Loomings
This is the first of my posts about my upcoming backpacking trips. I plan to write more before leaving and to finish the series upon my return.
Last night I started organizing all my gear, in order to see what I can and cannot carry on my trips. It is a methodical process of taking things out of boxes, folding them down as small as possible, and getting on and off a bathroom scale with my pack to make sure it will be under 45 pounds, with camera and water. The process inevitably leads introspection and consideration of my motives for doing such things…
When planning to go into the wilderness, I relate more to Meliville’s Ishmael than I do to Shelly, Emerson, or Thoreau. I fully expect moments of sublimation and transcendental experience to happen once I am there, but my main impetus for going is that I am ready to start knocking the hats off my fellow citizens. I have not romanticized the wilderness to the extent that Ishmael has the sea, and I am fully aware that Emerson and Thoreau never really ventured too far into nature, so it should be Muir and Abbey who are really on my mind, men who ventured out into the mountains of the West. Nevertheless, Ishmael’s flight from society with all its rules, customs, and niceties is what drives me to pack what I can wear upon my back and set off into the mountains.
Still, one can’t enter the woods without thinking of Thoreau and his little cabin shortly outside the warm hearths of Concord. He had his fair share of contempt for his fellow man, but he thought he could set an example for them, crowing on his rooftop like Chanticlair to wake his neighbors. His experiment was admirable, if somewhat exaggerated in his writings. We know that he often dined in town at the Emersons’, and that his cabin building skills were not all he made them out to be. Hyperbole aside though, he attempted to put his principles into practice during his time on Walden pond and all those who enter the woods to live deliberately owe him a debt of precedence, at the very least.
In this age, it is also hard to go into the wilderness without also thinking of Chris McCandless, as portrayed by John Krakauer in Into the Wild. McCandless was driven by the innocent romanticism of Emerson and Thoreau, but appears to have been deficient in the healthy skepticism of Meliville. It is hard not to admire his optimism and enthusiasm, but it is equally difficult to overlook the naiveté and imprudence of his excursion into the true wild of Alaska. He is a modern and tragic example of the balance between the idealism of the transcendentalists and the darker shade of romanticism developed by Melville. McCandless was most definitely chasing his own white whale.
These are heavy thoughts I have while packing Gortex and dehydrated foods, knives and waterproof matches, all into a pack I will carry on my back for the next two weeks, minus a few days of travel between locations. The wilderness I enter is much more rugged than any surrounding Concord Massachusetts, but then again, I can be extracted by helicopter if things go terribly wrong. I will be far more prepared than Chris McCandless, but he also often had incredible luck on his side. It is somewhat miraculous that he wasn’t killed on the Colorado river. Luck (nature’s will?) can turn either way in the woods, just as it can on the interstate, or while crossing a street. All risks considered though, my excitement is growing for my trip. I am ready to be away from society, to focus on my environment and my journey through it.
