Your trip, your story?

Use this forum to chat about anything to do with travelling.
Trekker
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Oct 23, 2016 8:24 pm

Your trip, your story?

Postby Trekker » Sun Oct 23, 2016 8:37 pm

Please tell us about your trip! It's not hard to find a post about someone going on a trip or starting a new adventure. But the follow up is often missing. I have no plan myself, not for the near future anyway, but I love the stories about Chris and people like him. How did you escape conformity?

There are some who made great trips, experienced great adventure. Except Chris I enjoy reading anything from Ken Ilgunas. Please share your story. Thanks!

Hurley
Posts: 6
Joined: Fri Jan 19, 2018 8:36 pm

Re: Your trip, your story?

Postby Hurley » Fri Jan 19, 2018 9:33 pm

My trip started in 2014 and I hope it never ends. I need to start and run a nonprofit in Anchorage, AK where I'll teach the homeless to manufacture outdoor gear and clothing. This may not be the trip you are referring to, but it's the only one I have presently. many years ago I wanted to kayak from San Diego to Point Barrow, AK, having people donate to their fav cause depending on how far I got. I planned and read about everything I would need to survive, but unfortunately, the 10k I had was used for a family emergency and I never went. I also never forgot how close I was to being happy. That was 25 years ago and trust me, when you get as old as me, you too will regret not following your peace and joy.

I plan that this nonprofit I start will make up for my failure in the past. You asked how did I escape conformity? That's a long answer and not for this forum, I'm afraid. Much of what I learned a long time ago was from Chris, but not all. He was a small part of my adventure. Chris was for me, a person in my time that I could relate to in some ways. What helped push, yes, I said pushed me to follow a long-held dream was the lose of any father in my teenage years, my cold mother, both taught me nothing about life or friendship. being a loner in the school years, I retreated into myself. Then I got married for some stupid reason because I didn't know anything about it. Is that why I married a meth addict? I had three kids that she kidnapped long ago and so they never knew me. Now, they know where I live but never contact me. I didn't have any family who advised me or helped. So, you can see I never truly learned to conform because I had no role model I wanted to perform for or be like. I don't want a lot of money, or a mortgage, or a car payment. Those are worldly notions that others put on you because they are prisoners themselves.

I lost my family, dignity, and purpose for a long, long, time. But as I got into researching charities overseas and how they give life and hope to people, I thought that's exactly what I want to do, to. Find a family outside my own which disowned me. And that's how I escaped conformity and staying a slave to the unfair and senseless social order that is the 21st century in the US. I also studied world history which explains people's behavior and practices since the beginning. I realized that my problems have been owned by millions of others through time. I was never alone as I thought. Chris may have wanted to share with others to be happy, I need to serve others to be happy.

"Horatius" from the Lays of Ancient Rome by Lord Macaulay, 1842. "Oblivion" film, 2013. Then spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate: "To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods." If you wish to follow me as I go through my nonprofit future, it can be found here: https://horatioatthebridge.blogspot.com/

janderson
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Feb 23, 2018 6:08 pm

Re: Your trip, your story?

Postby janderson » Fri Feb 23, 2018 6:48 pm

Hey all first time forum noob here. I literally spent all night reading hundreds of threads containing many different aspects of the McCandless story. I had first learned about Chris when Penn’s Into The Wild released. I intend to read the book, actually all books from John and Carine. I feel like Chris could’ve made it out but maybe the Moose, or he did ransack those cabins something made him continue to be self sufficient despite his downhill progress. The mind is a powerful thing. It can make you do things you never thought possible, but it can also put you six feet under before you are physically there.

I say this because I can relate to Christopher’s mentality. He was a victim of something he couldn’t get past and it warped his view of people, places and things. I can understand people who succeed or have a plan the whole time can not understand this. Not everyone knows from day 1 what they want. I’ve been out of high school for 15 years and I still have no clue what I want from life. In fact I find it very discouraging that we have to work regardless just to survive. But what happens when that survival is toxic workplaces? What purpose or joy is found in those places? I can tell you there is none from my experience. I do acknowledge though that some people are able to work in these places, with the lowest of low with no ambition. These people usually are followers and hum through the motions through their life and they are fine with being a sheep. I, on the other hand starve for purpose. I starve to make a difference. To take a stand and to deliver my message of peace and morals. I’ve always taken jobs in the low class areas where I would find people with no creative thought and for years I was trapped in the same toxic environments.

The closest I came to a Christopher McCandless story was I took a trip out west a few years ago. I was gone for a couple weeks and I wrote about my journey when I got back. The book is called MEMOIRS FROM THE ROAD WEST and it is published and available on iBooks and Barnes and Noble.com. I’m proud of the story but since then I have had this feeling of incompleteness. I may have gone on my own adventure but I wasn’t gone long enough to learn what I needed to learn. Instead I got scared. I’m not proud of that at all because I feel like I should’ve pushed through it to discover what I needed to. I want to go back out west again. To escape society(the bad people) and to fellowship with similar people in places where they seek the same. I don’t think I need to prove at all that I can survive as much as I need to find that “tolerance” of the people we share this world with. How to do that I still haven’t found to this day, but I know for sure that factory jobs are ripe with low ambition/lower intelligent people. I need to get away from that and find an outlet where I am heard and valued.

Like I said before I do relate to Christopher McCandless I get that what he experienced as a kid never left him and despite the opportunity he had, the bad was worse than good and he needed to deal with it. I believe he wanted to come back. I find it discouraging that locals knew and seemed to wait for him to die just to prove a point.

Chris wasn’t crazy he just went through things that messed him up I mean if you found out you were just a side family and you weren’t appreciated? That part is missing from a lot of speculation. Family mattered to Chris and he didn’t know how to deal with the circumstances he got. I’ve also been through things that make me question people and their integrity daily and it has made living in society difficult.

There are parts of the McCandless story I want to know. Like what happened when he was in Vegas? Why did the locals know but avoided him? I’m not sure about the Tercel that’s a tiny car to be driving in rugged Alaska forest. Did Chris avoid them? Where was Chris the couple weeks in May he didn’t make any entries? Was he snooping around the nearby cabins?
Hopefully all these answers will be revealed to us someday.


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