his mistress that she just knew he had. She finally got tired of waiting and hearing the "kids" screaming to go home, so we finally went home.

I can remember her chasing my father down with the "kids" in the car, him on his Harley. She was chasing him, and her front bumper at times would be right up to the rear fender of his bike. My sister and I were screaming, we thought she was going to run him over and kill him, either on purpose or accidentally.

So when my Aunt wonders why all this affected me so much, yea, I'm sorry but I get angry. WTF do you mean it shouldn't have affected me so much? It has. I have been through two marriages now myself and my own 6 year old son is now living without the benefit of his mom and dad living together. Granted, we did not fight as much and do to him what my parents did to me, but I know that he is traumatized as well. And it just tears me apart. When I was growing up, I said that I would NEVER get divorced. I guess I was a little naive and a "stubborn idealist".

Some may ask why I'm turning Chris' story into my own. It's because his story IS my own. Everyone's story is our own, we are all in this together. And the reason why movies and books affect a person so much, is because we see ourselves in the characters.

I too became introspective and withdrawn from society as I grew older. I never took it the extreme that Chris did, but as I said earlier, that was only because I lacked his courage, his bravery. When I became a teenager I began to read books voraciously. I had not yet come across Thoreau or Tolstoy though. Or Jack London. But it was at this time that I began to doubt my Christian upbringing. I too wondered why and how people could be so cruel to one another. I became so that I just did not understand other people at all. I felt as if I was from another planet. I did not understand the unsatiable desire of most people for "success", however "success" was defined by society. I shunned church and refused to go. My mother and I had many loud arguments because of this. She told me one time, several times actually, starting when I was around 16 or so that I reminded her so much of my father that it sickened her. I thanked her for the compliment but it tore me up inside for my mother to say such a hurtful thing. I knew how much she hated my father, and I now knew, or felt, how much she hated me too. She didn't really hate me, but she sure made me feel as if she did.

Like Chris, I also graduated at the top of my class. I graduated from high school in 1990, the same year Chris graduated from Emory University, in the top 1/3 of my class. I was a Florida academic scholar and was able to go to any state University that I chose. My father, who I was now living with, gave me no other choice but to go to the local University, the University of South Florida. During my first year of college, my mother moved to Knoxville, TN with my step father, to get him away from the drugs and his alcoholic friends. He was a terrible alcoholic at this time. My sister was only in 8th grade, and in her eyes, our mother chose her husband over her own daughter. My sister stayed in Florida. I ended up moving up there after visiting one time mostly because I fell in love with the area and with the University of Tennessee. I attended school there and continued to do well throughout my first semester of my second year. By the second semester I was becoming disillusioned with everything, did not see the point in anything that I was doing any longer. I was pre-med at the time but I felt trapped. I had always wanted to be a doctor since I was 5 years old and that is the direction my parents always led me in. I was always told growing up that I was going to be a doctor. At the age of 19, I no longer wanted to be a doctor.

Instead of going to class, I would drive my car down by the river and park by the scenic overlook of the Tennessee River as it goes over the Ft Loudon Dam. I would just sit there for hours, no music, no nothing. I would turn the car off and roll the windows down and I would just listen to the sounds of the river, the birds singing, the children running down the slope of the embankment to the river front. This was peace for me, tranquility. And I knew that I was done with college. I just had no idea what I was going to do. I was living at home at the time, making minimum wage a nursing assistant at the local nursing home. I was so confused. I was disturbed. I sat there and thought about God, wondered why life had to be so difficult. Why God allowed the Church to continue to spread lies about him.

So I finally decided to go to my own wilderness, to go into my own wild. I joined the United States Navy, for many of the same reasons that Chris wandered the country. I wanted to make a clean break, to get away from my parents, to live on my own terms. Joining the military, it turned out, wasn't the best of ways to live life on your own terms.

I could go on and on with this, I guess, I could ruminate on the many ways that Chris and I are kindred souls but there also many ways in which we are different. For one, I wouldn't have the balls to do what he did and if I did, I probably wouldn't have survived half as long as he did.

But I also want to get across how wrong I believe some people are about Chris. How do I know they are wrong? Because I understand Chris, I understand what he did and why. Some of the things people have said about Chris just frustrates me and some of it makes me angry. I feel like not too many understood Chris, just as not too many understand me.

There was an article in Men's Magazine, what a joke, entitled The Cult of Chris McCandless I know that I can't expect a magazine such as this to understand Chris, their idea of what it is to be a man is based so much on gender stereotypes, but one thing the article said struck me.

