John Muir and Chris McCandless

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Both John Muir and Chris McCandless had their own collection of similarities and differences. Jon Krauker’s nonfiction work, Into the Wild, captures Chris McCandless’ story. In 1992, a young man from a wealthy family was given a trip to Alaska and set out on his own into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Chris McCandless was his name. He had donated about $25,000 in savings fund money to charity, given up his car and a large portion of his belongings, burned all of the cash in his pocket, and imagined a new life for himself (Krauker, 12). His body was discovered four months later. How McCandless came to die is the exceptional and extraordinary story of Into the Wild.

Following his graduation from college, Chris had meandered through the West and Southwest on a fantasy mission like those made by his legends John Muir and Jack London. In the Mojave Desert, he abandoned his auto, stripped it of its plates, and burned all his money. He would give himself another name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unhindered with money and ‘things’, he would be permitted to fumble in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented (Krauker, 20)). Desiring a clear spot on the guide, McCandless essentially discarded the maps. Abandoning his frantic guardians and sister, he vanished into nature.

Krakauer builds up an explaining gem crystal which he reassembles the alarming occasions of McCandless’ short life. Conceding an intrigue that borders on obsession, he searches for the signs to the wants and needs that moved Chris McCandless. Burrowing profoundly, he takes a naturally persuading secret and loosens up the greater inquiries it holds: the noteworthy draw of the American wild on our inventive capacity; the appeal of high-hazard exercises to youthful colleagues of a particular cast of mentality; the puzzling, charged bond between fathers and their children.

At the point when Chris’ innocent errors end up being irreversible and deadly, he turns into the stuff of newspaper features and is rejected for his guilelessness, hubris, and pretensions. Krakauer brings Chris’ uncompromising journey out of the shadows, and the risk, misfortune, and renunciation looked for by this mysterious young fellow are lit up with an uncommon understanding– and not an ounce of nostalgia.

Of all the diaries, journals and other unpublished works of Mr.Muir, nothing is probably going to come to us more alight with his identity than the two volumes distributed since his demise. They bear an intriguing relationship to each other, for not exclusively do the Letters end similarly as he was setting out on the first of the trips recorded in Travels in Alaska, however the last book, the last to leave his hands, is as yet expressive of the beliefs and enthusiasms of the youthful John Muir so strikingly uncovered to us in the letters. It isn’t frequently given to a man to have lived on with his life with such singleness of reason and purpose, nor at three-score years and ten to have so completely satisfied the aims and goals of his childhood.

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Travels in Alaska is a record of three excursions of exploration using a canoe and afoot among the mountains and fiords of Southeastern Alaska. Despite the fact that traders, miners and a number of missionaries were scattered among the islands, and were starting to push up the river valleys, most of Alaska was in the year 1879 still unexplored, its fiords unfamiliar since Vancouver’s day. With Fort Wrangell as his base, John Muir made a few short steamer trips, which gave him the chance to learn something of the forests and glaciers of the region. After his arrival from a broadened trip up the Stickeen River in October, he set out with Young, a Wrangell evangelist, and a group of Indian canoe men, to visit the fjords to northward, close to the nation of the warlike Chilcat tribes. Their momentous excursion finished in the disclosure of Glacier Bay and its grand organization of ice sheets, the biggest of which bears John Muir’s name. The next year he proceeded with his explorations, especially in the area of Sum Dum Bay and the Taku Fjord, and in 1890 restored a third time to the Muir for more expanded explorations of its upper fields and exploration of its flow.

The book possesses abounds in passages of great magnificence and beauty. The portrayal of the dawn in ice Glacier Bay, his camp-fire in the tempest, of the auroras, of the view from Glenora Peak, and a score of others, will rank among his best work. A fascinating part of the book is the new light in which it places John Muir in his connection to humankind. His fine, expansive comprehension of the Indians, their ideas, their failings, the sadness of their circumstance, where the approach of human advancement brought predominantly the “contamination of bad whites,” is shown most thoughtfully all through. His meeting with Le Claire, the coureur-de-bois and their cozy brotherhood for a day and a night before partying ways, is another noteworthy look at the John Muir known to his companions, the big-hearted liberal friend, the admirer of everything basic, genuine and best in humanity.

