bus

A replica of the old Fairbanks city bus where Chris McCandless starved to death is parked in front of the 49^th State Brewery in Healy. It is a weird icon, serving both as a testament to adventure (how many thousands have come to Alaska inspired by the rambling writings and story of wanderlust that filled the pages of Into the Wild) and a warning to those that would test the wilds of Alaska and themselves, and come up short. There is a going theory that McCandless was not just a philosophizing wanderer, a lost soul in a world where he didn’t fit, but that he was suffering from schizophrenia and that the detachment from reality contributed to his eventual death in the wilderness just west of the little mining town.

Alaskans like to whine and complain about how the story of that troubled kid traveling the country and eventually ending up in Alaska inspires unprepared greenhorns to come up every summer and attempt a pilgrimage to ‘the bus’ out the old stampede trail. The summer I worked in Healy as a medic, the fire chief was quoted in the paper claiming that dozens of inept tourists had to be rescued from sure death after attempting to retrace the steps of their hero, taxing the resources of the small town. The reality that summer was that the only people needing rescue were a couple of local boys who got their four wheel drive truck stuck halfway out the trail on a mudding tear after a weekend party.

Tonight I stopped at the brewery on my way back to Fairbanks, and walked around the iconic bus prop from the movie, now turned into a museum of sorts with photos and quotes from McCandless’ last weeks trapped on the far side of the river and starving to death in the wilderness. I didn’t go inside this time, as I’ve seen it all before and I find the whole display in questionable taste, especially next to a Frisbee golf tee and bocce ball court outside a rowdy summer brewpub. The story sticks with me still, though, as it has with so many. I came up to Alaska in my twenties, as well, and made some poor choices in adventure and trajectory. I managed to come out of my scrapes alive, with a combination of luck and overcautious paranoia, but I was no less naive to the dangers of the bush than he was and no less in a state of idealistic reverie when I traipsed across the border starry-eyed and oblivious at the age of twenty four. I have only fate to thank that I’m still wandering these roads and trails, a decade later, a little more savvy and a little less idealistic about the wilderness and what she has to offer than I was back then.

And yet I still find myself wandering the trails into the mountains, feeling a connection and a place that I have never felt in the world of the people I come from. There is still that magic here in the hills, wild and uncaring, that gives me chills and draws me back year after year when I could be spending my precious weeks off elsewhere. And there are still days when I wonder if I will yet be drawn in a little too far, a little too deep, to come out on the other side.