'Carlson, a barrel-chested Athabascan who worked as a tribal liaison on the shoot, shows me around the bus. He chuckles through a handlebar mustache and offers an unburnished appraisal of McCandless: Another fool bit the dust. "We grew up here. You learn how to make a campfire when you're a kid. This, I didn't think much of it at the time. That kid's mistakes started a long time before he got here."

What got me is not that Chris was called a fool, but that Chris' philosophy of life was trivialized as a mistake, that Chris was the one who was wrong in his assessment of society. And I am here to say that no, it is society that is largely wrong in it's assessment of Chris.

The guy goes on to say:

"And what will happen to this bus?

"Not sure what we'll do with it. Make it some kind of attraction. Maybe a cappuccino stand. I know that sounds like we're profiting off someone else's story, but you do what you have to do to survive here."

This is exactly the kind of thing Chris was talking about. This makes a mockery of survival. It turns the idea of survival into market capitalism. It is grotesque! That is not survival, it is profiting off Chris' bravery. They didn't have the balls to do what he did, yet they want to capitalize on it.

"The majority of Alaskans share some version of the opinion that McCandless was deeply out of his element. Medred, the outdoors columnist for the Anchorage Daily News, believes that he was suffering from schizophrenia and compares him to Timothy Treadwell, the unstable filmmaker and bear enthusiast who (along with his girlfriend) was killed and eaten by a grizzly in Katmai National Park in 2003. "McCandless didn't need the wilderness," he says. "He needed help."

No, society needs help. Chris was spot on!! There was nothing wrong with Chris, he had a clarity of vision that most people will never have.

Chris said, "Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth." I full understand where he is coming from, I have said nearly the same thing myself in some of my articles here on Newsvine. But what Chris found out too late and what I know now, is that one of those words did not belong with the others. I shun money, faith, and fame but love IS the truth.

""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 dangerous 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 greather joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

This is one of the biggest reasons that led me to drive a truck for a living for a year and a half. It was my way of leaving society behind, so I thought, of just being on my own, just me, the truck and my music, and when the weather was right, the wind. It wasn't exactly like that though in truth.

"Surely all Americans have the right to give their money only to those causes which they support. But what kind of society has this created? A society where the ignorant reign. A society where enlightened must hold their tongues. A nation whose politicians must profess half-hearted devotion to an ancient fable or face the disastrous consequences of speaking their true mind."
Chris McCandless writing on religious fanaticism in The Emory Wheel student newspaper, October 1987

"Two years he walks the earth.
No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild. — Alexander Supertramp May 1992

I have never been as brave as Chris, I am still working on killing the false being within. It is a task that we each must do alone, in our own way.

Near Death!

In closing, I want to leave you with a snippet relating to a John Bunyan work, called, "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners", written in 1666. I do not agree with the truth that Bunyan ultimately came to but I can very much relate to his journey. When I read this, I felt like John's journey, like Chris' was just like my own. You could almost insert my name in here and it wouldn't make much difference, except for the final destination, which obviously has been different for me, John basically sticking with Christianity because, he was a product of his times after all.

"As a nonconformist, Bunyan rejects the Church of England -- it's rites, it's doctrines, it's authority, and it's congregations. And this makes him very much alone. He longs to join other believers: when he hears "three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, and talking about the things of God," he longs to enter into a brand new life. But the women, he writes, seem to be "on the sunny side of some high mountain... while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold." Between the women and himself,Bunyan sees a wall; he can't find a way through, until he discovers "a narrow gap... At last, with great striving, methought I at first did get in my head, and after that by a sideling striving, my shoulders, and my whole body; then I was exceeding glad, and went and sat down in the midst of them, and so was comforted with the light and heat of their sun." Finally in the company of others who also believe, Bunyan should be secure and full of grace. But the temporary comfort and hope that he feels is followed by an obsessive desire to blaspheme, and the cycle continues; Bunyan fights off temptation, is "put into my right mind again," is assaulted by temptation again, understand grace, struggles against guilt again. Finally he grasps that his righteousness is not his own, but that of Jesus Christ. "Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed." Is this the final act? Not quite; darkness descends again on his soul, until God assures him with a final scripture: You are come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God.. to the general assembly of the first-born..to the spirits of just men made perfect. At last Bunyan has found his company, where others stand with him in the presence of God. He is no longer alone. Has he reached Salvation at last? Perhaps, but for Bunyan, conversion is is not a single shining moment, but a long path down which he walks, with an eye always cautiously behind: Like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan was threatened by the "door to hell, even at the gates of heaven."

And that, my friends, is the story of Phaedrus. Told in the year 1666. The only difference being that I have found the truth in the opposite direction, away from the Church, but the journey is the same.

The following is my review of the movie Into the Wild.

LOVED IT!!!