Reality of the Remote Wilderness Krakauer s Into the Wild and the Inner Desert. Masato Tobari. Nippon Institue of Technology, Saitama, Japan

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1 Journal of Literature and Art Studies, December 2018, Vol. 8, No. 12, doi: / / D DAVID PUBLISHING Reality of the Remote Wilderness Krakauer s Into the Wild and the Inner Desert Masato Tobari Nippon Institue of Technology, Saitama, Japan In Jon Krakauer s nonfiction writing, Into the Wild (1996), away from the early 1990s American society filled with products and information, young McCandless headed for the Alaskan Wilderness which was believed as the last frontier. This remote wilderness far beyond several designated wilderness areas in the American West was a destination of his spiritual journey. The image of the wilderness overlaps with the desert in the fourth-century hagiographic literature in terms of solitude, pure and sacred. Although the image of the wilderness is an illusion, harsh experience quite different from daily routine give McCandless a sense of reality. If his purpose of going to wildernesses was searching for authentic self through bodily feelings (Wang, 361), the remote wilderness would be reckoned to have existential authenticity (Wang, 358) which makes him feel reality. However, when the wilderness experience inspired McCandless to go back home, a sense of reality shifted from the remote wilderness to society. Into the Wild is probably not literature to praise desert solitude, rather, Krakauer focuses on the relative self among people. Keywords: wilderness, reality, deseert, solitude, self, monk, experience, authenticity Introduction Since the US Congress passed the Wilderness Act in , designated wilderness areas have been basically highly protected against cultivation, grazing, logging, mining and other development for sake of our recreation and other reasons. Although section 2(a) of the Act mentioned outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation, conceptions of wilderness were criticized for its masculinity and the Eurocentric construction of wilderness (Mayer & Borrie, 299). Wilderness with a pristine or primitive quality could be a male fantasy 2. Authenticity of nature has been a critical issue in environmentalism 3. Masato Tobari is a Ph. D. candidate of Intercultural Communication Studies at Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan and a lecturer of English at Nippon Institute of Technology, Saitama, Japan. 1 Wilderness is an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve natural conditions (1964, Public Law : section 2(c)). 2 I compared Krakauer s Into the Wild (1996) with European fairy tales about wild man in terms of the hero s journey, Tobari, Masato. To Finish the Unfinished Journey: Creating a Saint of Wilderness. Literature and Environment: The Journal of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment in Japan, No. 21, 2018, pp See: Elliot, Robert. Faking Nature: The Ethics of Environmental Restoration. Routledge, Katz, Eric. Further adventures in the case against restoration. Environmental Ethics, vol. 34,2012, pp

2 1654 REALITY OF THE REMOTE WILDERNESS KRAKAUER S INTO THE WILD AND THE INNER DESERT Tourist research (Vidon, Rickly & Knudsen) in 2018 shows that even if the nature tourists acknowledged that, wilderness is a human construction (67), they feel pristine nature in their experiences. Because, they are instead seeking engagement with the fantasy of authenticity in hyperreal space (66) 4. It is not real solitude in a real wilderness (66) but a simulacrum (66) 5. This type of wilderness, as place devoid of human habitation or evidence of management is part of the fantasy that authenticity resides here (66). In the research, one tourist expressed his emotion, saying, (t)here s something magic there (67). Experiences with physicality brings the visitors a sense of reality, whereas a sense of wonder supports the reality. In this paper, I will examine how a sense of reality 6 based on experiences connects to the spiritual journey in a work of nonfiction, Jon Krakauer s Into the Wild (1996) referring to the image of wilderness in he fourth-century hagiographic literature, Life of Antony 7 based on Judith Adler s theory. Wilderness was regarded as a sacred place by the iconic figures such as Henry David Thoreau and John Muir: (o)ur forests are such a church, far grander and more sacred (Thoreau 13) and (n)o wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself (Muir 146). Journey into the remote wilderness is often narrated correlating to the matter of soul 8. A protagonist of Into the Wild left home for somewhere over the rainbow passing through deserts. Following Krakauer who followed McCandless, I discuss reality of the remote wilderness. Reality and Illusion of Wilderness Krakauer reconstructed interviews and a journal of Christopher McCandless who graduated Emory University, Atlanta in 1990, headed for the snow-covered Stampede Trail near Denali National Park in Fairbanks, Alaska in April 1992 and then, never came out of the wilderness. Into the Wild isn t an ordinary essay that the author describes his or her experience in wildernesses. As