Into The Wild Reflection Essay

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Every summer I spend 6 weeks away from civilization, canoeing and working hard with group of 8-12 young women. I have been doing this for the past 6 summers of my life. Throughout these summers people have told me how much I will value the time I spend in the wilderness. They tell me these experiences that I am so fortunate to have is something that I will truly never forget. But every time I heard this I brushed it off seeing as I was a young kid and all I cared about was having fun (which I did). But as I got older I started to understand more and more what people had been telling me all of these years. As the people around me started to get more dependent upon technology and digital interactions, I became more aware of how lucky I was. I have been fortunate enough to build character and strength through something that I love to do. This summer experience is one that I would not trade …show more content…
Although Chris McCandless was unable to have the success that Dick Proenneke had he still sought the experience of living alone in the wilderness. Chris McCandless was inspried by Thoreau, the “hermit of the wilderness” (http://transcendentalism-legacy.tamu.edu/authors/thoreau/ ) to try and survive without any human contact or being in touch with the outside world. John Krakauer explains the appeal of the wilderness from his own experiences mountain climbing. “The lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes--all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose...”(Krakauer, 143). This clarity of purpose that John Krakauer describes is one that appealed to many readers of this tale. Living so simply, while trying accomplish a task at hand is an experience that can potentially deeply influence one’s character and outlook on

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