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Christopher McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) wanted to do everything with intetion. McCandless wanted to leave behind the 'traditional life' and live in the wild, with the overarching goal of getting to Alaska and learn what it is like to live in the wild. "No longer would he answer to Chris McCandless; he was now Alexander Supertramp, master of his own destiny." (pg. 23) Chris even took the step of changing his name to leave behind his life. "Supertramp" celebrated his new life of adventure. He went into the wild with almost nothing and lived in an abandoned bus, staying true to living the 'wild life'.

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To live with intention is to be determined to live a certain way, with purpose. Chris McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) made a point to live with intention, and many others want/do live that way as well. For some, living with intetion means comminting every action with kindness, and for some it means living to reach a certain goal. For Alex, it meant to live a life of nothing but a few items, to discover the world and more about himself. "In the woods, we return to reason and faith." (Nature, line 7-8) McCandless wanted to experience a life without material, just him and the earth. Being in nature allowed him to connect to nature and himself on a much deeper level. It brought him back to reality in a different way.

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Every time Carine McCandless talks about her brother, Chris, and his journey into the Alaska wilderness, she's met with surprise.

Carine McCandless, now in her 40s and the mother of two children, regularly talks with students assigned to read "Into the Wild" in class. The bestseller by Boulder's Jon Krakauer tells the story of Chris' two year odyssey around the West, which ended in 1992 in the abandoned bus where he died, apparently of starvation. It was adapted into a film released in 2007.

"I saw what an amazing effect [the book] had on [students], and I became more and more comfortable answering their questions," Carine McCandless recently told Outside Magazine. "I would always answer the students honestly... Then I would receive letters from professors, saying, 'Your visit here has changed the way I'm teaching this book.'"

That's because McCandless' account includes the violent childhood she shared with her brother and six half siblings born to their father and his first wife.

Now Carine McCandless has published her own book, called "The Wild Truth," explaining the family's history. Half-sisters Shawna Downing and Shelly McCandless contributed to the book, and Krakauer wrote the forward.

(Photo: Courtesy of Carine McCandless) In addition to physical abuse by McCandless' parents, the book describes emotional abuse and manipulation. In one scene in "The Wild Truth," McCandless' mother calls her a liar when she tries to report a beating she took from her father.

McCandless' book also reveals the tangled history of Chris and Carine's extended family. McCandless writes in "The Wild Truth" that her father bore children with both of his wives in the same time period, and that her parents have lied publicly about the overlapping time frame.

Carine McCandless says she wanted to write "The Wild Truth" in part because reactions to "Into the Wild" have been painful for her at times. She explains in her book,

I was puzzled by the amount of attention Chris's story received, and from such a diversity of people. And as interest grew, the number of questions grew exponentially with it... Many admired Chris for his courage and felt inspired by his transcendent principles, his charitable heart, his willingness to shed material possessions and to follow what he believed was the path to a pure existence. Others considered him an idiot and admonished him for what they felt was obtuse, reckless behavior. Some simply believed that he was mentally unstable and had walked into the wilderness with no intention of ever walking back out...

With all the criticism and 'Why?' questions circulating around me, it was tough not to shout from t he rooftops the real reasons Chris had left the way he did.

In "The Wild Truth," McCandless writes that her brother left home to get away from their parents. She describes her mother's role in the drama morphing from being only a victim of their father's heavy hand to an active participant, blaming the kids for the abuse.

All this explains, McCandless writes, why her brother wanted to remove himself from the family, disappearing without telling anyone where he was going.

"The Wild Truth" includes an excerpt from a letter Chris wrote to Carine just months before he started his fatal expedition: "Once the time is right, with one abrupt, swift action I'm going to completely knock [our parents] out of my life. I'm going to divorce them as parents... I'll be through with them once and for all forever."

(Photo: Courtesy of Carine McCandless)
The Stampede Trail near Denali National Park in Alaska. The bus where Chris McCandless' body was found is on this trail and has become a popular hiking destination.