a third person, Krakauer discusses why some nature tourists are attracted to wildernesses and ended up there through an example of McCandless comparing with Gene Rosellini, Mallon Waterman and Carl McCunn. Krakauer speculated that these tourists had a similar illusion of the Alaskan wilderness. He introduces a description of McCunn s character traits by a young Fairbanks resident in Alaska, Mark Stoppel. It would be just like Carl to assume that somebody would magically appear to save him, says Stoppel. Carl was the sort of guy who would have unrealistic expectations that someone would eventually figure out he was in trouble and cover for him.he pronably still imagined that Big Sue was going to fly in at the last minute with a planeload of food and have this wild romance with him. But his fantasy world was so far off the scale that nobody was able to connect with it. (cite in Krakauer 83-84). 4 This is the reason for this journey into hyperreality, in search of instances where the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake; where the boundaries between game and illusion are blurred, the art museum is contaminated by the freak show, and falsehood is enjoyed in a situation of fullness, of horror vacui (Eco 8). 5 In fact, since it is no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal: the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere (Baudrillard 167) 6 Postmodernism has dealed with what reality is. See: Batterby, Doug. English Prize Essay Contemporary Realism, Postmodernism, and Bodily Feeling: Ian Mcguire s The North Water. English, vol. 67, 2018, pp See: William, S.J. Harmless. Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism. Oxford University Press, in her great solemn temple, where the true soul arises with a strong purpose and devout faith (The United States Magazine 376). The human soul like any soul, cannot be separated from nature (Plotkin 32).

3 REALITY OF THE REMOTE WILDERNESS KRAKAUER S INTO THE WILD AND THE INNER DESERT 1655 Big Sue could be a helper in Joseph Campbell s Cycle of the Monomyth (1949), who helps a hero by leading him to the other side of a threshold and giving him a magic item or a supernatural power to come home across the threshold. In reality, McCunn put an end to his life because of hunger without helpers. Both McCunn and McCandless entered the harsh environment without enough food and a proper outfit. They also left the journal in their final place, Fairbanks. One of the differences between them is unlike McCunn, he (McCandless) didn t go into the bush assuming someone would automatically appear to save his bacon before he came to grief (Krakauer 85). Instead of a person or a creature to help him, McCandless stumbled on an abandoned bus 9, the Fairbanks bus 142 besides the Sushana River. This remnant of civilization could work as a shelter for him. Besides, the wilderness surrounding the bus -the patch of overgrown country where McCandless was determined to become lost in the wild -scarcely qualifies as wilderness by Alaska standards (165). Krakauer indicates that the place McCandless stayed was not pristine wilderness. It s less than thirty miles to the George Parks Highway, sixteen miles to the Outer range where many tourists gather in summer (165). However, McCandless seemed to feel reality through his experience there. He wrote his thought in the margin of the chapter, Higher Laws in Henry David Thoreau s Walden (1854) when he stayed in the bus. I am reborn. This is my dawn. Real life has just begun. All true meaning resides in the personal relationship to a phenomeon, what it means to you. Absolute Truth and Honesty. Reality. Independence. Finality -Stability -Consistency. (in Krakauer 168; emphasis in the original) To borrow the words of the tourist research (Vidon, Rickly & Knudsen), hypernatural wilderness promises all that is pristine and perfect (66). If the wilderness is a state of mind, notion of self, being and experiential qualities (64) could define authenticity of the wilderness. It suggests that McCandless didn t feel reality in his previous life. Authentic Self State of mind in the urban areas was closely related to legislation of the Wilderness Act in Robert Marshall, a co-founder of the Wilderness Society argued psychological necessity for escape to the primitive (Nash 203) in terms of mental health (203). Over-civilized lifestyle would make the city dwellers feel that they lived in a superficial space apart from the earth. For Marshall the greatest values of wilderness were mental (202). Wilderness was firstly required for the health of urban life. Krakauer argues that a reason why McCandless headed for Alaska is relevant to a state of mind, saying that (u)nlike Muir and Thoreau, McCandless went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large but, rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul (183). McCandless might leave the West to the remote wilderness in Alaska so that he could confront himself. Casting a doubt why McCandless wasn t enough to the several preservation areas including designated wilderness areas on the way to Alaska, 9 When McCandless found the bus, Magic Bus Day, he wrote in his jounal (Krakauer 163).

