Into the Wild inspired my life of adventure – but I learned the wrong lessons about freedom

The film helped me realise that getting out into nature would also allow me to escape my anxieties, but I started to see the costs of constant escape It’s 5.30am, and I’m waking up on a granite slab overlooking the Domeland Wilderness, with nothing but forest, stone and silence for miles. I am 44 days into hiking the Pacific Crest Trail – a journey of about 2,650 miles from the Mexican border to Canada through desert scrubland, pine forests, deep valleys, volcanic terrain and alpine mountains. Each day, I walk about 20 miles with everything I need for the next four months on my back. I was 16

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