Heroes and Zeroes

Recently I participated in a discussion about 24-year old Chris McCandless. Chris spent 113 days alone in the Alaskan wilderness, surviving on what he could forage and hunt. In September 1992, he was found dead in an abandoned bus after succumbing to starvation.

Some view him as a self-indulgent fool who died needlessly. Some view him as a reckless nut with a death wish. Others view his death as the result of boneheaded moves and lack of knowledge or experience. Still others view him an inspirational adventurer daring to put himself in a challenging situation, despite the odds or risks.

Chris' journey into the Alaskan wilderness was the final act which started two years prior. After a lifetime of being defined by his family and being told what he should do by society, Chris longed to connect with something real that stripped away the facades, illusions and lies of life. His desire was to find who he was without anything/anyone else in the way. Right after graduating college, he dropped out of society and broke ties with his family in order to explore/discover himself.

Sure he may have taken it to the extreme and obviously paid the ultimate price. But getting out of our comfort zones, exploring, discovery, growing...that's what life's about! We only get one trip around this planet. For better or worse, we owe to ourselves to give it our all! I'd rather die doing something I love, pursuing my passions instead of living complacently, "what iffing" and regretting my life at the end. That to me is far more tragic.

Although Chris died alone in the wilderness, I don't believe he was foolhardy. He had read and studied and earnestly wanted to live off the land, in order to test and challenge himself. It's unfortunate that he didn't realize that there was a well-trod hunting trail several miles in the opposite direction from the swollen river that blocked his way out of the wilderness and back to civilization. It's tragic that this lack of information cost him his life. A small turn in his "luck" and he would have tramped back out of the wild...

So our discussion hinged around the question: Was Chris McCandless a hero or a zero?

Playing the Devil's Advocate, I posed this argument:

Captain Scott and his party starved to death on their way back from the South Pole in 1912. Should we ascribe their deaths as the result of "bonehead" moves"? How prepared can we really be for something we've never done? How much knowledge can we have until we are in a situation to realize how much we are lacking?

Sometimes all we can do is the best we can do. Sometimes it means taking the best that we have and are at any given time and putting it up for the challenge. If we wait until we are 100% prepared, we won't start at all!

That being said, i TOTALLY believe that if we are to venture into wilderness areas, whether on land or sea, we should be as prepared and ready as much as possible. To jump out of a plane without a parachute is suicide. To people on the ground, the flimsy parachute may look woefully inadequate; however, to the person at the end of the harness, the sturdy parachute is more than enough.

Perspective.

Sometimes, the best lessons learned are as we go along. The "Father of Modern Day Sea Kayaking", Derek Hutchinson, describes himself in his books as someone who likes the challenge of figuring things out for himself. There's a fine line we walk between an accident waiting to happen and wisdom learned through experience. How do we gain experience without challenge? How do we start a challenge without experience? It's a Catch-22 that has faced every explorer since dawn immemorial.

Many people have experienced similar conundrums while trying to start careers. I remember being frustrated at one time or another with not having experience and yet not given the chance to gain experience. “Give me a chance!” my soul would plead!

I think all of us at one time or another (particularly when we were younger) have stretched our vision way past our skill or experience. And we've lived to tell about it while safely seated around a campfire or pub stool, reveling with our friends over a pint! What is the difference between "success" and "failure"? Is the difference hinged on whether we live or die? Or is it simply enough that we tried, no matter what the results or outcomes were?

Hutchinson says, "The sea provides the unfamiliar, the unworn, and the unexpected. Facing the challenge of the sea causes the paddler to journey into the genuine unknown -- the unknown and untried areas of his soul". 

Chris himself wrote that he was waging a spiritual revolution to "kill the false being within"...and although he used the word "kill", it doesn't mean he had a death wish. I am sure Chris counted the ultimate “cost" towards his freedom as being worth it. For him, the wilderness provided the proving ground of the untried areas of his soul. I believe in his mind, if he died trying to live his dream of freedom, then that would be better than living a life trapped by lies. I believe for Chris, success was not measured whether he lived or died, success was measured by the fact that he tried. So although he may be declared a "zero" for dying, he is a "hero" for trying. 

The same may be said of Captain Scott...
The same may be said of any of us....

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

~ Chris McCandless ~

(February 12, 1968 – mid-August, 1992)

Post Script:

Contrary to Jon Krakauer's book "Into the Wild" and Sean Penn's movie of the same name, Chris had a road map, it was part of the inventory taken by the coroner. Krakauer has been criticized for listing ALL the items in Chris' possession except for the map. Krakauer has not published an updated inventory nor an updated cause of death. Why would Krakauer do that? Sensationalism? Dramatic stories sell more after all. 

Who knows. The fact is Chris had a map. Maybe it wasn't entirely up to date. Given the wilderness area he was in, things can change quickly. Also given his state of dealing with progressively weakening physical and mental facilities, who knows how much of the obvious he would have missed. 

Also contrary to Krakauer/Penn, Chris did not burn his documents. Again, was this book/movie sensationalism for dramatic effect? His backpack was found in the bus along with his wallet containing $300 and his social security card, birth certificate, driver’s license, health card, voter identification, and three library cards. From all appearances and within his last postcard to Wayne, he had all intentions of returning to society.

I object to Hollywood or society sensationalizing (exploiting?) such a young man. Chris may have been an idealist, but I don't believe he attempted to romanticize his life; it took Hollywood to do that. All facts leading up to Chris' death point to a young man who, although may not have prepared as best as he could have to the nth degree, he still was well-equipped for attempting his adventure. It is unfortunate, that most likely Chris' journey would have been left untold and unpublished if had he lived. In the end, Chris determined that living and sharing his experience was what he wanted to do. One of the last things Chris wrote was in paraphrase to a passage by Tolstoy, "Unshared happiness is not happiness".

My desire for jumping into this "hero or zero" discussion is to emphasize that everything is a matter of perspective. Our perspective is only as good as the information we are given. Whether we are the ones looking at the ones on the journey or whether we are the one on the journey ourselves...

In the words of a friend of mine quoting Teddy Roosevelt, "It is always better to dare mighty things than to take rank with those who know neither victory nor defeat." I agree with my friend and hope Chris isn't an inspiration to those who shouldn't be inspired. The wilderness is an unforgiving place. In the words of Anthony Doerr, "Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die." Life is a great teacher and experience teaches us to be prepared. I for one enjoy surviving my adventures in and of themselves, but also so I can do other adventures!

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In 2006 Ron Lamonthe followed the steps of Chris and made a documentary along the way. His findings and film can be found on his website: The Call of the Wild: Into the Wild Debunked.