The natural world is not a theme park

Today Stunt-boy was sick and didn’t go to school. He is feeling a bit better now later in the evening however now I’m feeling like I’ve gotten what ever it is that he has gotten.

Yay, that’s exactly what I need. I do not have any problem taking care of my children when they are ill and if I’m work place wants to complain about it I’ll have something to say which won’t be fun to hear.

However, I hate being sick myself.

With that said was reading about a book I’m still trying to get finished. “Into The Wild.” I had the same problems with another book by the same author, “Into Thin Air.” The point is that I’m not particularly fond of the writing style or really the point that Mr. Krakauer attempts to build an epic level sympathy for the main character, Chris “Alexander Supertramp” McCandless, as if he did some great thing by falling off the grid then dying in the middle of nowhere Alaska.

I know this has been said by several thousand voices before me. I don’t the Mr. McCandless is a hero, in fact I think his death was due to his own arrogance that he was smarter than most people he came across and felt that he could do anything that he heard or read without attempting any practical application of what he was attempting to learn.

I do admire his attempt to cutting himself off the grid in a sense but he didn’t really but more so than most people ever do in their lives. There are people who live off the grid and we don’t hear about them - because they don’t end up dead in the woods. Do I have what it takes to live in the wild. No, I don’t. I recognize my limitation and realize that I could live without many of the things I have and I’m working on eliminating the excess from my life.

The truth is that the corporate world wants us to crave and think that we need all the crap they are putting out there. While I can agree that the world that McCandless was running from needs to change and the frustration of seeing just how corrupt the corporate world really makes most people feel like running away. However, shouldn’t you try to fight the horrible world rather than runaway from it but if you do decide to run away from the world do it with a bit more sense.

The natural world is not a theme park, you don’t buy an admission ticket from some teen in a cage working for spare cash so they can buy x-box live membership credits. It’s the real deal out there and mother nature doesn’t show any mercy, she doesn’t feel sorrow or remorse for taking the lives of those who do not respect that life is cruel. McCandless died and that is sad, and his family surely lives with so many unanswered questions as to why and what if, however if he had used his obvious intelligence to take some preparations he would perhaps be alive today. He is not a hero in my eyes just a person who failed to realize their own limitations and was poisoned by the very society he was running away from that if you go you get to ride all the rides. Well you don’t get to ride all that rides and if you try to ride the rides which you aren’t ready for in nature you just might die.

Perhaps you can get through the book better than I can. The movie was ok and would give it a three over all.


Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.

Ciao,