Dear Dad, 

There was a time when I didn’t notice the clouds moving, when the sky was nothing more but a motionless tapestry of slumbering giants.  There was a time when the tree branches danced softly in the April breeze, their elongated shadows fractals on the pavement, reaching inward upon themselves in an infinite effort to find something, and who am I to say if they returned empty handed.  There was a time when the asphalt felt as if it breathed beneath my feet, and come May and July and September, the acorns would start to fall haphazardly on the now cold-to-the-touch sidewalks.  I would pick them up one-by-one and hold them in between my thumb and fore-finger, squeezing and digging into the meat of the acorn, holding it up to my nose and smelling it.  All of this to say, that is exactly how it is now.  Some people like to look back on the past and act as if things have so drastically changed, but the sidewalks are still a forest of oak tree kernels, and sure, there’s a new stop sign at the corner of 79th and Hope, but that doesn’t mean too much, I ran through it when it was first installed anyways.  This was in the year 2020 by the way, not that it matters.

Chris McCandless was a vagabond traveling along God’s country in 1992, before that however, he completed a double major in history and anthropology at Emory University in 1990.  Overall well-behaved and respected in his youth, oldest child of Walt and Billie McCandless was seemingly destined for financial greatness, coming from strong familial values of success and entrepreneurship, however upon his graduation, Chris and his yellow Datsun set off west from their home in Virginia on a cross country road trip with no itinerary and an expired license plate, in order to see the world in which he spent so much time studying.  Chris always seemed to have a dispassion for the materialistic, turning down offers for new and better vehicles, and as the leader of his high school cross country team, he would often tell his teammates to run as if they were running against the world.  His known-for-breaking-down Datsun eventually called it quits after a flash flood in Nevada, upon which Chris packed a backpack and began walking towards the Sierra Nevada Mountains under a new name, “Alexander Supertramp.”  Surviving off of the little money he had left, Chris found himself sleeping in hermit camps and abandoned houses, eventually sitting on a lawn chair on the side of the highway with a book in his hands.  When a woman pulled over and asked if he was hitchhiking, Chris replied “Yes.”  “Well you’ve got to be the worst hitchhiker I’ve ever seen,” exclaimed the woman, “You're not even trying!”  “Are you going to give me a ride?” Chris asked, looking up from his book, and a moment later, climbed into the back of the woman’s car. 

Come November the sky was brisk and I was wearing my green Adidas long sleeve shirt, my earbuds were in and you were sitting down at the kitchen table, at the head of the table, in your seat.  You were checking something on your work computer, I don’t remember what, and you looked up at me, my hair likely a mess, my face likely completely hairless, and asked me one more time if I wanted to come with you.  You were headed up to the deer lease with Radar, spending the night in a tent, and riding four-wheelers, of which I still have a picture of you on one, taken from a trail cam, maybe the last picture I have of you before you got sick.  I replied that I was okay, that I would join you on the next trip, and put my earbuds back in and replayed the song “Until the Sun Dies” by Lushlife, off of their “Cassette City” album.  Your trip came and went and I didn’t really pay much attention to the fact that you were gone, or that you returned, unloading your things onto the front porch, the light hitting the caramel-brown gun case in such a way that it almost glistened.  I didn’t pay it much attention when in the middle of mirror drill, I got called out of football practice, sent home because you had gotten sick.  I figured it would come and go, like it had with so many others.  I figured in a couple weeks we’d be back to talking football and eating fast food.  I figured wrong.

In 1991, after several months of professional vagabond-ing, Chris McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) got a job at a grain elevator in North Dakota, his pockets sufficiently run dry.  Chris worked at the elevator for a few months before he left, leaving a note on his boss’ desk that read “Tramping is too easy with all of this money, my days were more exciting when I was penniless and had to forge around for my next meal.  I’ve decided that I’m going to live this life for some time to come.”  From there Chris rationed out his money over the months, stopping for food at local stores and kayaking down the Colorado River, at one point accidentally finding himself on the other side of the U.S-Mexico border, being arrested by border patrol for possession of a firearm, and eventually being set free, minus his handgun.  From that point on, Chris began hitchhiking north, the kind folks willing to pick him up noting that Alexander Supertramp was a kind man, if not a bit odd and smelly. Being directionless is a funny concept, when there are four cardinal directions on every map ever printed, and all you need to do is pick one and start walking.  In April of 1992, Chris found himself in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Now how it normally worked in hospitals during the pandemic was that anyone with COVID-19 was not allowed visitors, under any circumstances, for fear of further spreading the virus.  Mom, however, had been and still was, a nurse at the hospital, so the people running tests and holding your water as you drank from it, were her friends, or friends of her friends.  We were able to go and see you the day before you got put on the ventilator, which would take the effort off of your shot lungs and breathe for you, because God knows that if you can’t breathe, you can’t do anything, everything just hurts.  It was December 13, the specific date of which I would happily forget, but with an easy google search it proves to be the same day in which you and I watched the Cowboys and the Bengals play each other in Cincinnati.  Dak Prescott was out with an injury, so Andy Dalton slung the rock for the cowboys, he scored two touchdowns and led the team to a dominant victory, but I wasn’t really watching.  I sat down in an uncomfortable hospital chair and held your hand as you lay in the bed, a thousand tubes erupting from your face and wrists.  You told me you were proud of me, that I was your son, and that I would have to take care of mom, of your wife.  I told you that when all of this was over, when you would walk out of this room and out of this building, that I would buy you a Five Guys burger.  You laughed.

