Alaska

A bit of trivia, but not a bit trivial, is the fact that I was born in the state of Alaska. It's a wild country, but my parents weren't thrill seekers. The most adventurous thing they've ever done was to marry each other; a close second was having me. Anyway, I wasn't in Alaska very long. My parents and I left when I was a year and a day old.

I have always been a bit intrigued by the land of my birth. I grew up in Oregon, which is a beautiful place, but to be brutally honest – it's kinda boring. I heard the call of the wild at an early age. I daydreamed about adventure, imagined setting out on my own and dancing with danger.

Sean Penn's film 'Into The Wild' was a natural choice for me when I saw it on the shelf at the movie rental place. It is the true story about Christopher McCandless. Raised by well-to-do, upper middle class peppermint Americans, his story is not remarkable until he graduated from college, donated his savings to charity and set out west in a beat up Datsun. Severing his ties with his family, he chooses a new name, 'Alexander Supertramp'; and cutting society's safety net he burns the last of his spare cash.

The new self made 'Supertramp' lives on the edge. He hobos freight trains, starves with the homeless in urban America and survives dehydration in the desert. He has this amazing adventure where he paddles a kayak down the Colorado River to the Gulf of Mexico, and then with no documents and a winning personality, fast talks himself back over the border. Every time he's reached the end his rope, dumb luck and the kindness of strangers snatch him from the jaws of calamity.

But its not enough for McCandless/Supertramp. His dream is to walk into the wild back country of Alaska and live off the land like his hero Jack London.

So I'm watching Into The Wild and thinking to myself, "If I were young, if I could do it all over again, this is exactly what I'd do." And then it occurred to me that that is exactly what I did. I left everything and everyone behind for a life I invented in an exotic and dangerous place close to the edge. I even did the name change thing.

Christopher hitched his way north to the Stampede Trail in central Alaska in April of 1992. He headed into the bush with a 22 caliber rifle and 10 pounds of rice and set up a base camp in an abandoned bus. At first he holds his own, but when he realizes that he isn't hunting and gathering enough to sustain himself he decides to hike out – only to discover that he's trapped by white water currents of a river that had been frozen over when he hiked in. Trapped in the wild by his own folly, Christopher McCandless starved to death.

Unprepared by spoilers, it hit me hard. Like McCandless, lust for adventure consumed me in my youth. I set out into the wild, and in a way I'm trapped there.

It's not something uncommon. Young men and women (probably more men than women) hear the call of the wild, singing like Sirens luring sailors to peril. You want life to mean something, to experience it in the extreme. You want to taste it raw and bleeding, not boiled and seasoned like it was served at home.

Many have answered the call of the wild. Most of us live to tell about it. My journey took me to the other side of the planet. I thought I could make up a name, invent a life of my own. I lived on a kibbutz and enlisted in the Israeli army. And by the time I realized what I had done, it was too late. An ocean of reality separated me from where I had come from.

McCandless and I aren't uncommon. Many young men hear the call. I have a cousin who 'disappeared' years ago. He was just a kid when I left America, a bit rowdy but likeable enough. He got in trouble here and there, but nothing too serious. And then he took off and nobody's heard from him since save for cryptic messages every now and then. Here in Israel, trekking into the wild is almost a rite of passage for young men and women after they finish their army service. Most of them find their way back, although I've heard more than one parent comment that even though they are back here, they're still over there.

If you walk into the wild and can't find your way back, you're lost. You live a life to the Nth degree and discover yourself, but the only ones that care are back where you started from.

I'm one of those that returned. I still live in Israel, but I'm a member of my American family. It involves long distance telephone conversations and flying for hours between continents, but the bottom line is that I came back. Home is where the heart is, and so is the wild. You can be on the other side of the globe or just around the corner, but when finding yourself means cutting yourself off from the ones that love you, you're lost in a wilderness.

I hope my cousin will find his way home someday. I think that if McCandless could have made it out of Alaska, he would have returned to his family. Weak and helpless, he wrote this on a page torn from a novel in hopes that someone would find it in time.

"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."

It was signed, "Christopher McCandless". Not Alexander Supertramp. He was ready to come home, but it was too late.

The state of Alaska is where my life began; its where Christopher McCandless's ended. The wild isn't a place as much as a state of mind. Some of the less fortunate get trapped there; most of us adventurous souls are lucky enough to find our way home.

The Little Engine That Can

I think every boy and girl, or at least every American boy and girl, grew up on the children's book "The Little Engine That Could" by Watty Piper. It's the story of a long heavy train that needs to be pulled over a high mountain. The bigger engines all refuse for this reason or that, but to everybody's surprise one little engine steps (rolls?) forward willing to take the overwhelming task on himself. Straining, pulling with only determination and faith that he can pull his charge to the top of the hill, the little engine chants under his breath "I think I can, I think I can." And, of course, in the end he does.

.

.

.

. The moral of the story, that with hard work and positive thinking anyone can, everyone can, is the stuff Americans have been raised on. We weren't handed everything on a silver platter, but anything was possible. We were offered opportunity.

As incredible as this may sound, there was a time in my youth that I considered being the president of the United States of America. No kidding. It was an option, one of many directions I considered taking at the beginning of my journey. Now, after time has tainted my mind with a healthy dose of realism, I know that I was only fooling myself. Yet perhaps it says something about one of the greatest gifts America has granted its men and women, its boys and girls; optimism, a belief that opportunity is endless. No matter how wild it is, how far fetched, Americans can.

Maybe its because I have lived over here so long, far away from the land of endless opportunity, but now I have come to see that American expression "because I can" the way the rest of the world sees it. The arrogance in it, as if it somehow it is a reason for anything. Like when ex-president Clinton was asked why he had the liaison with Monika Lewinski, he replied, "Because I could."

.

"I can" doesn't mean it's right or wise or good; it just means it's possible.

But Americans can. And sometimes they do.

Today I watched an American take the oath of office as president. Unlike me, he did take that the path to the White House, and he made it there with a promise to Americans. "Yes, we can."

Today was the crowning achievement of his career, greater than anything he will do in the next four years. An achievement for Americans and for America; for today all things are possible for all men and women.

In the next four years he will have to pull a long train with 300 million Americans aboard up a very high mountain. It will take a lot of determination on this young American's part, as well as that of others who are willing to jump down and step up and help him push that train up to the top.

Today I don't know if Obama can, but I certainly hope he will.

Winter

I recall growing up in Portland in the cold country of the Northwest, winter mornings waking up to see snow or black ice on the window. They closed school and we stayed inside, snug and warm out of the cold.

In the more than half of my life here in Israel winters are short and mild, temperatures usually range from warm to blistering heat. So do tempers.

This isn't my first war, most likely not my last.

Here school is cancelled more often because rockets, and not snowflakes, are falling. People stay closer to home, find snug shelter inside hopefully safe from the terror outside.

And even when you're out of range, more often than not someone you love isn't. You slow down and close down, do what you have to and no more. You find a place inside yourself and wait for the storm to pass.

I don't feel like blogging.

Where are you, Maayan?

"Sometimes in order to live somewhere, you have to die there."

Hagit Rhein, mother of Capt. Bania Rhein who fell in Lebanon, and Eliyashiv, in combat somewhere in Gaza.