Wild Man Life.

I feel like I just consumed the holy trinity of outdoor catastrophe memoirs: Into The Wild, Grizzly Man, Into Thin Air. Each story follows some man's insatiable desire for the wildreness, and his subsequent demise at the hands of the unforgiving mother nature.

Chris McCandless, the subject of Jon Krakauer's, Into the Wild, sitting in front of Bus 142 a few weeks before dying of starvation in the Alaskan outback.

Timothy Treadwell posing with one of his grizzly bear comrades, in Werner Herzog's documentary Grizzly Man. One of these bears eventually mauled and killed him.

Another epic tale from Jon Krakauer, detailing his ill-fated voyage to the summit of Mount Everest.

It's not entirely clear why people are drawn into the wild: to escape an unsatisfying society, to fulfill one's manly desires to be Wild At Heart, to be in nature, to push the limits of human capacity. I'm not really sure, but I feel like we all have that secret drive in us, and it comes out in different ways. For some people it tops off early, and for some people it seems to have no cap. So I guess that's why stories like this rattle me so much. I don't think that I could ever feel that urge to the point of putting myself in mortal danger, but I can, without a second's hesitation, understand why somebody would feel drawn to that.

I just can't decide. Were these men crazy, reckless, and foolhardy? Or are they some of the strongest men we'll ever know? Could you follow your dreams and desires any more passionately than this? I don't think you can, so I'm inclined to feel admiration--and maybe I slight twinge of jealousy that I don't posses the same fortitude. Also, what a gift it is to know so surely what you want. The one trait that all of these men share, is that they became possessed by their desires to face the wild, and that became their singular focus in life.

On that note, I suppose I also have a singular focus in life, but it's math, and that's not very sexy, or all that courageous. But it could be perceived as equally foolhardy. Then again, maybe it is courageous. Yeah, you know what, Class Field Theory is my Everest, and Gauss is KING.

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