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The Long Walk Is A Raw, Wrenching, Blood-soaked Chronicle Of The Human Cost Of War. Brian Castner, The Leader Of A Military Bomb Disposal Team, Recounts His Deployment To Iraq With Unflinching Candor, And In The Process Exposes Crucial Truths Not Only About This Particular Conflict, But Also About War Throughout History. Castner's Memoir Brings To Mind Erich Maria Remarque's Masterpiece, All Quiet On The Western Front.

-Jon Krakauer

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The Long Walk Is

Jon Krakauer

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The Long Walk Is A Raw, Wrenching, Blood-soaked Chronicle Of The Human Cost Of War. Brian Castner, The Leader Of A Military Bomb Disposal Team, Recounts His Deployment To Iraq With Unflinching Candor, And In The Process Exposes Crucial Truths Not Only About This Particular Conflict, But Also About War Throughout History. Castner's Memoir Brings To Mind Erich Maria Remarque's Masterpiece, All Quiet On The Western Front.

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He Read A Lot. He Used A Lot Of Big Words. I Think Maybe Part Of What Got Him Into Trouble Was That He Did Too Much Thinking. Sometimes He Tried Too Hard To Make Sense Of The World, To Figure Out Why People Were Bad To Each Other So Often. A Couple Of Times I Tried To Tell Him It Was A Mistake To Get Too Deep Into That Kind Of Stuff, But Alex Got Stuck On Things. He Always Had To Know The Absolute Right Answer Before He Could Go On To The Next Thing.

<...> Though He Found That If You Are Stupid Enough To Bury A Camera Underground You Won't Be Taking Many Pictures With It Afterwards. Thus The Story Has No Picture Book For The Period May 10, 1991 - January 7, 1992. But This Is Not Important. It Is The Experiences, The Memories, The Great Triumphant Joy Of Living To The Fullest Extent In Which Real Meaning Is Found. God It's Great To Be Alive! Thank You. Thank You.

Straddling The Top Of The World, One Foot In China And The Other In Nepal, I Cleared The Ice From My Oxygen Mask, Hunched A Shoulder Against The Wind, And Stared Absently Down At The Vastness Of Tibet.

I'm Intrigued By Fanatics - People Who Are Seduced By The Promise, Or The Illusion, Of The Absolute.

...books Possess An Ounce-of-weight To Minute-of-entertainment Ratio That Compares Quite Favorably To Intoxicants.

Having Stumbled Upon A Tolerable Career, For The First Time In My Life I Was Actually Living Above The Poverty Line. My Hunger To Climb Had Been Blunted, In Short, By A Bunch Of Small Satisfactions That Added Up To Something Like Happiness.

He Was Unheeded, Happy, And Near To The Wild Heart Of Life. He Was Alone And Young And Wilful And Wildhearted, Alone Amid A Waste Of Wild Air And Brackish Waters And The Seaharvest Of Shells And Tangle And Veiled Grey Sunlight.

I Don't Know What God Is, Or What God Had In Mind When The Universe Was Set In Motion. In Fact, I Don't Know If God Even Exists, Although I Confess That I Sometimes Find Myself Praying In Times Of Great Fear, Or Despair, Or Astonishment At A Display Of Unexpected Beauty.

Its Not Always Necessary To Be Strong, But To Feel Strong.

Everest Has Always Been A Magnet For Kooks, Publicity Seekers, Hopeless Romantics And Others With A Shaky Hold On Reality.

Hopeless Romantic

You Should Own Nothing Except What You Can Carry On Your Back At A Dead Run.

Almost Every Magazine Piece I've Ever Written, I Felt Like I Haven't Done It Justice, Like It Was Just A Gloss.

I Understood What He Was Doing, That He Had Spent Four Years Fulfilling The Absurd And Tedious Duty Of Graduating From College And Now He Was Emancipated From That World Of Abstraction, False Security, Parents, And Material Excess.

Don't Settle Down And Sit In One Place. Move Around, Be Nomadic, Make Each Day A New Horizon.

I Think I Understand That Religious Faith Which Makes The Holy Brave And Strong; My Strength Is Just Somewhere Else--it's In Myself...i Do Not Fear What May Await Me, Though I'm Equally Confident That Nothing Awaits.

Mountains Make Poor Receptacles For Dreams.

The Desert Sharpened The Sweet Ache Of His Longing, Amplified It, Gave Shape To It In Sere Geology And Clean Slant Of Light.

Don't Settle Down And Sit In One Place. Move Around, Be Nomadic, Make Each Day A New Horizon. You Are Still Going To Live A Long Timeand It Would Be A Shame If You Did Not Take The Opportunity To Revolutionize Your Life And Move Into An Entirely New Realm Of Experience.my Point Is That You Do Not Need Me Or Anyone Elsethe Only Person You Are Fighting Is Yourself And Your Stubbornness

I Never Studied Writing, But I'd Always Been A Reader And Had A Secret Fantasy About Being A Writer.

