Kingswood Oxford by Chris McCandless

I sit on the weather-worn bench facing the Senior Green. Everything is well-trimmed, well taken care of. There is no wilderness, no wild for me to take refuge in. I am fully immersed in society, surrounded by civilization. Every person I have seen in my short time on this bench has been worried about what other people think of them. They are all trying to conform to the societal ideal. Yes, there are different personalties, but the common prep school personality hangs thick in the air. All of these people have money. They want many things. Right now, I hear a pair of girls walking past me arguing about what shoes they want the most. The prices coming up are ridiculous. Some of these shoes are over a hundred dollars of a pair of leather flip flops. Extravagances like those are completely unnecessary. I have hitch-hiked across America with the clothes I have on my back, little money, and rice. The girls enter the building behind my back, and I view the campus once more. The people sit mainly in groups of two, and mainly in groups of the same gender. I shake my head at their necessity of community and other human presence as I gather my things, heading inside the air-conditioned building. It is almost too cold, a shock from the warm September weather outside the thick doors. The tile floor shines, and the building is quite neat. Everything is trim, cleaned, polished, organized. I feel confined in the almost too clean building, so I quickly walk through to the other side, into the parking lot. I see many new cars, and I know that there are some are owned by the faculty and staff, while others are owned by the students. I see only one or two cars that are much over four or five years old, much unlike the Datsun I loved so much. I don’t particularly like this place. Chock-full of brand new extravagances, confining buildings, and just swimming in the hated ideals of society.