On Saturday I awoke from my slumber and decided to watch another film before heading out to Matt’s cottage for the day. I figured Into The Wild would be a perfect choice as I was heading into the wild myself.
I had been introduced to the film through Eddie Vedder’s solo album which was made for this Sean Penn film. It is based on the adventure of Chris McCandless who was a college graduate who decided to leave all material possessions behind and head into the wilderness.
He first heads around North America…wherever the wind takes him. However, it is clear that he eventually wants to travel to Alaska on his own and experience nature firsthand. It was an interesting film in that he explores the relationships Chris has on his journey and makes you think a little about what we are trying to get out of our life here. The film explores the extremes (like his parents thinking a brand new car will solve all problems, or their son burning all his money and hoofing it around America) as well as the in-between thought processes (hippies, military folk, etc.).
I really enjoyed this film and it gave me this need to be out in the forest. It had a calming effect on me and I took my time driving to Matt’s cottage while enjoying the scenery. I think that this film would appeal to my own generation whereas older generations may wonder why the guy is so against the grain and is simply wandering through life and not settling down to get a job. I think I’d like to explore these thoughts in a future entry so I’ll leave it at that.
That being said, I really enjoyed the film…it’s a story of a man’s adventure into trying to discover a little more out of life when they weren’t satisfied with the norm. As soon as I finished the film, two people reminded me of this nomadic spirit…Vero and Carrie. They are both people who seem to want a little more in life than the norm, they just have to figure out how to get it. I think they would find the film interesting.
With this newfound nomadic spirit within me, I packed the car and headed west to Matt’s parents place. They live 1.5 hours of Ottawa so it’s a good couple of albums worth of music to get me by. It had also started raining as soon as I left the house so the outlook didn’t look good.
I arrived in the wilderness and walked into their house to find everyone sprawled out on the couches and watching the hockey game on a nice new flat screen television which was mounted to the wall. While this was an impressive sight from a technological perspective, it wasn’t quite what I had in mind for the trek to the wilderness. 😉 I have to remember that Matt’s parents place is eventually their HOME in the woods, and not their COTTAGE in the woods. Any place with Internet, satellite TV and a furnace is not a cottage. Either way, it is a beautiful home and is coming along nicely. There was a pile of top soil out in the front and I figured I was brought here on false pretenses and I was going to help bring the top soil up to the upper roof where they are going to put in a sod roof! I didn’t mind if that was the case as Matt’s parents have been nice to me over the years in allowing me to visit once in awhile, so it’s the least I could help with. In the end, the work was not happening this afternoon…we were left to go down to the dock, have some beers, run away from the thunderstorm, have a little BBQ, jam on the guitars a little and simply enjoy the nature around us. I got stir crazy later on in the night and wished to go back outside instead of hanging out in the living room so with a cooler we headed down to the dock where the fog had settled around us. It was quite freaking cold out there after awhile and it finally got us moving back into the house. May I also point out that Evan had bought the most God awful beer there ever was and I wish I could remember the name of it so I could issue a public health warning. We felt bad for him so we helped him finish it. Let me say that I didn’t feel like drinking much more after that horrible concoction.
We eventually headed downstairs to crash for the night and if there is one thing pets need, it is slippers! Every time the dog would walk around all you would hear is ‘clik, clik, click on the hardwood floor. 😉 Jenny is a great dog though so it’s hard to be mad at her, but I did consider throwing a pair of slippers on her paws.
In the morning, Karilee made us some great blueberry pancakes and then I decided to head back into town to start studying for my midterm in microeconomics. It was great to see Mike and Mel (along with Lola and Gigi!) as well as meeting their friend Amelie. Dave, Evan, Erica, Marie and Norm also showed up for the night and it was good times had by all. I even talked to Norm a little about comic books and let him in on the fact that I had a great assortment of old comic books coming my way this coming week from Aunt Lois. I must admit that I very excited to peruse what are in these boxes. I have visions of what gems could be in there…could there be X-Men comics dating back from the 1980’s Dark Phoenix Saga culminating in #137? Who knows? Aunt Lois let me know that there were probably 100 X-Men comics in those boxes and they figured that there were around 500-600 comics in total. It is a great treasure to receive these books and I look forward to this upcoming weekend when I’ll get to see what’s in them! Thanks again to Aunt Lois and Uncle Gary for this.