Alexander Supertramp

[timberghost]

I was sitting in a very large department store parking lot waiting for family to do some shopping and was allowed my people watching to fill the time, I decided to find some music to listen to and ram sacked the dash board for a homemade cd. The second song on the cd was "Society" by Eddie Vedder. Ahhhhh, right on time. As I watched the side show of the masses of people rushing to and fro, I found myself once again thinking of Chris and just how right he had it. I pondered Alexander Supertramp and how many lives he has now touched. I wondered if Chris's parents really understand just how many people still think of Chris and long to have walked with him into the wild. He still walks on with us. His footprints now leave their marks on our souls instead of in the snows. His longing for the " real " life still finds it's way into our hearts. Free, we long to be. Where was I headed with this post, just wondering aloud, and if I have to explain it to you, then you will never understand any way.
Peace,
Chase

[pezar]

What I don't understand is why, after two years of an economic depression, a lot of people STILL don't get it. They are saying that this will be "the best" Christmas season (for the stores, of course) since the mid 2000s. People are willing to spend even though they don't have the money to make monthly payments in a lot of cases. I was reading one article where an out of work waitress decided she simply couldn't live without new clothes, and she said "if you stop shopping, you stop living". REALLY? Are the lives of Americans really so defined by malls and the hottest gizmos from Shenzhen (China's electronics city) that risking everything is worth it for some retail therapy? What a sad life. I posted a video of Black Friday lunacy on general forum, go watch it and then decide for yourself if the narrator of the video is right when he says we're a lost society. Our society is vastly different from the one that wrote the Constitution, and it's by design. In the 1930s people hunkered down and changed their whole lives from what they had been in the 20s, and those changes lasted a lifetime for those who lived through them. Today it seems people can't go three years without giving in to the urge to splurge. You can see why Chris felt so uncomfortable around people, since he saw things that they didn't.

[naturelover24]

yeah PEZAR, we live in a fallen world, and totally screwed up society who has everything backwards. society, through media and the people before us, want us to live a business-man, 9-5 lifestyle, absolutely void of PASSION, and live unselfish lives. because if we lived doing our passions, not worrying about money, being unselfish and helping others out, and being anti materialist, then how would the world continue?? thats why they want us to value our meaningless predicatable jobs over passion, unselfishness and freedom.. ya know??

[Kai Leather]

So feeling it, its the same bs everywhere, but i'll be packing my bags soon, living in society have been nothing but bad luck for me

[Sick Eddie]

Balance.

You have to acknowledge and learn to deal with everything you encounter in life. Loving the wilderness is fantastic. Loving freedom to travel every square inch of the world is a great dream. The idea that you can just abandon your family without the common decency of even a shitty good-bye is messed up. Even if you disagree about every belief they had with every fiber of your existence then it's still unthinkably selfish. A person who can't think about even that much minimal decency could never possibly have enough foresight to live for long in God's country.

He ran from the only thing that could've helped him. Other people. In the end he begged for help from that which he sought to escape. Ironic to the 10th power.

My balance is that I think that he meant to do well in the end.

[Sick Eddie]

Chris was way too young but had an amazing love for freedom of spirit and the great unknown in nature. He was however, not at all unique in that sense. There are countless millions of people who love the idea of dropping every attachment you have to anything, anybody and any responsibility and just go do a "walk-about". The big difference is that 90-some % of the rest of the population realizes that out of common minimal decency you don't just abandon your family without even a "screw you". Put things in their proper place. Even if you despise every fiber of their existence, it still holds true that this much is basic civility. As nothing more than a pulse on two legs, if you can be decent to strangers (and we all should) then you should be humble to those that have fed and clothed you... even if they've wronged you in the worst way.

There is nothing good or admirable about waking up one day and realizing that you grew up with a silver spoon all of your life and deciding you hate it and all that it stands for. There are rules in the wild and rules in civilization and when they are ignored to extreme in either sense you will pay irrelevant to any mythical dreams you may conjure in your absentminded youthfulness. Don't be pissed at me on this. I don't adhere to all rules either. I climb, dive, swim, hunt, hike, breathe, dream, love, hate, give, feel, smell and dream to no end.

