outside reading- Erin Comerford

One book that I have read that I feel is relevant to this class is Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. I read this book in my leadership studies class last year. Since I have read it, the story continues to pop into my head throughout this class. The general story is about a man who feels that he has no direction in his life so he feels the need to just get up and get out. So he decides that he is going to go live in the wild or wilderness. There are some themes from this class that show up in this story. As he makes his decision to go live in the wilderness, he is beginning the separation phase of a pilgrimage. He then entered into the liminal phase while out in the wilderness. This phase was very rough for Chris McCandless though because he never came out of it and into the aggregation phase. He survived for 112 days in the wilderness in Alaska and then died. McCandless never had the opportunity to re-enter into the society that he left before the pilgrimage, but I would imagine the aggregation phase to be very difficult. Another thing that comes up in this book is Lane's axioms of sacred place. McCandless is able to experience the wilderness as sacred because of the four axioms that Lane speaks about. McCandless went on a spiritual journey into the wilderness in order to go through a transformation because what he had in his life then was simply not working for him.