Connection, Escape, and Reading(?)
A book made me cry.
A book.
Made me cry.
I haven’t read a book, for fun, in over a decade. I actually couldn’t point you to the last one it may have been. Nearly every plane ride, every backcountry trip, and every restless moment spent indoors over the past few years, I’ve asked myself “why can’t I just sit down and read a book?” Is it the racing thoughts? Is it the ADHD? Is it the imposter syndrome? Do I have an undiagnosed reading problem? Whatever it is, reading has always felt like a near-unachievable task for me.
Maybe that’s because I’ve always seen reading as work. And I’ll never forget the inception of that mindset. In fourth grade, my (otherwise wonderful) teacher, Ms. Evangelista brought in the infamous, dreadful, haunting…reading log. Each month, the reading log listed a predetermined amount of pages that we were to complete on our own, ranging anywhere from 100 to 500. At ten years old, the idea of reading even 10 pages was daunting, let alone reading 500. Even today, that number seems impossible to me.
Yet, today, I am a graduate student and researcher. My field, political ecology, is pretty damn cool too; it allows me to combine basically every field–history, policy, economics, ecology, and more–to create a full portrait of what is happening in the world. So why wouldn’t I be interested in reading more about what I’m passionate about? In short: I am, but I can’t.
In the corner of my room sits an antique, wooden cabinet, full of books that I’ve told myself I should read. Of all of those books, I’ve opened (maybe) two within the past year. In addition, I’ve been responsible for class and research readings; there have been too many of those to count, and I’ve skimmed most of them out of necessity.
This summer, I traveled out to Arizona for a research conference: a trip that I felt I should do so that I could meet people that I should meet and gather information that I should be gathering. I also brought a book on the plane that I thought I should read; it was never opened.
When I landed in Phoenix, however, I moved away from the shoulds and just opted for the wants. I took my rental car, and, instead of driving it into my research territory, I drove it up north, two-and-a-half hours, to Flagstaff to visit some of my good friends.
The visit was one of both breadth and depth. Flagstaff’s altitude of nearly 7000’ made it so that our adventures had to be fairly unambitious–if you would call hiking a small mountain and traversing a couple miles through a lava cave within a few hours “unambitious.” In addition to our outdoor adventures, we ventured into town, ate some tacos, and emulated the locals by browsing the thrift-outdoor store. All of that was the breadth of the trip.
The depth came from the conversations between my hosts and me. I’ve known my one friend, John, for several years now. Our friendship “cut its teeth” in our Wilderness First Responder course and then continued to cut its teeth every single time we decided to go on an expedition together. Not planning for snow in January, not planning for snow in May, not planning for hypothermia in October, not bringing the right kind of tent, not filling up the gas-tank before getting on the service road: you name it, we’ve done it. John and I have had a lot of type two fun together, and we’re forever connected from it.
John met his partner, Julia in the most unconventional of ways: a forest service trail crew in Cordova, Alaska. Cordova, Alaska, for reference, is in the middle of fucking nowhere. You might be thinking, “Ben, it’s 2023; we can get anywhere pretty fast.” You’d be wrong, actually, if you thought or said that. A flight from Chicago to Anchorage is roughly seven hours. So you made it to Alaska: big whoop. If you’d like to make it the extra 150 miles from Anchorage to Cordova, you have a decision to make: embark on another two-hour flight (and not the nice kind) or take an eleven-hour bus/car/ferry journey to your destination. Sounds fun, right?
John and I actually discussed doing a side mission–of sorts–to an abandoned mining town called “Kennecott” during some of his days off from trail work, but the sheer amount of travel it would have taken us just to meet up in Alaska–before even embarking on said side mission–was far too much, so we bailed on the idea.
Anyways, here they were–John and Julia–in Cordova, Alaska: the end of the Earth. I can’t tell you how it happened because I wasn’t there, but I can solidly guess that the two of them eventually figured out that they were just the right brand of weird for one another. Months later, I was sitting in their living room in Flagstaff, Arizona, discussing–for lack of a better term–life.
