One of my all-time favorite books when I was growing up was called My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George. It’s a story about a boy named Sam who goes to live alone on a mountain for a while. He ends up living in a hollowed out old tree, hunts his own food, and survives a snowy winter.
Stories were a big part of my childhood, but this one in particular remains engrained in my memory. I don’t quite know why. Maybe it was the sheer uniqueness of the story: there was only one human character present in most of the book (I think we read about his dad when he drops him off in the Catskills). Maybe it was that, with my family often spread out across the globe, missing people I love has long been a theme in my life and, thus, puzzled me greatly in this character: here was somebody who chose to leave behind everybody he loved. Maybe it was the fact that Sam must rely only on himself for survival, something that I have always wondered whether I could do. And maybe it was that I have always harbored (and continue to harbor?) a secret desire to throw off the demands of everybody I know and do the ultimate selfish (unselfish?) act: run away and live in the woods.
Come to think of it, this theme of natural, utterly independent existence is not one that is rare in the books I have read over the years. The Hatchet series, by Gary Paulsen, which follow a boy who survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness and is forced to fend for himself, left me breathless. Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, and the same film with Emile Hirsch, entranced me as well. There are a number of other stories whose names I cannot remember that fascinated me in a similar regard. Apparently, I have a thing for this whole solitary, outdoorsy, action-adventure thing.
It’s truly not just one thing that draws me to these stories. There are many things that sustain my daydream of setting off on my own similar adventure. A desire to see if I could make it on my own, for example, and in all senses of the world. To see if I could make do without others, if I could take care of myself. Also, the desire to be part of nature – really part of it, not just an observer – and to lose myself in it for a while. There is another thing: the desire to throw off all the expectations and burdens of society, to just be, live, exist. That is still the part that draws me in, and infeasible as it is.
But I have also realized that, not only is that option not feasible, it's not what I want. For better or worse, my happiness is tied to the people I care about and there is no distance I can travel to free myself from that.
Even if I could, I am not convinced that I would want to.
