Reading this correspondence, one is struck by Ruess's craving for
connection with the natural world and by his almost incendiary passion
for the country through which he walked. "I had some terrific experiences in the wilderness since I wrote you last - overpowering, overwhelming," he gushed to his friend Cornel Tengel. "But then I am always being overwhelmed. I require it to sustain life."
I have been thinking more and more that I shall always be a lone wanderer of the wilderness. God, how the trail lures me. You cannot comprehend its resistless fascination for me. After all the lone trail is the best...I'll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die I'll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.
The beauty of this country is becoming part of me. I feel more detached from life and somehow gentler....I have some good friends here but no one who really understands why I am here or what I do. I don't know of anyone, though, who would have more than a partial understanding; I have gone too far alone.
I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly.
from "Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer
I have been thinking more and more that I shall always be a lone wanderer of the wilderness. God, how the trail lures me. You cannot comprehend its resistless fascination for me. After all the lone trail is the best...I'll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die I'll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.
The beauty of this country is becoming part of me. I feel more detached from life and somehow gentler....I have some good friends here but no one who really understands why I am here or what I do. I don't know of anyone, though, who would have more than a partial understanding; I have gone too far alone.
I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly.
from "Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer
