Walden Wheels Open Road Freedom
I hesitated to get this book, as a feared that I would not like the author, and thus not relate to the story. I was thinking he was just another of those people who want attention for being rebellious or "weird". Instead, I found a young man who does rebel against blindly following society's "norms", but does so in large part because of what he believes, not just to rebel for the sake of rebelling I found much of what he wrote to be well thought out. He does indeed remind me of Thoreau, and is a worthy successor.
The book in broken into 4 parts: Debtor, or My Attempt to Pay Off $32,000 in Student Debt with a Useless Liberal Arts Degree; Tramp, or My Attempt to Live a Free Life in Spite of Debt; Grad Student, or My Attempt to Afford Grad School by Moving into a Creepy Red Van, and Vandweller, or How I Learned to Live Simply.
The following are brief quotes from the book that give insight into the outlook of Mr. Ilgunas, and showcase what you can expect from the book: "Yet after each rest, I was able to get up and take a few more steps, and a few more after that. At some point, I'd wandered into that strange territory between my perceived limits and my actual limits -- that stretch of land called the "unknown" a territory as wild and unfamiliar at the Alaskan country before me." (pp. 25); "Perhaps there's no better act of simplification than climbing a mountain. For an afternoon, a day, or a week, it's a way of reducing a complicated life into a simple goal." (pp. 29); "I became obsessed with destroying what I thought was most constraining me. The debt wasn't a mere dollar amount; it was a villain that needed to be vanquished, a dragon that needed to be slain, a windmill that needed to be toppled." (pp. 47); I was bearing witness to an ancient ritual (the northern lights) that I felt I'd seen in a previous lifetime. I was being reacquainted with the images processed by a million eyes before me, reveling in the privileges of the great human experience. Money, prestige, possessions, a home with two and a half bathrooms -- these aren't the guiding lights of our universe that show us our path." (pp. 73); "When we tell ourselves that we are controlled, we can shift the responsibility of freeing ourselves onto that which controls us. When we do that, we don't have to bear the responsibility of our unhappiness or shoulder the burden of self-ownership. We don't have to do anything. And nothing will ever change." (pp. 74); "(Thoreau) described how his fellow citizens ("serfs of the soil") would toil away at desks or on huge farms, hating every minute of it, just so they could live in large homes and wear fashionable clothes in order to impress their neighbors, who were also unhappily employed." (pp. 78); "By having had to do without, I discovered that I was, in many ways, better off." (pp.78); ""while I only made $22,000 in a year, I saved 82 percent of it and could have saved nearly 100 percent if I hadn't spent it on my trip to Ecuador and other tiny luxury costs." (pp.81); "Alaska taught me that anything was possible; that there are other ways to live, to work, to shelter oneself; that the cold wasn't so cold; and that -- even in an age of inky oceans and suburban sprawl -- there was still wildness." (pp.88); "Frankly, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. This was all just so weird. Yet I knew the experience would be memorable. And I hoped that the strain of the voyage might somehow fast-forward my development." (pp.109); "But when we go on a journey -- especially a journey that follows no one else's footsteps -- it has the capacity to help a person become something unique, an individual. While Western society never had anything quite like the vision quest, we do have a heritage of journeying laced into our cultural DNA." (pp. 116): "The voyage was teaching me how unexceptional I was and how exceptional the human mind and body is." (pp. 117); "I learned that when work is meaningful and when the worker produces some useful service or produces some useful product, work is no longer "work" but an enriching component of one's day." (pp. 145); "I was so terrified of guilt I never did anything that I thought someone else would disapprove of. For my whole life, I'd been feeling guilt for doing -- or wanting to do -- what my instincts begged that I do." (pp. 148).
In short, life is about experiences and personal growth, not stuff.
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