"Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

I can't remember the last time I read a book where I could not help but pick up a pencil, highlight passages and make little notes in the margin. Thank you "Into the Wild" for breaking that dry spell. Below are the passages that, aforementioned, hit me like a ton of bricks. Being a 23 year old, unsatisfied, adventure-bound, green, inappreciative brat, I definitely understand what the lead character, Chris McCandless, is facing in his desire to enter the Alaskan wilderness, with nothing more than a 20 pound bag of rice and a few books.

Too often do we get so blind-sided by "stuff." "Things," more specifically. If we could only start from scratch, with nothing, then even the smallest of convenience would be enough to provide happiness for an entire day. Rather we are surrounded by Ipods, Razors and Blackberrys. These now are what we consume, or "consumer," our daily rituals with, blurring the lines of simplicity with noise.

Listed below are the passages. You really should read the book for yourself. Then we would have something relevant to discuss. Like the women on "The View." They always have something relevant to say. They never sound like a bunch of squawking hens with over-caffeinated budgets. Never.

There was another irony he failed to appreciate: His struggle to mold me in his image had been successful after all. The old walrus in fact managed to instill in me a great and burning ambition; it had simply found expression in an unintended pursuit. He never understood that the Devils Thumb was the same as medical school, only different.

Andy Horowitz, one of McCandless's friends on the Woodson High cross-country team, had mused that Chris "was born into the wrong century. He was looking for more adventure and freedom than today's society gives people." In coming to Alaska, McCandless yearned to wander uncharted country, to find a blank spot on the map. In 1992, however, there were no more blank spots on the map--not in Alaska, not anywhere. But Chris, with his idiosyncratic logic, came up with an elegant solution to this dilemma: He simply got rid of the map. In his own mind, if nowhere else, the terra would thereby remain igcognita.

...Not only did McCandless die because he was stupid, one Alaska correspondent observed, but "the scope of his self-styled adventure was so small as to ring pathetic--squatting in a wrecked bus a few miles out of Healy, potting jays and squirrels, mistaking a caribou for a moose (pretty hard to do)... Only one word for the guy: incompetent."
What the angry letter writers didn't know, however, was that the ungulate McCandless show was exactly what he'd said it was. Contrary to what I reported in Outside, the animal was a moose, as a close examination of the beast's remains no indicated and several of McCandless's photographs of the kill later confirmed beyond all doubt. The boy made some mistakes on the Stampede Trail, but confusing a caribou with a moose wasn't among them.

McCandless wasn't some feckless slacker; adrift and confused, racked by existential despair. to the contrary: His life hummed with meaning and purpose. But the meaning he wrested from existence lay beyond the comfortable path: McCandless distrusted the value of things that came easily. He demanded much of himself--more, in the end, than he could deliver.

Now, go do the right thing.