Drop it all. Go see the world. Stay invisible for months or years if you like. Sleep in the woods or on a boat. Never come back but tell the people that expected you to stay in touch that you won't be in touch anymore. Tell the person you're mad at that you're mad at them and you will never forgive them and never speak to them... and then never speak to them. Don't just not be decent because "I don't have to" or "I don't play by man's rules". Learn about what you're getting into before you get into it. When you're on that mountain or on that ocean or in that cave or 85ft underwater is too late to beg forgiveness of this thoughtlessness.

Poor Chris. He chose to pop in and out of people's lives when it suited him, leaving many hurt in his wake. The freedom of not having any ties or strings or rules to cloud his image of beauty was what killed him in the end. People who want to romanticize that he would've rather died than have it any other way need to read his own words at the end and see that he knew too late that he fukt up and would've loved to had his family or any other man to take him home or to any other place on the planet then.

There is "dream world" and there is "real world" if you want to play "dream world" then get a satellite phone.

[GoNorth]

He ran from the only thing that could've helped him. Other people.

Seems you've only seen the movie and not read the book. McCandless never said he wanted to get away from people eternally, he only wanted to spend a few months alone in the wilderness of Alaska. He made new friends on his journey through the US, stayed in touch with them more or less regularly, met some of them again and promised to get back to them after his Alaska trip, and had even told Wayne once that he was thinking about founding a family one day.

Never come back but tell the people that expected you to stay in touch that you won't be in touch anymore. Tell the person you're mad at that you're mad at them and you will never forgive them and never speak to them... and then never speak to them.

I agree with you on this point. Not only for his sister (this thing really doesn't make any sense, I mean the fact that he still talked about their great relationship to strangers on his journey even years after having left her without a note), but also for his parents, whom he apparently really intended to leave (as he had told Carine rather shortly before disappearing). Even though I can understand that he didn't want to talk to them about his decision in person, in order to buy some time before they might start to search for him. But he could or should have written a letter at least. Just one. (but who knows, perhaps he did and the letter got lost somewhere )

He chose to pop in and out of people's lives when it suited him,

What's so special about that? Isn't that the way most people live? I don't know many people who would get in or out of someone else's life if it didn't suit them. And I wouldn't like anyone to get into or stay in my (private) life if it doesn't suit them.

leaving many hurt in his wake.

See above. That's only what the movie tries to persuade us of. All of us have already hurt other people, I suppose, and probably unintentionally most of the time. For me there's no evidence that Chris hurt more people in his short life than anyone else did or does in average in the same period of time.

The freedom of not having any ties or strings or rules to cloud his image of beauty was what killed him in the end.

As far as I understood, he died from starvation, which means a lack of food. And this situation occurred because he was not able to cross the Teklanika river and get back to the road in time. So if he had known more about rivers in subarctic regions and/or taken along a topographical map to show him a place to cross the river, or if he had been better prepared in terms of food reserves and supply, he would have survived this thing without the help of anyone else.

Really: Read the book and you'll get much more information about the person.

Happy New Year!

[Sick Eddie]

I've almost finished the book and would love to see the movie. I was talking about balance but I don't think I gave this enough balance myself. I love the idea of what I believe Chris was trying to become. His story has obviously touched many people including myself and it's a bit unfortunate that like in many cases that if he hadn't died we probably wouldn't even know anything of a Alex SAupertramp. Even worse is that it's looks like there was a good chance that if he were to have lived long enough to have gotten older and wiser he may have made some type of notable contribution to us in some way.

Thanks for your coaching GoNorth.

Happy New Year

[SteveSalmon]

~SS

[GoNorth]

Chris was an adult and didn't owe anyone an explanation

You are absolutely right. However I think it would have been, let's say more "coherent" to stand by his decision "officially" by telling his folks that he was through with his old life. Not necessarily on day one, of course, but perhaps after a while - when he knew he didn't intend to come back (by the way, when was that? We don't even know if he had planned to stay away for so long from the start, but that's another question).

For the rest, I agree with what you wrote.