With the wish to abandon industrial life, Edward Abby from Desert Solitaire and Chris McCandless from Into the Wild, immerse themselves in nature. While rejecting notions of industrial life, their defection is not absolute. Despite McCandless's stated wish to live off the land (Krakauer163), he is delighted to find an industrial bus in the Alaskan wilderness for his base camp (Krakauer163). Likewise, Abbey, from his comfortable trailer in the Utah desert, declares that he is there to “face…the bones of existence” (6). Using industry to escape from it seems at first glance like a contradiction, but this conflict indicates that they are not rejecting industry, separating only to the degrees necessary to accommodate what they want to experiment. Abbey's industrial dependence responds to his need to maintain a philosophical dialogue with nature without separating himself from it, while McCandless's primitive approach responds to his need for autonomy. This separation by degrees allows rejection and use to coexist within their individual paradigms. Removing absolutes allows both men to explore outside of defined parameters. Adhering neither to the total rejection of a notion, nor to adherence to rigidly defined ideas, the two men can incorporate without contradiction evolving discoveries in relation to their needs. Abbey and McCandless experience varying degrees of separation from industrial life, but neither rejects it entirely. Abbey, an employee of the National Park Service in Utah, says: "I am here not only to escape for a moment from the clamor, filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus, but also to confront immediately and directly, if that is possible, the bones of existence” (6). While Abbey surrounds...... middle of paper...... the natural" (Abbey 6) then personifies everything around it, from the crows which "caw smug sounds of satisfaction" ( Abbey 16), to a Juniper who might be mad, or simply undergoing "an inner effort of liberation" (Abbey 27) While Abbey explores the contradiction between man and nature merged but separated, McCandless frequently reshapes his paradigm. to integrate the discovery. The non-adherence to predetermined configurations allows the two men to maintain the relationships they seek with wild nature and industrial society. first seen as a contradiction is in reality a deliberate nonconformity which allows each man to adapt his experience. Abbey, Edward. New York: Simon & Schuster, Print.2. nature. New York: DOUBLEDAY, 1997. Print.