let's hit the open road

In Intro to American Studies today we discussed the myth of the frontier and how there’s still an inescapable urge to want to move west, leave civilization behind and start over by living off the land. It’s a romantic idea, sure, but one that seems easier said than done. My dad, who’s a lawyer in D.C., is as gentrified as they come. He plays tennis and likes to unwind with a nice red at the end of a long workday. But every so often he talks about moving west upon retirement, where he can live in our house in Steamboat, CO and hike all summer and ski all winter. He speaks of the west like it’s the only place he can feel free.

There is a certain raw appeal to the bluebird skies and ankle deep powder of the Colorado slopes, though. When I’m at the top of a run with the sun shining down and my brothers shouting at me to hurry up, I feel happy in a way that rarely comes in the depths of my suburban neighborhood or in my stifled, cinderblock dorm room. I guess it’s that feeling of freedom that drew settlers to expand westward and caused Teddy Roosevelt to espouse the virtue of “the strenuous life.”

The irony is that Roosevelt was born into a wealthy family in New York City and could afford to lead “the strenuous life” as a sort of game. His writings imply that living the strenuous life is the only way for a man to be a man, but his lifestyle of politics and academia show that he may have loved the strenuous life so much because he didn’t need to do it to survive. I doubt the settlers who worked from sunup to sundown to provide for their families spent as much time reveling in their freedom. I doubt Pa from Little House on the Prairie had time to hunt for sport or explore the Kansas plains.

Even now, over one hundred years after Roosevelt first told the public that a “life of slothful ease” is literally useless if you want to contribute at all to society (not his actual words) overgrown children across the country want to move west! Find a new life! Live off the land! Find myself! Live free! Die hard!

Chris McCandless, who drove and hitchhiked to Alaska after he graduated from Emory, was fed up with society and contemporary values and just wanted to embark into the wild. He believed that “nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit than a secure future” and that everyone should divest themselves of possessions and live free. We all know what happened to him – he went into the bush with few supplies and eventually died, tragically, of malnourishment brought on by eating the wrong berries.

McCandless was really, really, really into living off the land, but the idealized version of the West most people seem to have today isn’t nearly as extreme as that. My professor in class today discussed how the open frontier is more of a mentality, than a specific location. I doubt the teenage boys I know – even my dad – who say they want to split for the open road and leave civilization behind actually want to live the sort of strenuous lifestyle Roosevelt advocated and McCandless took to heart. A ski resort in Colorado wouldn't even occur to McCandless or Roosevelt to be part of the lifestyle they advocate.