oil on panel

Thank you to Ed Plumb [link] for graciously allowing me to use his photo of bus 142 as reference.

This painting was inspired by the story of Christopher McCandless – aka “Alexander Supertramp”. I first read his story “Into the Wild” more than 10 years ago and have reread it several times since. It’s a captivating and haunting story. If you haven’t read it already - I highly recommend it. In short: upon graduating college he renounced a life of privilege and “success”, donated all the money in his savings account ($24,000) to charity, and lived the life of a vagabond. He lived simply, often off the land, by his own wits, and occasionally by taking up odd jobs. He kept company with nature, books, drifters, misfits, and the destitute. Eventually he was found dead in an abandoned bus near Fairbanks Alaska.

Many folks (especially Alaskans) consider him to be foolish and arrogant for setting off into the Alaskan wilderness as ill prepared as he was. He only had a 10 pound bag of rice, a tent, a sleeping bag, and a .22 caliber rifle (which is practically like having a bb gun). No compass, no map, no axe, no snowshoes, and not even mosquito repellent. It’s my belief, however, that the point of Chris’s Alaskan adventure wasn’t only to survive – pushing himself and truly living was the point. He had written that he wished to “kill the false being within”. Not that I think it was his intent to die – just that this was more of a high-stakes spiritual exercise for him. If simple survival were his primary motive he would’ve undoubtedly come more prepared.

I chose the raven as, both, a symbol of darkness and light: I think Chris’s death can be a stark warning to us all that an excess of confidence and personal ambition may eventually lead to a barren wasteland of unrelenting loneliness and regret. So, to have Poe’s raven turn his cold eye upon us and croak out “nevermore” seems fitting. Beyond that, though, and possibly more importantly – Chris’s life and how he lived it has been inspirational and enlightening to the many of us fortunate enough to benefit from hearing his story. Chris had the wisdom to see that the materialism and poison values of our culture required a response of radical change. He maintained the courage to hope and applied his indomitable will towards living a new way. There’s a common Native American myth where a greedy old man has taken the light and hidden it from the world. The raven (less than pleased with this arrangement) tricks the old man, steals the light away, and places the sun back in the sky – vanquishing the dark. Chris lived more fully in his 24 years than most of us probably will in a lifetime – primarily I see him as a bringer of light.