I Read Somewhere... How Important It Is In Life Not Necessarily To Be Strong, But To Feel Strong... To Measure Yourself At Least Once.

When You Forgive, You Love. And When You Love, God’s Light Shines Through You.

An Extended Stay In The Wilderness Inevitably Directs One's Attention Outward As Much As Inward, And It Is Impossible To Live Off The Land Without Developing Both A Subtle Understanding Of, And A Strong Emotional Bond With, That Land And All It Holds.

Mr. Franz, I Think Careers Are A 20th Century Invention And I Don't Want One.

Hours Slide By Like Minutes. The Accumulated Clutter Of Day-to-day Existence — The Lapses Of Conscience, The Unpaid Bills, The Bungled Opportunities, The Dust Under The Couch, The Inescapable Prison Of Your Genes — All Of It Is Temporarily Forgotten, Crowded From Your Thoughts By An Overpowering Clarity Of Purpose And By The Seriousness Of The Task At Hand.

Common Sense Is No Match For The Voice Of God.

Achieving The Summit Of A Mountain Was Tangible, Immutable, Concrete. The Incumbent Hazards Lent The Activity A Seriousness Of Purpose That Was Sorely Missing From The Rest Of My Life. I Thrilled In The Fresh Perspective That Came From The Tipping The Ordinary Plane Of Existence On End.

I Thought Climbing The Devil's Thumb Would Fix All That Was Wrong With My Life. In The End, Of Course, It Changed Almost Nothing. But I Came To Appreciate That Mountains Make Poor Receptacles For Dreams.

Above The Comforts Of Base Camp, The Expedition In Fact Became An Almost Calvinistic Undertaking. The Ratio Of Misery To Pleasure Was Greater By An Order Of Magnitude Than Any Mountain I'd Been On; I Quickly Came To Understand That Climbing Everest Was Primarily About Enduring Pain. And In Subjecting Ourselves To Week After Week Of Toil, Tedium And Suffering, It Struck Me That Most Of Us Were Probably Seeking Above All Else, Something Like A State Of Grace.

It Is Easy, When You Are Young, To Believe That What You Desire Is No Less Than What You Deserve, To Assume That If You Want Something Badly Enough, It Is Your God-given Right To Have It.

The Trip Was To Be An Odyssey In The Fullest Sense Of The Word, An Epic Journey That Would Change Everything.

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I Love Being Outdoors, Being In The Mountains And The Desert, And My Wife Enjoys That Too. That's One Of The Things That Sustain Our Relationship.

Sometimes My Need To Love Hurts-- Myself, My Family, My Cause. Is There A Cure? Of Course. But I Refuse. Refuse To Stop Loving, To Stop Caring. To Avoid Those Tears, That Pain...to Err On The Side Of Passion Is Human And Right And The Only Way I'll Live.

Chris Would Use The Spiritual Aspect To Try To Motivate Us. "he'd Tell Us To Think About All The Evil In The World, All The Hatred, And Imagine Ourselves Running Against The Forces Of Darkness, The Evil Wall That Was Trying To Keep Us From Running Our Best. He Believed That Doing Well Was All Mental, A Simple Matter Of Harnessing Whatever Energy Was Available.

Sometimes He Tried Too Hard To Make Sense Of The World, To Figure Out Why People Were Bad To Each Other So Often.

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The Sad End He Met In Afghanistan Was More Accurately A Function Of His Stubborn Idealism - His Insistence On Trying To Do The Right Thing. In Which Case It Wasn't A Tragic Flaw That Brought Tillman Down, But A Tragic Virtue.

Mr. Franz, I Think Careers Are A 20th Century Invention And I Don't Want One. You Don’t Need To Worry About Me; I Have A College Education. I’m Not Destitute. I'm Living Like This By Choice.

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Meaning Of Life

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Weeping...betraying A Sense Of Loss So Huge And Irreparable That The Mind Balks At Taking Its Measure.

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Human Condition

At Long Last He Was Unencumbered, Emancipated From The Stifling World Of His Parents And Peers, A World Of Abstraction And Security And Material Excess, A World In Which He Felt Grievously Cut Off From The Raw Throb Of Existence.

Heaven, For Me, Is One Focused Project - It's Like A Weird Form Of Autism.

The Long Walk Is A Raw, Wrenching, Blood-soaked Chronicle Of The Human Cost Of War. Brian Castner, The Leader Of A Military Bomb Disposal Team, Recounts His Deployment To Iraq With Unflinching Candor, And In The Process Exposes Crucial Truths Not Only About This Particular Conflict, But Also About War Throughout History. Castner's Memoir Brings To Mind Erich Maria Remarque's Masterpiece, All Quiet On The Western Front.