CPR News requested an interview with McCandless' parents, Walt and Billie McCandless. They didn't respond, but they sent a written statement about their daughter's book to ABC News earlier this month. It said, in part, "[This] fictionalized writing has absolutely nothing to do with our beloved son, Chris, his journey or his character... This whole unfortunate event in Chris' life 22 years ago [meaning Chris' journey and ultimate death] is about Chris and his dreams."

Carine McCandless says she's not surprised by her parents' reaction to her book.

"I think their history has shown that denial would be very likely," she told Outside. "My mother has told me in the past that, because of her and my dad's religious beliefs, the slate has been wiped clean, and that the events of our past just don't matter anymore-they're non-existent.

Christopher McCandless starved to death in this abandoned bus in 1992 in the Alaskan wilderness.

"But I believe honesty is imperative in the process of healing from family turmoil and tragedy."

Carine McCandless speaks tonight at the Boulder Book Store, and PBS is scheduled to air a new documentary about Chris McCandless' story on Tuesday, Nov. 25, called "Return to the Wild."
Read an excerpt

Reprinted from "The Wild Truth" with permission of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins. Copyright (c) CarineMcCandless, 2014.

During the first few months after Chris's death, I witnessed some changes within my parents that I was confident were reconnecting us in a positive way. Though I had questioned their motivations in looking for Chris when he'd disappeared, their grief now was un- mistakably real. My mother was losing weight while my father gained. Their eyes were gaunt and tired. Whether or not they actually took responsibility for the loss of Chris, they were suffering. I was suffering, too, so I felt closer to them than ever before.

At home one day I received a call from a writer who identified himself as Jon Krakauer. He was working on an article about Chris for Outside magazine, and wanted to know if I would talk to him. I was conflicted about the idea. I wanted to know what Chris's life was like after he left Emory, where he had been, what all he had done, and here was a journalist willing to find some answers. But Chris had had a very private nature, and I feared him being exploited, which I was quick to inform Jon during our short interview. The cause of my trepidation, how- ever, I did not explain to him on the phone that day.

The article Jon wrote for Outside received an extraordinary amount of attention and generated more mail to their offices than any other article in the magazine's history. This was as much a surprise to Jon as it was to my family, which increased his already strong desire to explore Chris's story further. The next time I heard from Jon was in May of 1993. He had just made a formal agreement with my parents to expand his efforts into a book, and asked if he could come to Virginia Beach to interview me at greater length. I was cautious.

Since it was my parents who had granted him permission to tell Chris's story, I doubted that much of the truth would be told. I was also unsure how much should be shared. I still held out hope that my parents would see the error of their ways and regret the course of events that had led to a story at all. In the end, I agreed to at least meet with Jon in person. He was not very well known, and I didn't understand why he felt that there would be enough public interest in Chris's life and death to write an entire book about it, much less sell many of them. I doubted that anyone beyond our own family or the occasional reader of Outside would even pick it up.

Jon Krakauer flew to Virginia to interview me at the new house Fish and I had recently finished building. Upon meeting him, I was struck with an unexpected sense of trust of the kind that only comes from having years of history with someone. He seemed much like I would have expected Chris to be in his late thirties. He wasn't particularly tall, and he had a wiry yet quite muscular build that he did not make any effort, visual or otherwise, to boast about. His hair was dark, like Chris's, though his eyes were lighter. Overall, though, his similarities to Chris were more internal. He had an inquisitive nature that seemed to be in constant conflict with skepticism.

There was not much public information on Jon to be found. I had learned only that he was a literary, journalistic-style writer and an active outdoorsman, highly respected within the obscure world of first-rate climbers. Although Jon had a reserved demeanor, I could almost see the current of fervent energy flowing behind his eyes. The mystery surrounding my brother's story was one that seemed to intrigue him to a point of obsession, but in a very private way. He never asked me directly, but I could discern from Jon's questions that he believed there was much more to Chris's story than he had previously been told. He wanted to know about our family dynamics from my perspective. I recognized his intense quest for truth. At first, I spoke vaguely around the issues he was attempting to dissect, but this strategy did not last long. Not because I was unable to speak in soft circles around the specifics of our childhood-I had been doing that for years-but because, for the first time, I felt obligated to tell the truth. I had kept so much private, and even the notion of coming clean about our family history offered me a sense of relief.

