Wilderness
(Epigraph 3)
According to Roderick Nash, Wilderness allures those that dislike human society, to escape
and experience either happiness or dismal behavior in a solitary setting. However, does Roderick
Nash’s idea reflect Chris McCandless’ approach to wilderness? Many personal experiences can
reflect similarly to Roderick Nash and Chris McCandless, including the author of Into the Wild, and
myself. In return, we can use our relations to understand the minds behind these two men. One
limitation involves McCandless’ death, leaving researchers with questions and evidence from his
writings only remains.
McCandless relies significantly upon use of literature to document his discoveries and
events. He uses several resources to display his ideas and beliefs, such as his diaries, letters, graffiti,
and excerpts from books. One significant quote by McCandless (Page 163 of Into the Wild) is
written on a piece of plywood, beginning with an excerpt by his favorite Roger Miller song, “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…The climatic battle to kill the false being within
and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution.” In return, Roderick Nash believed Wilderness
was an “Ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his
own soul.” McCandless lived out Alaska with an open mind to begin a new life and learn of his
moral values. Roderick Nash and Chris McCandless both state wilderness as an opportunity to
avoid man and his works, in which Nash reveals it as an escape from society. McCandless was so
mortified by the human society; he referred to it as “poisoning.” A word that both of these men
would use to describe their experience as a whole, can only be written with an emphasis of
“freedom.”
“The solitude and total freedom of the wilderness,” Roderick Nash writes as his last
sentence, “created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation.” McCandless’ adventure
has risen up and down with blessings of adequate food supplies, to downhill falls of nearly
starvation. There is no evidence that McCandless was depressed from unsuccessful events but may
have felt other miserable feelings. A turning point of behavior began at his arrival of the Fairbanks
school bus, where his journal entries for the first week displayed acts of disappointment, scribbling
down weakness, snowed in, and disaster. However, thereafter weather had blessed him with
various sources of food, and he began to live his life more comfortably in the wild. In a journal
entry that McCandless entered in, he had been reborn; real life has just begun. In addition, he listed
important values of life, including “Positivism (underlined to display his emphasis), the
Insurpassable Joy of the Life Aesthetic.” However, in the end, McCandless may have felt of
melancholy before his death, possibly suffering from poisoning and starvation.
Roderick Nash’s thought of wilderness can relate to that of McCandless, but also to me.
Often in my younger childhood, adventuring the woods was an exciting activity where I could
explore and find new things out of the ordinary. A spot was eventually uncovered where I’d visit
everyday of the summer, where I could sit, relax, and enjoy the peace while I could. It felt as if
time had stopped; a place to stop and solve my problems, and escape all the racket from the
neighborhood. The woods were a place I could rely on if I ever felt unhappy and needed something
to cheer me up, thus, it “created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation.”
Evidence collected from McCandless’s belongings proves McCandless and Roderick Nash’s
ideas are similar. Nash described wilderness as a scene where an individual would either hate it or
love it. McCandless represents an example of one that simply loved his experience regardless of
the obstacles. The story of his adventure is simply motivating and sends its readers a message that
may affect their entire life, a message that may be interpreted to follow their dreams, and live it to
the fullest.