4 1656 REALITY OF THE REMOTE WILDERNESS KRAKAUER S INTO THE WILD AND THE INNER DESERT Krakauer speculates that McCandless embraced an illusion of Alaska as a last frontier 10 in the U.S. But Despite the relative proximity of the bus to civilization, for all practical purposes McCandless was cut off from the rest of the world. He spent nearly four months in the bush all told, and during that period he didn t encounter another living soul (Krakauer 165). In a hypernatural landscape, illusion of wilderness offered him a refuge from society 11. When he fled to the wilderness, personal computer was increasingly a part of American lifestyle, and an information space, the World Wide Web was formed based on hypertext links and other systems. Virtual reality emerged in the early 1990s, while global environmental issues such as climate change and acid rain were broadly acknowledged. Natural habitats were degraded from above in reality, whereas virtual reality became a new frontier. These two phenomena would urge people to have a sense of connectability and wholeness globally. McCandless entered the Stapede Trail in April 1992 and died accidentally on August 18, 1992 (Krakauer 199), caused by eating moldy seeds ( ). It follows that he spent the last days in the wilderness during Earth Summit 12. While networks were forming worldwide, McCandless could develop an intranet in the secluded area. Wang (361) argues that a purpose of nature tourism is searching for authentic self through bodily feelings 13 in the space outside the dominant institutions, a space with cultural and symbolic boundaries which demarcate the profane from the sacred (Graburn 1989), responsibilities from freedom, work from leisure, and the inauthentic public role from the authentic self 14. In a sense, remote and ragged wilderness would be an ideal setting for the self-creation (Wang 363) because of the distance from society, offering the nature tourists diferrent experience from a daily routine. If we feel a loss of real self in public roles (Wang 360), remote wilderness opposite to society could emerge as the alternative reality no matter what pristine wilderness isn t authentic in terms of history. Indeed this in tourism may be a fantasy. But such a fantasy is a real one it is a fantastic feeling. Despite being a subjective (or intersubjective) feeling, it is real to a tourist and thus accessible to him or her in tourism (Wang 360). This suggests that reality isn t the absolute but the relative value based on individual experiences. McCandless described the Fairbanks Bus 142 as a (m)agic (Krakauer 163) while he expressed a sense of authentic self with a term, reality (168) in the Alaskan wilderness. The bus magically appeared in his reality as if it were a pumpkin carriage. His alternative reality in the wilderness was filled with magic in other words, a surprise such as poisonous seeds (193) which he ate mistakenly and the full flood of the Teklanika River (170) which cloistered him in an open space. 10 Historian, William Cronon has identified two main sources of the wilderness idea: the sublime and the frontier (474). 11 McCandless starred and bracketed the paragraph and circled refuge in nature in black ink (Krakauer 189). 12 It was held by UN in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992 to discuss climate change and sustainable development. As a result of the summit, three critical documents, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Agenda 21 and the Forest Principles were agreed. In addition, three important treaties, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa were ratified. 13 the body is through practices of risk in the wilderness. The fit body is, figuratively and literally, external evidence of internal qualities (Ray 261). 14 Wang calls this type of authenticity intra-personal authenticity (361).

5 REALITY OF THE REMOTE WILDERNESS KRAKAUER S INTO THE WILD AND THE INNER DESERT 1657 Inner Desert Adler argues some similarities between idealization of wilderness (15) in the U.S. and narratives of early Christian monasticism (13). As a new self-reflective investigation of mind (25) was a monastic practice (25), empty wilderness would be indicated as the ideal site for exploring, or rather cultivating, vast interior spaces of a newly discovered soul (26). Outer environment was inseparable from inner environment in hagiographic literature; mindscapes are as much as landscapes (16). Krakauer calls McCandless a monk (65, 199) because of his speculation that (c)hastity and moral purity were qualities McCandless mulled over long and often (65) focusing on his reading, Walden; McCandless circled Chastity is the flowering of the man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it (66). In Krakauer s narrative, Alaskan wilderness works as a monastery apart from secular world filled with seduction 15. In the Alaskan wilderness, McCandless experienced raptire through starvation (198), and then, he was at peace, serene as a monk gone to God (199). Adler describes mindscape in the fourth-century hagiographic literature, Life of Antony written by Athanasius. Ascetic vocation is identified with being led by the spirit into the desert (Lu.4.1; Mk 1.12; Mt. 4.1); moving higher, up a mountain. Or further, into a more remote inner desert, is the sign of spiritual progress and exaltation. The saints and deserts of hagiographic literature mirror one another: pure, rugged, terrible, mountainous wilderness offers