Target contest Draft #1

Dear Mr. Krakauer,
As a fifteen-year old guy living in the city, I spend little time alone with my own personal thoughts. However, I recently read Into the Wild and, subsequently, have found myself sitting sometimes for over an hour, and simply pondering this extraordinary tale. I was struck by the unrefined humanity of Chris McCandless and decided to do more reading into the case. I noticed that, as you mentioned in your book, a large amount of criticism towards McCandless was based around his disregard for common sense in the face of death. In my opinion, there is no beauty greater or more alluring than nature at its wildest. Therefore, I can identify with Chris’s desire to experience raw nature and test death. Before reading this book I had, from time to time, wanted to go and spend time in the woods alone. Into The Wild was both an influential and cautionary tale for me. I was deeply inspired to follow my own dreams of going out with little and living off the land. However, the story also made the dangers of such a trip a true reality for me.

I felt that Chris’s trip was almost a religious experience for him. In the story he often refers to it as an “odyssey” or his “great Alaskan adventure. Living in central Virginia, I am very close to the scenic Blue Ridge mountain range, as well as the Appalachian Trail. However, truly wild places are a rarity, and, hiking in the area is periodically interrupted by a road, or a development. This has driven me to desire a more excluded area where I can better enjoy nature. I empathize with McCandless’s yearning for a truly unexplored land.

Throughout your novel I noticed your comparisons between McCandless, other loners/wanderers, and yourself. I too feel that I have an understanding of what Chris truly desired. Though I have never spent time alone in the ice like you, or lost myself in the desert, I still feel that pull towards wild places that I believe we all share. As a believer in certain social freedoms and certain basic obligations of a government towards its people, I feel that I can understand many of Chris’s emotional problems relating to society. Such things as poverty and financially driven evils disgusted him as they disgust me. When I read of all the atrocities people commit these days, I have often wanted to find some place where I can be free of such burdens on my conscience. I found it interesting how some of the basic, almost subconscious thoughts that drove both you and McCandless are mirrored in myself. Both of you were driven by a desire to get away from normality and find yourselves, and this is one of my greatest desires. However, because of your first hand account of how such a trip can be both dangerous and disappointing, I have since decided not to depend on the thought that such a trip would completely fix my life.

Your novel gave me hours of contemplation and, again, I want to thank you for writing such an honest, raw account of what it is to journey through nature. I almost feel as if the book embodies some my own personal desires and dreams. It has inspired me to contemplate my past and my future, and to one day perhaps attempt an odyssey of my own.
Thank you,
Kai Irving