Into The Wild

So…I am going to admit that seeing the film “Into the Wild”, screenplay and direction by Sean Penn, starring Emile Hirsch, changed the direction of my life. When I saw it at the end of 2007, I had an overwhelming urge to get the heck out of LA. And just GO…experience life, figure things out, see the world while I’m young and not tied down. I remember having a teary drunken conversation with my father to this effect, unpacking all of my longing and discontent and confusion and lack of direction. He encouraged me to just GO - just DO it.

And that’s when I decided to join the Peace Corps. I am a big pansy. I don’t have the gall to do what Chris McCandless did, though I sure wish I did (except for the part about starving to death in the Alaskan bush). I needed an adventure with a safety net, a bit of structure. Hence, Peace Corps: I would get to go to a far away land and live under great hardship, learn a new language or two and come out of it feeling like I had perspective and maybe I had done something with my life. At the end of this I hope I do feel this way, but now, at what is still the outset, I almost feel as though Africa is much the same as anywhere else, even LA.

The point is that I finished reading Into the Wild today and the book contains a lot of information that Mr. Penn opted to leave out of the film for artistic, narrative and editorial purposes (someday, if I ever do meet Mr. Penn and still feel that his film changed my life I might ask him to explain himself with great interest [and hope against hope the conversation goes better than the one with Emile Hirsch did]). The idea that McCandless’ life ended with acceptance, with a short but optimistic farewell note and a photograph of his emaciated yet smiling and serene face, that he did not seem to lament his passing but rather see it as a rather logical end to his journey of self-discovery is something I appreciate knowing.

I still have a thirst for travel, for experience that I don’t know my time here in Africa will quench. I’ve had a long-suffering burning desire to go on an extended road trip all around the US. I, in fact, have a big US road map on the wall of my living room here in Africa that is peppered with stickers marking some of my planned stops along the way (Yosemite, Mt. Rushmore, D.C., Death Valley, etc…). The things stopping me from taking this trip in the past were: having a car I didn’t think would make it very far, not having a traveling partner, and gas being WAY too expensive to cover the distance desired. But when I get back to the States, I think one of the first things I will do is take that trip, even if I have to do it alone (or better yet, with Yogi):














There will be plenty of people to visit along the way (heck I’ve just added 28 people who come from all over the country to my arsenal) and maybe even some who will join me for a week or so and catch a bus home. This is a trip I want to take more than the desire I have to tramp through Europe for a few months, which would be a lot more expensive, but is also an experience I know I need to have while I’m young. That, however, is one I will not do alone. Although I think Sajay did it alone. Sajay is a greater man (in the sense of being a human being, not a male) than I, in many ways.