Beginning with John Muir he had numerous occupations. He was an agriculturist, naturalist, inventor, author and an explorer. Chris had a similar enthusiasm for being an explorer and an author wanting to investigate and explore the world and its numerous marvels and beauty like Muir. Mccandless always wanted to explore the world somewhat more in Alaska, yet this was something John Muir couldn’t do on the grounds that he was married and had two girls which he claims took a lot of time off his work (Goldenstein,13). When they were young both Muir and Mccandless encountered a portion of similar perceptions and observations of nature.

One would take interest in exploring a forest learning the quality and true value of nature while the other would wander through the fields. Contrasting John Muir wonders with Chris McCandless, John would have a slighter better shot of leaving this world with a better name or reputation on his hand. By this, I mean John did not likewise explore and write he was an inventor and built up his own particular hypothesis and theories. As a creator and inventor, he designed timekeepers that kept precise time and a gadget that tipped him out of bed every morning getting used to and also became a nuisance and annoyance to his family.

Furthermore, John was the inventor of the Theory of the glaceon Yosemite Valley Behaviorally Philosophically. Chris on the other side lived a quiet down to earth existence with a sprinkle of visionary contemplations all over. John additionally appears to have an inclination towards McCandless all through the book, perhaps to live his life the way he did. Historically Muir was noted for being political representative, ecological thinker and religious prophet, whose compositions turned into an individual guide into nature for innumerable people, making his name ”practically omnipresent” in the cutting edge ecological cognizance. Behaviorally John Muir and Chris McCandless both appreciated writing which pushed them towards taking more classes to acquire learning.

The two were generous. John Muir attempted to spare a part of Foundation Lake so individuals could appreciate nature and Chris McCandless gave 25,000 dollars to OXFAM. Muir built timekeepers, table saws, indicators, barometers; in addition to other things and McCandless worked in the carpentry business they both, therefore,had helpful skills. They both had enormous objectives as a primary concern. John needed to walk 1000 miles to Florida and Cuba and Chris needed to drift the nation over. They both invested energy in Alaska and in the wild since they had affection for nature and its magnificence.

Despite the fact that John Muir got a book published and distributed and Chris didn’t, he still expounded on his experiences and adventures philosophically just like Muir a mountain climber, conservationist, naturalist and ecologists whose perspectives were nearly connected with introspective philosophy (like Chris).

Muir and McCandless were both intensely inspired and influenced by the writings of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Muir and McCandless all were willing to risk it all for nature. Muir climbed deceptive mountains, Muir went to look for the ”sublime in nature”, and McCandless strongly ventured ”into the wild”.

Jon Krakauer and Chris McCandless were both daring and brave people who lived for the thrill that nature gave them. The two had controlling fathers who set the bar high for their children, driving them to feel the want to get away. After sometime McCandless got some answers concerning his parent’s dim past mystery he started to take trips and outings to get away from reality. Krakauer’s dad gave him the strife to be fruitful even though their objectives were not the same. The two people ventured out into the wild to appreciate the beauty it offered.

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McCandless chose to make a trip to Alaska and Krakauer chose to travel to Antarctica. They appreciated and enjoyed these places that relatively few individuals had been there and it gave them a feeling of quietude since they felt little in such an expansive, open plain. McCandless and Krakauer would concur that there were dangers included when they selected to go into the brutal obscure world; however, that was what made the trek beneficial. It kept them on their toes and mindful of every one of that was going ahead around them. Jon and Chris realized that they would presumably persevere through extraordinary agony being in an uninhabited landscape yet the physical exertion brought them bliss and fulfillment.

