Into the Wild Corruption
I recently completed the book [Into the Wild](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1845.Into_the_Wild %281996%29) by John Krakauer, and I fell head over heels for it.
Though I can't dive into those epic 3+ hour reading marathons I had during my teenage days anymore, I managed to squeeze in moments of reading here and there. This book had the power to pull me in for 1 or 2-hour reading sprees, which is quite the achievement given my usual attention span of barely 5 minutes for articles and no more than 30 minutes for books, let alone an hour.
It's an incredible work of nonfiction, divided into different sections that explore diverse facets of Christopher McCandless' fate. He was discovered deceased inside a bus in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness, his body showing unmistakable signs of starvation. The narrative takes various forms, from objective interviews with people who knew him in his early days to encounters he had during his journey. Some parts read like a novel, with eloquent prose interjected by the author's own insights.
I've always been captivated by the archetype of the free-spirited adventurer, unburdened by societal norms, going wherever their heart led them, whenever the mood struck.
The ultimate embodiment of this spirit is encapsulated in Easy Rider (1969), the film that paved the way for them all. It follows two bikers careening from LA to New Orleans, living solely in the present. There's a significant scene at the beginning where Peter Fonda hurls his watch into the desert just before they roar off on their Harley Davidsons.
One film that epitomizes freedom and holds a special place in my heart is The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019). In it, a troubled young man named Tyler, played by Shia Labeouf, evades a violent situation and sets out on foot from North Carolina to Florida. Along the way, he crosses paths with a person with Down syndrome, and an extraordinary bond forms between them. A scene that resonates deeply with me is when Eleanor (Dakota Johnson) condescends to Zak (Zack Gottsagen), and Tyler intervenes:
Tyler: Cut that out. Why are you treating him like he's dumb?
Eleanor: I'm not doing that.
Tyler: Yes, you are. You're assuming he can't do things on his own.
This scene strikes a powerful chord about treating others with respect, devoid of patronization. Tyler's approach to Zak is genuine, free from protective barriers; he shares laughter and reproach when needed.
There are plenty of examples of these archetypes, like Nomadland, O' Brother or American Honey.
Of course, there's a shadowed aspect to this lifestyle: isolation, detachment, loneliness, and the risk of becoming a societal outcast, among other consequences. But you catch my drift.
Circling back to the book, Into the Wild really tapped into my yearning for that feeling of freedom. A young, educated, and brilliant guy with no attachments and a disdain for material wealth and accommodated life, fighting for a glimpse of reality, far from suburbia, concrete convenience, automatic cars, and food excess.
After I finished reading it, I was completely enamored with it. Now I understood why it was such a classic. Right afterward my curiosity drove me toward checking about Alaska, Fairbanks and The Fairbanks Bus 142. I wanted to know how the place where Chris McCandless spent his last days looked, to get a feel of the ambiance, the context, to smell the grass around the bus so to speak.
So I looked the bus up online and I found out it had been lifted up by helicopter and placed down a museum in Fairbanks, so visitors can look at it in a warm and comfortable building and afford themselves the inconvenience of having to hike through the wilderness (even if the place where the bus happened to be was not that far along apparently). Now the bus, a symbol of freedom and disobedience lays uncorrupted in a sheltered spot, you can even donate to preserve it if you want.
I can't hide my disillusionment. The bus became almost a spiritual place for those who shared Chris' view in life, those who were touched by his story and wanted to watch it by themselves, and now it became corrupted and thrown into the money-making machinery of tourist hordes. Much like the natural-born primitives in Brave New World that lived in reservations and were observed by those civilized with awe and shame.
I don't know, it makes sense that after such a literary hit people would flock toward the bus to see it themselves, but I guess I sort of imagined it in a romantic way, like a self-discovery pilgrimage one would make, not by a group of people on their way to have lunch on a seat-warmed restaurant.
I still have hope that in the world we live in, vastly interconnected, where instant gratification, hassle-free, one-day delivery, there is room for (positive) struggle, introspection, communion with nature, and spirituality. The alternative is not looking good.