My point is that many of us humans that are conformed to society have a curiosity about adventurers that 'drop-out.' Maybe because there is a part of many of us that wish we could do the same thing. Why else would Walden still be popular over 150 years after it was written? Thoreau only roughed it a bit compared to others. Mountain men, pioneers and explorers all lived tough, solitary lives for short stints like Thoreau but he was able to put into compelling words his experience. I think we care so much about these stories because there is a part of us that wish we could try the same thing.
Very well put, CaliHawk.
No need to demonize someone because they wrote a book and made a movie about him (and they made a lot of money on him going into the wild).
Whoa, hold on there fellas. No is demonizing McCandless because a book was written about him. Demonizing the idolizing writer and filmmaker, maybe, but they both deserve that. Simply casting a different light on McCandless
in spite, literally, of the book and movie.
The similarities between McCandless and Reuss, even if apt, are quite beside the point. They do not go to the ethical question of going into the wilderness completely unprepared, the point on which they were polar opposites, and the point on which this discussion of Dustin Self took off. ANd I don't think they are in fact particularly apt. McCandless's writing's and actions show me an immature, wishful, naaivew and largely deluded sense of what he was about. His lack of real preparation Reuss's on the other hand show an incredibly mature, self aware intention and purpose, not to mention ability.
In fact, there is not a bit of evidence that anything untoward happened to Reuss. It is not easy to disappear without a trace, and the circumstantial evidence on Reuss is completely consistent with his having completely succeeded in finding his dream.
I would also be very careful about citing Thoreau on this point. It is a 20th century fantasy that Thoreau went to Walden Pond to drop out, rough it, live in a state of nature or anything of the kind. He stayed quite closely engaged with society, including the justice system, and in fact conducted his most famous exercise of civil disobedience, while residing at Walden Pond:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
I don't see anything here about wilderness, dropping out, living off the land, or the like, and I don't think Emerson, or anyone else that he hung out with a couple of times a week during this period, would have either.