We quickly came to a consensus among the three of us: no one knows what the hell is going on in this world. Having control is a rarity–if not a myth, entirely. And all we can control is the energy that we decide to put out into the world.
The time spent with Julia and John was beautiful and almost as impactful as the time I spent later with a new friend that Julia introduced me to as I walked out the door: Into the Wild.
Yep, a book: we’ve returned. But it wasn’t a book that I felt I should read for any reason other than the fact that I wanted to read it, I wanted to enjoy reading it. My friends understood the struggle too, and they offered me much encouragement beyond the gift–mostly in the form of showing off their “emotional-support books” to me. These consisted of The Hunger Games series, the Twilight series, as well as various books about bears and mountains. That was a nice reminder that this thing–reading–didn’t have to be taken so seriously.
So, after leaving Flagstaff, I put on my big-boy pants for a few days, listened to panel discussions about various water solutions for the arid Southwest, and, of course, networked. To be honest with you, it wasn’t terribly fun, BUT there was university money paying for me to be there, so I had to do SOMETHING research-related with the funds.
The day after the conference (finally) ended, I woke up at the butt-crack of dawn and hightailed it from Tucson to the Phoenix airport. I returned the rental car, got through security, boarded my plane, and then pulled out my new book.
Into the Wild. I’d heard about it from several people, for several years. “Wild” sounded up my alley at least; how bad could it be?
Within the first twenty pages, I was in tears…on the plane–and that wasn’t the last time it happened either. This kid, Chris McCandless, was just like me in so many ways. He was a nature lover, he was a thinker, he was a writer…and he was confused. Shit, I’m confused every single day of my life–though some less than others. Why am I in graduate school? Why am I in Wisconsin? What am I going to be when I actually “grow up?”
The book was a validation of every doubt that I’ve ever had about the normal lane of society that I live in, yet it was also a warning to never push the bounds as far as McCandless did–not that I’d ever intend on living inside of an old bus in the Alaskan bush alone for months or anything. But I have done the McCandless thing already–to an extent. I’ve taken weeks out of my life to drive across the West in search of meaning and purpose. I’ve spent weeks of my life off the grid. Honestly, those periods of my life have made me feel more alive and more like myself than almost any other time. There are a million ways to express this in words, but none of them do it justice. What I’d suggest is to just get out there…but if you don’t want to do that though, this Stegner quote sums it up pretty well.
It should not be denied that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations. Absolute freedom. And the road has always led west.
-Wallace Stegner
So is it time for me to escape my “irksome obligations” and follow the road to freedom out West for good? Yeah probably not right now. I don’t think I’ll ever be fully following in McCandless’s footsteps; I have a lot here–in my normal life–that I’m pretty thankful for and don’t want to escape. However, I find daily escapes from the tougher parts of my life every day; right now, that comes in the form of music, exercise, food…you know: the usual stuff. And maybe, just maybe, if I can start to use stories, like Into the Wild and others, to add to that list of escapes, reading can benefit me in a way I never thought it would.
True happiness can’t be entirely about escape though. Take John and Julia, for example: two people, embarking on independent escapes from civilization, ended up finding humanity and fulfillment from each other instead. And for McCandless, I’d argue that the book Into the Wild would have hardly any meaning at all without the chapters filled with Chris’s personal encounters and impacts he made on folks along the way. That is Chris’s legacy: not what he did, in the end, but how he got there and the manner in which he did it–with earnestness, kindness, and so much more.
Towards the end of his life, McCandless eventually reached the realization that true happiness can only be found amongst others: not alone. But Chris never got the chance to actually come back into society and see the people whose lives he touched so profoundly, nor did he get the chance to continue on with leaving his mark on the world.
So where does that leave me now? I’m just about the same age as Chris was when he died of starvation in the Alaskan bush.
But I still have a chance to leave my mark.
I ought to try.