Jim Gallien was an Alaskan electrician that picked up Alexander Supertramp, and who was asked to drive Alex to the Stampede Trail Head with, in Jim’s opinion, a severely under packed travel bag.  Jim pleaded with Alex to pack more food and cold weather gear, and eventually convinced him to accept a couple sandwiches, wet boots, and a bag of chips in addition to his ten pound bag of rice and Remmington .22 long rifle.  Upon Jim’s final pleas, Alex simply stressed that this was something he needed to do, and then got out of Jim’s car and thanked him.  That was the last time Chris McCandless was seen alive.  Chris began walking into the woods, keeping a day chart on which he would write down animal encounters and memorable events, this is how we know what happens from here on out.  On day four Chris stumbled upon a structure that he deemed “the magic bus.”  Decades earlier mobile units were dropped in the woods to act as way camps for roadway workers, easier than building a new shelter, complete with a wood stove and cot, this particular bus suffered a broken axle and was left in the cold to die.  Chris set up camp in the magic bus and for weeks lived happily in the Alaskan wilderness, surviving off of small game and berries, but would eventually attempt to re-enter society to get a good meal and a touch of stability.  What Chris didn’t account for or even know for that matter, was that the Teklanika River in which he crossed to get to the magic bus, had begun rising with warmer temperatures, making it impossible to cross without the risk of drowning or freezing.  On day 60 Chris writes “River looked impossible, lonely, scared.”  At some point after this Chris McCandless came down with an illness, the cause of which is still heavily debated: rabbit starvation, sweet pea poisoning, whatever the case, that is not why I am telling you this story.  On day 94 Chris writes “Weakest condition of life.  Death looms as serious threat.  Too weak to walk out.  Have literally become trapped in the wild.”

I spent a lot of the next week walking, thinking, maybe trying not to think.  Mom would come along with me sometimes, but we would never say much.  You had instructed us, well mom really, to let you fight for one week, and if you hadn’t gotten any better, to let you go.  The acorns were flooding the sidewalks, big ones and small ones, those with their cap still on and those with no cap at all.  They would crunch beneath my footsteps, piled up in driveways and raining from the highest branches of dead trees, they were inescapable, the way memories are.  I found myself hoping that you would hurry up and die, a terrible thought, but one that I stand by.  Why wait?  Just let everything be over.  On the seventh night I called you, you didn’t answer of course, but I called anyway.  I texted you after I heard your voice kindly telling me to leave you a message,but I didn’t have the strength to speak.  I simply texted “I love you,” I never got a response back.  The next morning Mom and Jarred and Landon and I stood in a dim hospital room as they began to withdraw care, and it only took you eleven minutes to die.  They pulled the mask off of your face, taking some of your skin with it.  Jarred held me and cried, he said that he was sorry, that he was so sorry, and I told him that it was alright.  I couldn’t sleep much that night, or the night after that, or the night after that.  And then it was Christmas, I opened a present from you and Mom, it was a red Nike hoodie from the two of you, you helped pick it out.  I don’t really wear it anymore, but it still hangs in my closet regardless.  And people say things change.

Chris McCandless was essentially a man who stepped out of this modern world and into a reality of his own.  Sure you could call him an idiot for not being well prepared, or not living the stable life his parents wanted him to, or not knowing that just a half mile away from the magic bus was a hand-operated cable car that stretched across the river, designed for the exact situation Chris found himself in, but I like to think that Chris found whatever it was he was looking for out there.

