With the desire to abandon the industrial life Edward Abby of Desert Solitaire and Chris McCandless of Into the Wild, immerse themselves in the wild nature. While they reject notions of industrial life, their defection is not absolute. Despite McCandless's stated desire to live off the land (Krakauer163), he is happy to find an industrial bus in the Alaskan wilderness for his base camp (Krakauer163). Likewise, Abbey, from her comfortable trailer in the Utah desert, claims to be there to “face…the bare bones of existence” (6). Using industry in their escape seems like a contradiction at first glance, but this conflict indicates that they are not rejecting industry, but are just separating themselves by degrees necessary to accommodate what they want to experience. Abbey's industrial dependence satisfies his need to have a philosophical dialogue with nature without separating from it, while McCandless's primitive approach satisfies his need for self-reliance. This stepwise separation allows rejection and use to coexist within their individual paradigms. Removing absolutes allows both men to explore outside of defined parameters. Accepting neither total rejection of a notion nor adherence to rigidly defined ideas, both men can incorporate evolving discoveries related to their needs without contradiction. Abbey and McCandless experience varying degrees of separation from industrial life, but neither rejects it completely. Abbey, an employee of the National Park Service in Utah, says: "I am here not only to escape for a while the noise, filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus, but also to confront immediately and directly, if possible, the framework of existence" (6). As Abbey circles… the center of the paper… naturally” (Abbey 6), he then proceeds to personify everything around him, from the crows that “caw harsh metallic sounds of pleased satisfaction” (Abbey 16), to a juniper who may be mad, or simply suffering from “an internal effort of liberation” (Abbey 27). While Abbey explores the contradiction between man and nature fused yet separate, McCandless often reshapes his paradigm to incorporate discovery. Not adhering to predetermined configurations allows both men to have the relationships they seek with wilderness and industrial society. Upon closer inspection we see that what at first appears to be a contradiction is actually an intentional non-conformity that allows each man to personalize his own experience. Works Cited1. Abbey, Edward. Desert loner. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968. Print.2. Krakauer, Jon. In the wild nature. New York: DOUBLEDAY, 1997. Print.