Adventure

    Such a simple title, yes. I wasn't going to write tonight but I got out of the shower and began thinking of how to inspire myself to adventure. Then my mind fell back to the movie I watched this weekend: Into the Wild. If not for the beautiful inspiring photography, and the adventurous theme, then perhaps for the counter-culture, anarchist thinking this movie inspires it struck a chord with me. And I well expected it would, as I read the book some years ago and the book also took my heart.
    I've always found the subliminal mindset alluring, and Chris McCandless has become a bit of a figurehead to me. Yes, he was reckless and he's not the perfect golden statue of a counterculture revolution. However he certainly left behind a message as Alexander Supertramp, of honesty to self and man, of seeing the world around you, of being the real human. I find this beautiful in its own way, beautiful that, even though reckless, he left behind everything and sought the real adventure in life.
    I find that always my heart beats in time with these people, with these ideas, with these images. I can't help but see myself next to that teal bus on the Stampede Trail. I want to do what Chris did, I want to find a real existence in the solitude of nature. And while some people call him just another dumb youth seeking the meaning of life... I would've liked to be right there next to him. Right or wrong, reckless or not, I know that Chris and myself share more of the adventurer's spirit than most people even begin to understand. Yet the end humbles the spirit, one of the last things Chris ever wrote before starving to death alone in the wild.

"Happiness is only real when share." Scribbled into the margins of a book by the hand of a man humbled in the face of death, enlightened with the thoughts only experienced in the last hours of life. I doubt this world will ever see more beautiful words than those written by the hands of dying men.