Jon and Chris were used to a somewhat more urban range with access to an unfaltering food supply, a vehicle for speedy travel and a home they underestimated their circumstances. Chris didn’t bring sufficient food supply to live comfortably nor did he have an automobile to traverse the raging water in Alaska.

Chris did not have a guide or a map which would have enabled him to locate a safe course over the river. Jon thought little of what the height of Mount Everest and how frosty it was on the climb. The high altitude made it hard to inhale and difficult to keep one’s thoughts straight. A typical logic was that one couldn’t simply discuss the wild, one needed to encounter it.

Unlike Chris, Muir used a map or guide in most of his travels and explores. I believe that Muir would not find any difficulty in navigating the course of the rivers, even finding the safe routes would have been much easier. In association with the land management agencies Map Guide of Muir trails has been expertly researched and created (Goldenstein, 23).This Map Guide gives nitty-gritty topographic maps, fascinating history, a waypoint table, data about wild safety, and key purposes of intrigue you will experience along the trail. A resupply area chart demonstrates shipping address or contact data, administrations accessible and distances at each resupply point. Each guide page has a definite trail profile that demonstrates the height transforms you will experience. Additionally, the John Muir Trail is featured and focused on each page so you can without much of a stretch keep tabs on your development.

The maps begin at the northern end of Yosemite Valley and advance along the edge of the Sierra Nevada, past Devils Postpile, and end at the most elevated point in the lower forty-eight on the highest point of Mount Whitney. En route you will go through; Ansel Adams Wilderness, Yosemite National Park, Devils Postpile National Monument, Kings Canyon National Park, John Muir Wilderness and lastly, Sequoia National Park and Mount Whitney. A twenty one-day test schedule is incorporated also.

Following quite a while of tramping the American Southwest after his graduation from Emory University, McCandless touches base at the town of Topock, Arizona. There, he hastily purchases a used aluminum canoe, and starts to paddle down the Colorado River to the Gulf of California. The lower Colorado goes through ”some of the hottest, starkest country on the continent,” and is ”stirred by the austerity of the landscape.” From Topock, he ventures south down Lake Havasu, through the Colorado River Indian Reservation, Imperial National Wildlife Refuges and the Cibola (Krauker, 40). Conveying no ID, he sneaks into Mexico by sneaking past the open conduits of the Morelos Dam, at that point turns out to be pitifully lost in a labyrinth of water system waterways.

Chris had started his excursion by canoe towards the beginning of November, and it was now the beginning of January. At this time he was caught in a fierce storm which cleared his canoe out to untamed waters, and he narrowly escaped with his life. This near fiasco persuaded Chris to surrender his canoe and head back north. Leaves the boat at southeast of El Golfo de Santa Clara, and he started strolling north along the shoreline, he was caught by authorities at the US border, and he was briefly imprisoned.

Likewise, John Muir had several canoe experiences; but they were much different from Chris’. John’s kayaking experience was not as fatal and also unlike Chris he never got lost or experience fierce storm along the way. I believe that if Muir was the one paddling the canoe along the waters of Colorado River he would have accessed and learned of any signs of storm and choose a different time to paddle the waters.

I lean to the thinking that Chris was irresponsible and his death inescapable. But there are also stories about John being reckless like- climbing a tree amidst a storm to encounter its fury. Considering the two, Chris and John it is clear to see that there is a huge difference between taking well-calculated risk (in light of broad information and shrewdness) that other individuals may think irresponsible and taking risks from pure naivety and not having an idea about the amount you don’t know. I doubt that John, in Chris’ circumstance would have had any issues getting out alive.

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Works Cited

Goldstein, Natalie. John Muir. New York, NY: Chelsea House, 2011. Print.

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. , 2015. Print.

Muir, John, and Terry Gifford. John Muir: The Eight Wilderness Discovery Books. London: Diadem Books, 2010. Print.

Penn, Sean, Jon Krakauer, Michael Brook, Emile Hirsch, Marcia G. Harden, and William Hurt. Into the Wild. Paris: Pathé distribution [éd., 2008.

September 11, 2021
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