Present Confusion Essays: Alone in the Wilderness

March 2014. It's a cold Saturday afternoon. Last time I checked it was 1:20 pm. I'm traveling through the streets of Ikebukuro, Japan. theres a sense of waiting in the air. In the seat of the bus meant to take me home, I look out the window. A few stray raindrops fall from the side window like small tears.  A comforting female voice drones from the speakers on the bus, saying words I barely understand.

Suddenly it's sometime in August, 1994. this picture was taken along a remote path in the Alaskan wilderness. A visibly emaciated man is seen smiling at the camera. The picture was undeveloped; the camera found only after moose hunters find his corpse and his possessions.

I've just finished a journey to this country, alone, and I'm absorbed by this book I checked out in the bookstore before leaving for good. It's worth a few hundred yen more than the book, but the cover haunted me. It was this picture: where, in the last weeks of his life, Christopher McCandless spent his time hunting and foraging for food in the Alaskan wilderness, trying to survive. Completely alone, he was on some sort of trip to liberate himself from society.

This book is Jon Krakauer's Into The Wild, an account of McCandless' journey through America to find himself. Along the way he meets different people whom he changes, mostly for the better. He's depicted as an idealistic young man with a passion for adventure, well read and very intelligent, but very much a risk taker. Despite many offers to settle down, the way of the road becomes his way, and he finds himself in the perfect spot: the Alaskan Wilderness, a spot that proves fatal.

Looking at it from a certain standpoint, our decisions in life are diametrically opposite; he's decided to live out his life and escape civilization, and here I am in one of the largest cities on earth. But in a way we have something in common. He went to the wilderness to find himself after the void of life post college graduation. He wanted to be free. I went to an unfamiliar land to find myself as well, as by this time my life was full of its own uncertainties. Despite the throng of people surrounding me, I was alone, left to find myself.

But at the same time, his own journey is one that resonates with so many people, because many experience that same sense of isolation and disconnect. We are given so many choices in the course of our lives that we tend to slide into a sense of ennui and false complacency. Before we know it, we're in the thick of something we are not entirely familiar with, lost in our own lives. We all take steps to mitigate or correct this. People gain wanderlust; some quit their jobs and go their own way; some create a small nook for themselves. I lose myself in solitude, in a society alien to me. McCandless chose the Wilderness.

It's quite admirable that he decided to react to his situation in such an extreme way, and his story touched a lot of people, among them Sean Penn, who decided to adapt the book into his own feature film (also titled Into the Wild) in 2007. Largely based on the book but fictionalizing some parts, it almost seems that McCandless is painted as some sort of visionary who knew something about the world that we don't.

It's hard to judge McCandless by his actions. While some may see him as this saint who threw away everything that he had to become one with nature, others may see him as an idealistic man with misplaced intentions at best, an ill-prepared, selfish fool at worst, underestimating the power of nature, not as a caring mother, but as an unfeeling force that takes away, much like Timothy Treadwell and his bears.

A differing view comes from Ron Lamothe's documentary The Call of the Wild, which was made almost parallel to the production of the Penn film. Lamothe retraces McCandless' footsteps and makes many of the same observations as I did: of a youth, wandering and aimless, desperately trying to find himself in a world that is quickly losing meaning.

Lamothe also tackles the rather disputed circumstances of McCandless' death. Krakauer and Penn attribute it partly to misidentification of the local flora, mistaking a poisonous plant from its edible counterpart. Lamothe submits a simpler theory that he simply died of starvation from a lean diet bereft of the essential carbohydrates and fats that would have fueled his life.

He also casts aspersions on McCandless' total abandonment of his previous life, as his wallet, social security card and even some cash were found in his possessions where he died. Perhaps 'aspersions' is to strong a word. But however one may interpret this man's actions, the real Christopher McCandless died that summer over twenty years ago, and we may never know what he really wanted, or if he had achieved his goal in the end.

I'm back in the bus and there's an hour and a half left in my trip to the airport. Sleep begins to take me.

I close my eyes and it's suddenly two days ago. Shinjuku, the red light district, ten in the evening. The soft buzz of electrical wires and signs overtakes me. Softly, I hear a tout mumble something behind me, perhaps soliciting me for something.

"What are you looking for?" he asks in Japanese.

I am suddenly lost in myself, walking, disoriented. Where am I exactly? I do not know for sure. The ground seems to give below me. And I ask myself:

What am I looking for?