Into the wild by Jon Krakauer

Author:Jon Krakauer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Essays & Travelogues, Sociology, West (U.S.), Social Science, Survie en milieu sauvage, Adventure and adventurers, West, Travel, Postwar period, Wayfaring life, Biography: General, Pacific, Alaska, United States, Road Travel, Biography & Autobiography, Hitchhiking, General, Geographical discovery & exploration, Biography, 1945 to c 2000
ISBN: 9780330453677
Publisher: Pan Books
Published: 2007-08-15T01:33:57.488000+00:00

VIRGINIA BEACH

The physical domain of the country had its counterpart in me. The trails I made led outward into the hills and swamps, but they led inward also. And from the study of things underfoot, and from reading and thinking, came a kind of exploration, myself and the land. In time the two became one in my mind. With the gathering force of an essential thing realizing itself out of early ground, I faced in myself a passionate and tenacious longing— to put away thought forever, and all the trouble it brings, all but the nearest desire, direct and searching. To take the trail and not look back. Whether on foot, on showshoes or by sled, into the summer hills and their late freezing shadows—a high blaze, a runner track in the snow would show where I had gone. Let the rest of mankind find me if it could.

JOHN HAINES, THE STARS, THE Snow, THE FIRE: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE NORTHERN WILDERNESS

Two framed photographs occupy the mantel in Carine McCand-less’s Virginia Beach home: one of Chris as a junior in high school, the other of Chris as a seven-year-old in a pint-size suit and crooked tie, standing beside Carine, who is wearing a frilly dress and a new Easter hat. “What’s amazing,” says Carine as she studies these images of her brother, “is that even though the pictures were taken ten years apart, his expression is identical.”

She’s right: In both photos Chris stares at the lens with the same pensive, recalcitrant squint, as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of an important thought and was annoyed to be wasting his time in front of the camera. His expression is most striking in the Easter photo because it contrasts so strongly with the exuberant grin Carine wears in the same frame. “That’s Chris,” she says with an affectionate smile, brushing her fingertips across the surface of the image. “He’d get that look a lot.”

Lying on the floor at Carine’s feet is Buckley, the Shetland sheepdog Chris had been so attached to. Now thirteen years old, he’s gone white in the muzzle and hobbles around with an arthritic limp. When Max, Carine’s eighteen-month-old Rottweiler, intrudes on Buckley’s turf, however, the ailing little dog thinks nothing of confronting the much bigger animal with a loud bark and a flurry of well-placed nips, sending the 130-pound beast scurrying for safety.

“Chris was crazy about Buck,” Carine says. “That summer he disappeared he’d wanted to take Buck with him. After he graduated from Emory, he asked Mom and Dad if he could come get Buck, but they said no, because Buckley had just been hit by a car and was still recovering. Now, of course, they second-guess the decision, even though Buck was really badly hurt; the vet said he’d never walk again after that accident. My parents can’t help wondering—and I admit that I can’t, either—how things might have turned out different if Chris had taken Buck with him. Chris didn’t think twice about risking his own life, but he never would have put Buckley in any kind of danger.

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