"Americans, he says, have always tended to understand freedom as primarily a dimension of space. To explore the possibilities of being human has been to possess unbounded freedom of movement over new terrain." -Belden Lane in "The Puritan Reading of the New England Landscape" (pg. 144)
When I read these two sentences I thought they were so true. The idea of being able to walk across a space without any hindrances from life is such a good feeling. I read Into the Wild over the summer, and this idea is exactly what Chris McCandless was hungry for. He wanted to get as far away as possible from the institutions he was used to, the control and influence of his parents, the idea of money, and many other things. As Americans, we seem to hunger for it to some degree, but then we always come back to our "center," which is home, and our jobs, and our daily routine that we are comfortable in. It seems like as Americans, we find it admirable to go out and explore for a while, but then reel that adventurous side in and be more "practical." This was how many people felt about McCandless' journeys, and some even criticized him for it. Where does this attitude come from, that we need to follow the cookie cutter pattern of the "American Life" when doing so sometimes causes us to inhibit ourselves and not make use of the freedoms we possess? Maybe it's part of the stereotypical idea of the American Dream. To me, it sometimes does not make a lot of sense because McCandless was utilizing freedom to its fullest, and felt as free as he had ever been, yet many people felt he was being stupid and naive. I feel like he knew exactly what he wanted, and ended up getting that, to a certain extent. He felt this "unbounded freedom of movement over new terrain." I hope I can experience that feeling for a little bit of my life. Feeling completely free, in this sense, is something that a lot of us never do, here in the "Land of the Free."
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