The film helped me realise that getting out into nature would also allow me to escape my anxieties, but I started to see the costs of constant escape
It’s 5.30am, and I’m waking up on a granite slab overlooking the Domeland Wilderness, with nothing but forest, stone and silence for miles. I am 44 days into hiking the Pacific Crest Trail – a journey of about 2,650 miles from the Mexican border to Canada through desert scrubland, pine forests, deep valleys, volcanic terrain and alpine mountains. Each day, I walk about 20 miles with everything I need for the next four months on my back.
I was 16 when I first watched Into the Wild, the film telling the true story of Christopher McCandless, an adventurer who gave up his middle-class life to live in the wilderness. I’d always had a sense of adventure and was enticed by the idea of breaking away from expectations and moving through the world on my own terms. I began to fantasise about escaping my north London bubble to live somewhere as remote and unknown as the wild American landscapes in the film.
Continue reading...
The film helped me realise that getting out into nature would also allow me to escape my anxieties, but I started to see the costs of constant escapeIt’s 5.30am, and I’m waking up on a granite slab overlooking the Dom...
See more
