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Comment by starpilot | Hacker News Reader

Most Alaskans live in towns with lives similar to that of other Americans. They go to work, buy groceries, do laundry, watch TV. Not a "great" story except in the sense of celebrating the ordinary.

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I guess, but as a kid, I practically lived in the thick woods around our house.

As a boy, it was awesome to live in a place where carrying a khukuri (or small sword) wasn't so out of the ordinary, and I have fond memories of bushwhacking trails, coming home smelling of earth and picking the inevitable spiders out of my clothes.

> I guess, but as a kid, I practically lived in the thick woods around our house.

You were just enjoying nature and going back to the safety of civilization at night. McCandless was trying to break his dependence on civilization entirely. There's nothing wrong with what you were doing, I do it myself. But it's not the same thing.

I lived like that growing up in Virginia. Mid-Atlantic has many areas like this. Minus the Nepali souvenirs though.

And I had the same experience growing up in rural southeastern Ohio. Bushwhacking, spending a lot of time in and near rivers and streams, walking the fields, hunting small game. The specific place where I grew up has largely lost most of this, minus the water. I wonder if other places have lost pieces of it, too.

Nothing wrong with doing laundry with a better view than 90% of the rest of humanity. I was a really studious kid and only later came to appreciate the area where I am from.

For someone like me who has rarely seen snow in my 45 years on this planet, getting a glimpse of an ordinary life in extraordinary climate is quite interesting.

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