I Mean, How Can You Not Be A Feminist If You Have A Brain In Your Head? If You’re Not A Feminist, Then You’re A Problem.

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Moral Absolutism

Once You Believe That God Is Speaking Directly To You, There Is No Discussion.

If You Want A Blank Spot On The Map, You Gotta Leave The Map Behind.

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But Somethings In Life Are More Important Than Being Happy. Like Being Free To Think For Yourself.

Now What Is History? It Is The Centuries Of Systematic Explorations Of The Riddle Of Death, With A View To Overcoming Death. That's Why People Discover Mathematical Infinity And Electromagnetic Waves, That's Why They Write Symphonies.

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Collective Unconscious

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This Forms The Nub Of A Dilemna That Every Everest Climber Eventually Comes Up Against: In Order To Succeed You Must Be Exceedingly Driven, But If You're Too Driven You're Likely To Die.

If You're Bumming Out, You're Not Gonna Get To The Top, So As Long As We're Up Here We Might As Well Make A Point Of Grooving. (quoting Scott Fischer)

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I Think Part Of The Appeal Of Antarctica Is Experiencing Some Sort Of Power, The Forces Of The Natural World.

Some People Feel Like They Don't Deserve Love. They Walk Away Quietly Into Empty Spaces, Trying To Close The Gaps Of The Past.

There Is Something Special About A Quiet Untouched Forest That Just Pulls You Into The Moment. Something That No Parks Will Ever Be Able To Achieve. Isn't That What We're All Searching For In Life? To Just Be Happy And Content In The Moment, To Just Be There In The "now"?

Short Form Media Is Reductionist By Nature.

He Needed His Solitude At Times, But He Wasn't A Hermit. He Did A Lot Of Socializing. Sometimes I Think It Was Like He Was Storing Up Company For The Times When He Knew Nobody Would Be Around.

But Perhaps The Greatest Attraction Of Mormonism Was The Promise That Each Follower Would Be Granted An Extraordinarily Intimate Relationship With God. Joseph Taught And Encouraged His Adherents To Receive Personal Communiqués Straight From The Lord. Divine Revelation Formed The Bedrock Of The Religion.

Intimate Relationships

Intimate Relationship With God

There Is Nothing Glamorous Or Romantic About War. It's Mostly About Random Pointless Death And Misery.

The Core Of Mans' Spirit Comes From New Experiences.

New Experiences

Critical Spirit

You Are Wrong If You Think Joy Emanates Only Or Principally From Human Relationships. God Has Placed It All Around Us. It Is In Everything And Anything We Might Experience. We Just Have To Have The Courage To Turn Against Our Habitual Lifestyle And Engage In Unconventional Living.

Antarctica Is A Very Alien Environment, And You Can't Survive Here More Than Minutes If You're Not Equipped Properly And Doing The Right Thing All The Time.

The Only Person You Are Fighting Is Yourself And Your Stubbornness To Engage In New Circumstances.

Military Investigations Are Designed Not To Find Anyone Guilty.

The Endless, Agonizing Recycling Of What Might Have Been, Soon Followed By A Litany Of Rationalizations And Self-deceptions As You Struggle To Reconcile The Void Between The Person You Want To Be And The Person You Fear You Are.

Happiness Is Only Real When Shared

I'm Going To Paraphrase Thoreau Here... Rather Than Love, Than Money, Than Faith, Than Fame, Than Fairness... Give Me Truth.

Getting To The Top Of Any Given Mountain Was Considered Much Less Important Than How One Got There: Prestige Was Earned By Tackling The Most Unforgiving Routes With Minimal Equipment, In The Boldest Style Imaginable.

It Is True That I Miss Intelligent Companionship, But There Are So Few With Whom I Can Share The Things That Mean So Much To Me That I Have Learned To Contain Myself. It Is Enough That I Am Surrounded With Beauty.

That's What Was Great About Him. He Tried. Not Many Do.

If You're Not A Feminist, You're Part Of The Problem.

If You Don't Take It, I'm Going To Throw It Away," Alex Cheerfully Retorted. "i Don't Want To Know What Time It Is. I Don't Want To Know What Day It Is Or Where I Am. None Of That Matters.

I Was Dimly Aware That I Might Be Getting In Over My Head. But That Only Added To The Scheme’s Appeal. That It Wouldn’t Be Easy Was The Whole Point.

Alaska Has Long Been A Magnet For Dreamers And Misfits, People Who Think The Unsullied Enormity Of The Last Frontier Will Patch All The Holes In Their Loves. The Bush Is An Unforgiving Place, However, That Care Nothing For Hope Or Longing.

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