  During Chris’ final days he pinned the following message to the door of the magic bus, “Attention possible visitors.  S.O.S.  I need your help, I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here.  I am all alone, this is no joke.  In the name of God, please remain to save me, I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening.  Thank you, Chris McCandless.  August ?”  This is the first time in all of his travels that Chris used his real name.

  No one came to rescue Chris, and on day 107 he wrote his final message “Beautiful blueberries.”  Days 108-112 were all marked through, indicating that nothing noteworthy happened on those days, and then finally, day 113 was left blank.

  A photo was found by hunters two weeks later, sitting in the back of the magic bus that now reeked of decay, the 67 lb. corpse of Chris McCandless tucked snuggly into his sleeping bag.  The photo of a very near-death Chris waving at the camera included a caption that read “I have had a happy life and thank the Lord.  May God bless all!”  

I’m unsure if you ever heard of the story of Chris McCandless, I wonder what you would have thought of the man.  If you would have thought that his death was silly and preventable, a comedy of errors with options to escape at seemingly every turn, or if you would see it as something from a folk tale, the story of a man sick and tired of the material world he was born into, more adept to walk into nature and leave it all behind.  I wonder if you would have caught the fact that our last names are pronounced the same, if you would look back upon this man’s tale and feel an urge to live your life to the fullest, however little of it you had left.  Little is known about Chris’ funeral, and even less is known about whether, as he sat there alone in the wild, he ever thought he’d have one. 

  Shortly after Chris McCandless’ death, the path he took to the magic bus became a popular hiking destination, which didn’t help his post-mortem reputation; two people ended up drowning in the same river that kept Chris from civilization.  In the latter part of 2020, the magic bus was picked up by a chinook helicopter and dropped off at the University of Alaska, who agreed to display the bus at the UA Museum of Alaska.  A plaque displayed in front of the once-shelter read “Christopher Johnson McCandless “Alex” 2-68 - 8/92.  Chris, our beloved son and brother, died here during his adventurous travels in search of how he could best realize God’s great gift of life, with his final message, “I have had a happy life and thank the Lord, goodbye and may God bless all!” We commend his soul to the world.  -The McCandless Family 7/93”  This would have been just a few months before you got sick.

On the back of Chris’ final message was an excerpt of a poem by Robinson Jeffers.  The poem, “Wise Men in their Bad Hours” speaks of stupid men dying a life well lived, with no concern about their legacy or how they will be remembered.  The wise men despise the little men for this “making merry like grasshoppers,” and cannot let go of what will be.  “The mountains are dead stone, the people/ Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness/ The mountains are not softened nor troubled/ And a few dead men’s thoughts have the same temper.”  Chris was one of these mountains, a dying man amongst everything else that was so alive, what are you?  Are you the acorns on the side of the road, little pieces of memory scattered about winter sidewalks, a reminder of a different time, a constant despite all that is different, a reminder that not much is different at all.  I wrote a poem about acorns once, about picking one up and putting it in the cupholder of my car, bringing it with me as a reminder, a memory incarnate, so that I could bring with me this piece of the past into the future.  I’ve considered writing an additional poem in which I grow tired and throw the acorn into a field, where maybe it would grow into a sturdy oak tree, or in which I toss it haphazardly on the asphalt, content to die there on the pavement.  I’ve considered putting it on my windshield and driving away, leaving it up to the wind as to whether or not it should fly off. What would I do if I got to my destination and it remained?  Would I have the resolve to leave it there?

This letter is one that you will never read, you understand that right?  You cannot read this letter with your own two blue eyes, or hold it in your own two calloused hands. So dear reader, what would you do?  Would you journey off into the unknown?  Would you decide to have one last trip with your father, sleeping in tents and riding on four wheelers, maybe then I could have actually been in the last picture I have of my father.  Would you cast away everything society deems necessary to go and die in a rotting school bus, becoming content with your fate and maintaining an attitude of kindness and grace.  My father knew he would die long before I had accepted it, his magic bus was on the ninth floor of Covenant hospital, with a window that looked out south, but who’s view was blocked by the southern wing of Peace Tower, far above the oak trees that wept countless memories on cracked sidewalks and car windshields.  He may not have been in the wilderness, but he was up there with the clouds that twirl and spin among glorious West Texas sunsets, no quarrel with what he would write or do, a mountain in the middle of the flatlands.  Despite what it is you do, despite what I decide to write down, I think it’s a piece of art on its own to do something different than what you tell people, to keep the acorn in your glove box, to keep hope in the hearts of your children, to keep living without the promise of a funeral.  This letter is a sort of funeral after all, it is more for the living than the dead.

Love, 

Jaxon