This is what Chris McCandless carved into a piece of wood discovered at the site of where his body was found in 1992, along with that a pile of books and few other possessions. I wholeheartedly agree with this claim – the world London creates is a romantic emersion into the wilderness. (and yes, i am indulging in ‘INTO THE WILD’ by Jon Krakauer.)
What i am enjoying most about this read are the short excerpts taken from the books found with McCandless in that bus in Alaska. So many of these short snippets of literature put you in the head space of where someone who feels life is only pure when in the wild and all else is excessive. Whilst I appreciate these ideals, I don’t think i could fulfil the desire to walk into the wild as he did.
I just settle for the wilderness of Tasmania from the safety of Launceton.
This particular excerpt is such a visual and romantic idea of the wilderness, I thought I would share...
Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible than any sadness – a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.
– Jack London ‘WHITE FANG’.
