I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure … - Jon Krakauer

Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.

At such moments something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn’t the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard.

I began my adult life with the hypothesis that it would be possible to become a Stone Age native. For over 30 years, I programmed and conditioned myself to this end. In the last 10 of it, I would say I realistically experienced the physical, mental, and emotional reality of the Stone Age. But to borrow a Buddhist phrase, eventually came a setting face-to-face with pure reality. I learned that it is not possible for human beings as we know them to live off the land.

The revelation that he was merely human, and frightfully so, was beyond my power to forgive.