Fraters Libertas

Note To Friends: Don't Do Me Any Favors

I just finished a fairly interesting (and fairly depressing) book recently sent to me by the Elder. It’s called Journal of the Dead, by Jason Kersten a senior editor at Maxim.

The story is about two friends, Raffi Kodikian and David Coughlin who set out to drive to California from Boston in 1999 as a sort of last hurrah before Coughlin started graduate school.

As they went from town-to-town they realized they were a few days ahead of schedule and decided to camp in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico for a night. Being fairly typical east coast-types, they did not take adequate supplies of water or food with them, thinking it would only be one night and nothing could happen in one night.

After hiking a mile or so into a canyon and camping for the night, they promptly got very lost the next day as they tried to find their way out. One night stretched into two, then three. They were completely out of water and completely lost.

Eating prickly cactus fruit provided some sustenance and water, but after three days in the desert without water they were desperate. Making a suicide pact, they both decided to kill themselves rather than die the excruciating death that dehydration brings and to spare them from the buzzards, which had been their constant companions.

But, the suicides never took place. Each made slight efforts at cutting their own wrists with a knife, but neither had the gumption to go deep enough to draw blood. At that point, Kodikian said that Coughlin told him to put an end to his suffering by driving a knife through his heart.

And that is exactly what he did. Raffi Kodikian took the knife and stabbed his best friend twice in the heart, killing him. He then buried him with rocks in a cowboy grave.

A day later, Kodikian was rescued as he lay dying in his tent by a Park Ranger. When asked where his companion was, he pointed to the grave and said “Over there...I killed him.”

At 229 pages, the book breezes by a little too quickly and could be properly accused of being simply an extended magazine article (a shorter rendition of the story appeared in Maxim). But, it is nothing if not a compelling read. I got through in two sittings and couldn’t wait to find out what happened to Kodikian (I won’t ruin it for you.)

As good as it is, however, it is not as compelling as a similar book by Jon Krakauer called Into the Wild, the story of a young, idealistic loner who wanders into the Alaskan bush and never makes it out alive.

If you’re a glutton for depressing tales of young men dying in the wild, read both.