Sometimes it鈥檚 crazy to think about how chance occurrences and interactions with simple things can be powerful enough to change our entire world.
I was thinking about this recently after recalling books that I had read that have had a huge impact on my life. In reality, books are merely paper and ink of very little value, but the words and sentences can become invaluable.听
Once read, books have the power to plant an idea into our minds that can stay with us for a lifetime.
While I now try to write to inspire others to explore the wild, I too was at one point inspired by the writings of others to lace up my boots and head out on the trails in search of adventure.
Here are a few of the books that I have read that had a profound impact on my life and steered my course down paths I would never have otherwise visited.听
听
Walden听
You can鈥檛 begin to do any sort of research into wilderness in North America without coming across the book Walden by Henry David Thoreau. While most have likely seen quotes from Walden juxtaposed with scenic landscape images on the Internet, the book itself doesn鈥檛 get fully read nearly as much as it should.听
Put simply, Walden is the memoirs of Thoreau while he was living in a simple cabin at Walden Pond in Massachusetts.
I will be the first to admit that it is a hard read, due in part to the fact it was written more than 160 years ago in a style of prose that is no longer common in English literature. Nevertheless, when I read Walden for the first time, I felt like Thoreau was reaching out through the pages and explaining to me thoughts I had already had but had not been able to give form to within my own mind.听
They were thoughts about living simply, reducing my wants and focusing on what I actually needed, connecting with the natural world around me and becoming more self-reliant.听
As I devoured chapter after chapter, I felt a fire growing inside of me.听
I finished that book determined to learn how to explore the wild and to gain the same level of understanding about myself and the world around me that Thoreau had gained when he had chosen to live intentionally and connected to the world in its natural state.听
One of the most famous lines from this book reads: 鈥淚 went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.鈥�
听
Into the Wild听
By late 2011, feeling almost completely changed by my experiences in the wilderness in Squamish, I came across the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer at the Squamish Public Library.听
I had watched the movie by the same name when it was originally released in 2007. Back then, living a mostly sedentary life in Ireland with no understanding of the wilderness, I felt angry about the story in this movie.
Into the Wild is an account about Christopher McCandless, who went on a journey of discovery across North America, living the life of a hobo before eventually walking into the wilderness of Alaska to live simply. He never walked out again.听
This story made me angry and confused back in 2007 because I couldn鈥檛 help but feel the risks McCandless had taken were extremely selfish to his family and friends. He left them behind with only questions and pain. I couldn鈥檛 understand the point of any of it. Why live like a hobo? Why walk into the wilderness at all? For what was he searching?
Those questions went unanswered, and I eventually forgot about them. But then I chanced upon seeing the book that inspired the movie sitting on a shelf in the library. All those questions I had asked originally began flooding back into my mind, but I now found I better understood.听
I checked the book out of the library and read through it voraciously. My original feelings of anger changed to ones of sadness but also respect that McCandless wasn鈥檛 just following the path that was laid out in front of him by society but was seeking his own truth and understanding about the world.
While I still felt McCandless was a little careless in his endeavours, I realized I was now on the same path of discovery. I approach the wild with more caution, but I鈥檓 drawn to it in much the same way that McCandless was, with the motivation to discover who I am as an individual.听
Risking Adventure
If the name of author Jim Haberl sounds familiar to you, it is likely because there is a cabin named in Haberl鈥檚 honour in the Tantalus Range.听
In 2013, when I was still quite inexperienced in the finer details of mountaineering, I set out with too much hubris to hike from the Squamish River into the Tantalus range all the way up to the Jim Haberl hut, where I planned to stay for a few days before summiting Mount Tantalus itself.听
During that trip, on quite a number of occasions, I felt I was close to falling and dying. I had not accounted for how bare the glaciers were and the difficulties in transitioning from the ice across the gaping moats that blocked access to the rocky ridges that I would need to go up and over.听
Eventually, I made it to the Haberl Hut in a complete whiteout and collapsed from exhaustion. On the walls in the hut is a memorial to Haberl, who had died in a mountaineering accident in 1999. Looking at those images of this accomplished climber who was no longer here, I began to ask myself why I too was taking so many risks with my life in the mountains.
I eventually abandoned my plans to summit Mount Tantalus and paid for a helicopter to fly me out, not wanting to risk the return journey. When I got home, I began to look up books on risk and mountain climbing and found, poignantly, that Jim Haberl himself had written a book touching on the subject.
In Risking Adventure, he recounts stories of losing a friend in the mountains and of the dangers he faced on a number of occasions. On the surface, these accounts could simply remind the reader that the mountains take lives, but as I read deeper, I understood from Haberl that their greater quality is to breathe life into those who go there.
I find I live more when I am out in the mountains.听
Life isn鈥檛 so much the hours in our days but rather the memories we make that are worth remembering. Every minute of memories I make out in the wild feels like it could replace years of sitting at desks or on couches.
I feel that I now think this way because of the books I have read since coming to Squamish, books by authors from centuries ago to ones who are younger than me right now.
Books are the keys that open the doors in our minds to who we can become and the new ways that we can see the world.听
If you do only one thing today, head down to your local bookstore or library and start reading a new book.
