see/read into the wild

I've just finished reading 'How the West Was Ruined,' by Jonathan Raban, in the Jan. 2008 edition of Playboy. Yes, I read the articles. His argument states that John Muir's vision of the West, which obsessed over the sublime vision of 19th century romantics, is an outdated, elitist way of looking at the world.

"It's time to retire the language of the sublime, with its implicit class snobbery and muddling together of aesthetic pleasure with social hierarchy, and look freshly at the relationship between the ungussied-up townships of the American West and their natural surroundings."

you'll have to pick up a copy of Playboy to read the rest of the article - couldn't find the link.

But it's interesting, because I think of Christopher McCandless, subject of the film Into the Wild and book of same title, and his obsessive quest to throw off his suburban, well-to-do upbringing and live among the impoverished during his journey, which ultimately took him into the wilds of Alaska.

Chris McCandless is the young romantic searcher - with an almost unhealthy reverence for nature - which ultimately kills him. You're pulling for him, but you just know he's trekking towards disaster.

There's a poignant scene during his journey when he reenters society from a long, isolated journey down the Colorado on a kayak, which ultimately took him into a Mexican desert.

He hops on and off a train and visits LA, where he's aggrieved by both the plight of the homeless and its seediness and a trendy restaurant, where he could envision himself with other social climbers if he weren't the rough and tumble Alexander Supertramp.

He flees in desperation from the scene, back onto the trains, just like other romantics who view society with abhorrence and revere nature.

I say to hell with nature and Thoreau-esque journeys into the woods.

Try to live ethically in society - that's got balls to it.

I wonder how Raban would view him - did he escape his family - or did he try to create order in nature where it had been lost in his parents' lies? Were his intentions -similar to Tolstoy in his renunciation of money - socially conscious or elitist in their scope?

Because how can someone raised in wealth ever understand what it means to be poor? One cannot cast off his social umbrella completely. it's always there, isn't it?

It's present in his elevation of nature to the level of majesty. Noone who was truly penniless would see beauty in living in a stinky bus by himself in the middle of the woods. Maybe his priorities were out of whack.

The film, which I loved by the way, is shot in locations that are almost all what are considered majestic beauty-type shots. Grand Canyon, the coast, the top of a rock mountain near the Salton Sea where an old man and Chris climb to the top and see the light of God. It's all about some "higher" elitist? reverence in nature.

It's the difference between Western and Eastern Oregon. The warm fuzzies come out when you think of the Cascade and coastal ranges and thick evergreen forests. That's the type of environment that environmentalists protect. It's also got more $$$ than Eastern Oregon.

But I'm not so sure he would think of lost middle of nowhere towns in Eastern Oregon with the same reverence as say, the Oregon coast. Maybe that's the problem with young Chris McCandless, who would be approaching 40 if he were alive today.

He saw things from the eyes of a young romantic, not as they really were. He lived in the 19th Century, not the late 20th. What's so wrong about setting a forest fire that would have attracted the planes or at least someone to come rescue him? Probably didn't realize that the trees would grow back or that he squatted on millions of acres of forest.