the very image of the mind of a holy man, whose ascribed qualities, in turn, sanctified real geographical spaces (Adler 16-17; emphasis added). Since an ascetic and isolated life of Anthony the Great, an Egyptian monk became the foundation for monastery, he was called the first of the Fathers of the Desert (Waddell 3). His image of abstinence in desert was spread by another saint and a friend of Anthony, Athanasius of Alexandria 16 despite other ascetics before him as well as McCandless wasn t the first nature tourist to die in the wilderness. Image of McCandless is distinguished from his predecessors, because narrative of Into the Wild emphasizes his chastity. In Life of Antony, real geography corresponds with Anthony s spiritual quest which sets a destination in the desert far away. Adler argues that desert became idealized in Christian ascetic narrative as a spiritual home and final goal: a place to go to die to the world or, literally, to go to die; a virile, single-sex paradise that was not of this world (17). In a sense, the end of life and the end of the quest are mutually substitutable coreferents (16). Although the remote place without population called for the saint in a context of his personal spiritual progress and exaltation (17), monks reckon the place as devine because of his holiness. As well, chastity of McCandless sanctifies vast and remote Alaskan wilderness in Into the Wild with Krakauer s narrative. Leaving behind Atlanta at the end of June 1990 (Krakauer 22), he moved around the West including the Niland Slubs, an old navy air base that had been abandoned and razed, leaving a grid of empty concrete foundations scattered far and wide across the desert (43) in California. He did a lot of socializing, Jan Burres who corresponded by letters with him, witnessed there. 15 in a wilderness whose separation from the world is represented as pure and unqualified (Adler 19). 16 St. Athanasius and the Greek Life of Antony. Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 39, 1988, pp

6 1658 REALITY OF THE REMOTE WILDERNESS KRAKAUER S INTO THE WILD AND THE INNER DESERT Leaving the community in the Sonoran Desert, McCandless hiked further to Anza-Borrego Desert State Park whthin the Colorado Desert of southern California. The desert includes twelve designated wilderness areas and a bizarre encampment, where some two hundred people had gathered to spend the winter living out of their vehicles (50). MacCandless met an eighty-year-old devout Christian, Ronald Franz at the edge of the desert in January 1992 (48). After Franz lost his wife and only child caused by a drunk driver accident, he started to adopt many Okinawan children. However, when he met McCandless, Frantz had been living a solitary existence for many years (55). Declining an offer of adoption by the monk Franz, McCandless departured for a more remote inner desert. Return to Reality Developing deep relationships with Jan Burres and Ronald Franz, and the fact of that both the Sonoran Desert and the Colorado Desert had the communities, could urge McCandless to go into the Alaskan wilderness in pursuit of solitude. These two persons would work as milestones in his spiritual progress. In early April 1992, McCandless sent a letter to Franz. My point is that you do not need me or anyone else around to bring this new kind of light in your life. It is simply waiting out there for you to grasp it, and all you have to do is reach for it. The only person you are fighting is yourself and your stubbornness to engage in new circumstances. Ron, I really hope that as soon as you can you will get out of Salton City, put a little camper on the back of your pickup, and start seeing some of the great work that God has done here in the American West. You will see things and meet people and there is much to learn from them. I hope that the next time I see you, you will be a new man with a vast array of new adventures and experiences behind you (in Krakauer 57-58; emphasis added). The letter to Franz suggests that the journey of McCandless was internal, facing himself so that he could be born again as a new man in a divine realm. In the letter, McCandless didn t mention a wilderness nor recommend a solitary life, rather urged Franz to meet people on the basis of his own experiences in new circumstsnces, the American West consist of unknown landscape and people. Although he headed for the remote wilderness leaving Franz and others behind, he didn t intend to die in the wilderness according to Krakauer, saying that (m)y suspicion that McCandless s death was unplanned, that it was a terrible accident (134), and (s)atisfied, apparently, with what he had learned during his two months of solitary life in the wild, McCandless decided to return to civilization (168). I hope that the next time I see you (in Krakauer 58) in the letter, corresponds to this. The remote wilderness wasn t a place of demise but a place for regeneration. Jack Zipes, a researcher of fairy tales in terms of postmodernism, mentions only through experiencing the strange utopia of Oz, learning about aliens and other ways, does Kansas become bearable (127) in his anaslisis of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Baum 1900) and its film adaptations. A sense of alienation in Oz makes Drothy accept Kansas where she belongs. (H)er experiences in the utopia of Oz (127) prompts her to confront her daily life. A journey to the ideal place is actually a journey to accept own home.

