Have you ever wondered why you are the way you are? Just what is this multilayered thing called, your personality? One of the best parts of getting long in the tooth is the ability to turn around and gaze at your life’s path. If yours looks like mine, there will have been many twists and turns, multiple dead ends, and road signs warning of hazards ahead.
I must admit that I am quite satisfied with my life lived thus far but, why did it unravel into its present footprint? All of us are exposed to many influences during our time on earth. For some, it will be family, for others friends, and for others still, a cataclysmic moment in time. I have always followed the path less traveled and eagerly pursued solitude. Why? I don’t dislike people however; I don’t really care to spend much time around them. I hunt, ski, and backpack alone. I’m not a thrill seeker or trying to prove myself in some way. I like to read and think and both of these pursuits are best served alone. After much adiue, I believe my choices in literature and film formed me.
For most of my life, I served our nation as a Special Forces (Green Beret) non commissioned officer. I believe my passion for adventure led me to this choice of careers and was fueled during my youth by the works of Jack London, James Fenimore Cooper, and Ernest Hemingway. I spent many a night under my blanket with a flashlight reading Hemingway’s “Nick Adams Stories”. My love of solitude and wild places was most certainly flamed by London’s “White Fang and The Call of the Wild”. My sense of exploration developed with Cooper’s character Hawkeye in Last of the Mohicans. Interestingly, I’ve read and reread works from these three authors many times over the ensuing years.
I love cinema but here too, I return again and again to five films. They are, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Wild Bunch, The Cross of Iron, The Deer Hunter and, The Green Berets. While tough, Clint Eastwood’s character, Josey Wales never could assimilate into society. In The Wild Bunch, Pike (William Holden) and Dutch (Ernest Bourgnine) failed to adapt as time passed them by and paid for it with their lives however; I learned from them, the powerful impact that a single group of men can have at a single point in time. James Coburn’s character “Steiner” in The Cross of Iron taught me that you can exist alone and yet blossom in a team of like minded individuals. The roles played by Robert Deniro and John Wayne in The Deer Hunter and The Green Berets respectively, taught me that an individual’s true strength of character lies within.
There you have it, I’m a simple rendition of what I hope to one day become. I must however, ask myself one question. This will be hard or impossible to answer but, what if I was already the individual I am and therefore merely drawn to these authors and films because they were relevant for me? Maybe I’ve merely walked around in a circle only to return to the same interrogative - Who Am I?