7 REALITY OF THE REMOTE WILDERNESS KRAKAUER S INTO THE WILD AND THE INNER DESERT 1659 Conclusion After spending two months in a hanting and gathering life-style (Krakauer 168, 188) in the Alaskan wilderness, McCandless decided to go home, writing down that (a)nd so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED (in Krakauer 189; emphasis in the original). Krakauer describes how McCandless struggled to hunt games and preserve meat. He could feel authentic self (Wang 361) with his survival instinct in the unfamiliar circumstances and then, he seemed to realize that he didn t belong there with a feeling of alienation from the wilderness. His home is out of the wilderness, where his family and fellows such as Burres and Franz wait for him. His journey to the remote wilderness was necessary to accept his home as well as Drothy did. Searching for authentic self (Wang 361) in a vast blank space without social influence -ripping off his public roles (360)- was a part of the journey to come home 17. In the quotation (in Krakauer 189), McCandless expressed that his solitary life in the remote wilderness was not his reality anymore. The Alaskan wilderness was supposed to be the last reality in the world with climate change and virtual reality. Separated from the rest of the world, the secluded wilderness worked as the inner desert (Adler 17) which was the real place corresponded with his state of mind. However, when he realized that he couldn t stay there any longer physically, reality was inverted. The remote civilization became his reality, because he identified himself in a state of relativity. Although postmodern wilderness-oriented wrintig and the fourth-century hagiographic literature 18 focus on the absolute self living up to the American identity or Christian monasticism 19, Into the Wild implies that human is a creature living in the relationship with others. References Adler, Judith. Cultivating Wilderness: Environmentalism and Legacies of Early Christian Asceticism. Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 48, no. 1, 2006, pp American Periodicals. The United States Magazine, October 1856, p.378. Athanasius. Athanasius : The Life of Antony and the Letter To Marcellinus. Edited by Robert C. Gregg, Paulist Press, Baudrillard, Jean. Disneyworld Company. Liberation, March 4, Baum, L. Frank. the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.George M. Hill, Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces (3rd ed.). New World Library, Cronon, William. Te trouble with wilderness, or, getting back to the wrong nature. Great New Wilderness Debate, edited by J. B. Callicott & M. P. Nelson, University of Georgia Press, 1998, pp Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. Harcourt, Graburn, Nelson H. H. Tourism: the Sacred Journey. in Hosts and Guests (2nd ed.), edited by Valene Smith, University of Pennsylvania, 1989, pp Krakauer, Jon. Into the wild. Random House, Meyer, Angela M., and Borrie, William T. Engendering Wilderness. Journal of Leisure Research, vol. 45, no. 3, 2013, pp Muir, John. My First Summer in the Sierra. Houghton Mifflin, Coming back home with a new-self is a final step of a type of Hero s journey according to Joseph Campbell. 18 Your soul is your true home (Plotkin 40). 19 Antony the Great told his friend, Augustine of Hippo who didn t follow him to the desert. Antony had said, this goodness as a thing impossible nor the pursuit of it as something alien, set a great way off: it hangeth on our own arbitrament. For the sake of the Greek learning men go overseas but the city of God hath its foundations in every seat of human habitation the Kingdom of God is within.the goodness that is in us doth ask but the human mind (Waddell 7).

8 1660 REALITY OF THE REMOTE WILDERNESS KRAKAUER S INTO THE WILD AND THE INNER DESERT Nash, Roderick Franzier. Wilderness and the American Mind (5th ed.).yale University Press, Plotkin, Bill. Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World. New World Library, Ray, Sarah Jaquette. Risking Bodies in the Wild: The Corporeal Unconscious of American Adventure Culture. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, vol. 33, no. 3, 2009, pp Thoreau, Henry David. Walden: Or, life in the woods. James Munroe and Company, Thoreau, Henry David. A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and reform Papers. Ticknor and Fields, Vidon, Elizabeth S., Rickly, Jillian M., and Knudsen, Daniel C. Wilderness state of mind: Expanding authenticity. Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 73, 2018, pp Wang, Ning. Rethinking Authenticity in Tourism Experience. Annals of Tourism Research, vol. 26, no. 2, 1999, pp Waddell, Helen. The Desert Fathers. Constable, Zipes, Jack. Fairy Tale as Myth. The University Press of Kentucky, 1994.