I trusted that Jon wanted honest answers for the right reasons. I told him about Walt's coinciding "marriages." I told him about the awful fights, the manipulations, the violence. As I treaded into the unexplored territory of exposing the reality of our past, I became more and more comfortable with Jon. Resolute, I explained that truth was of paramount importance to Chris-and why that was. In Chris's own words, there was "nothing more crucial to a pure and happy existence." I wanted to honor and do justice to Chris, and I felt I could only do that by describing everything in the most finite detail, telling Jon the whole story so he could represent Chris fully, even if not explicitly. Jon was grateful to my parents for allowing him to delve into the mystery of Chris's journey, and he was also sensitive to their pain. But I perceived an even stronger obligation within him to understand Chris and be fair to him. He was clearly not party to what I feared might be my parents' agenda.

While I told him almost everything, I asked that he keep much of it private. I still wanted to protect my parents from full exposure in case they could change for the better. I wanted to spare my siblings from having to deal with the painful mess of our family history in a public way. We spoke about the delicate line we would need to de- fine and walk together. He would quote me describing my relation- ship with my parents as "extremely good," and at the time, I hadn't stopped believing that it could be.

Just as Jon was preparing to head back to the airport, I felt an overwhelming reassurance come over me. I decided to let him read Chris's letters, which I had never shared with anyone else-not my parents, not Fish, not my closest friend, not even my siblings. I would not let Jon make copies or take any photographs of the letters. He was restricted to handwritten notes only.

Shortly after reading the first letter, the others spread out on the table awaiting their turn to speak for Chris, Jon's mood became anxious. His eyes darted across Chris's impassioned handwriting, then back to his notepad. I knew he would need time to digest what he was reading and that there would be hours of discussion ahead. I invited him to have dinner with Fish and me and stay in the guest room for the night. His acceptance was understood as he quickly rescheduled his flight and informed his wife, Linda, of the change in plans.

Before handing over the letters, I made Jon promise that he could not include anything from them in his book without my approval, and even as I said the words, I felt that they had been unnecessary. I sensed a deep respect from him and that he was very aware that having my trust was his key to truly understanding what had made Chris tick. I had given the author of the story Chris did not live to tell the enormous responsibility of knowing the truth yet not writing it.

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Chris McCandless' sisters explain why he went 'Into the Wild'

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Every time Carine McCandless talks about her brother, Chris, and his journey into the Alaska wilderness, she's met with surprise. Carine McCandless, now in her 40s and the mother of two children, regularly talks with students assigned to read "Into the Wild" in class.

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There have been so many great parts of the book, "Into the Wild." One quote stuck out to me specifically. Chris McCandless was writing a letter to Ronald Franz. He wrote this letter to Franz to encourage him to leave his life and live along with McCandless' lifestyle. “So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” (pg. 57) This is a really good and inspiring quote because it encourages taking risks and initiative. This quote can encourage in many different areas of life. Whether that is wandering into the woods, or going back to college.

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"There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened." - Mary Kay Ash, American businesswoman

"Initiative is doing the right thing without being told." - Victor Hugo, French writer

Helen's manager was due to meet with her and her co-workers to discuss their role in the next product roll-out. Unfortunately, he's been snowed in at an airport on the other side of the country, and his cell phone battery is dead. The deadline is tight, and the team can't afford to waste a day because of his absence.

Helen was the last person to talk to her boss before he left, and he'd outlined who was going to be doing what on the project. So, Helen takes command, and, within an hour, everyone on the team has their preliminary tasks mapped out.

When her boss arrives in the office three days later, he's impressed and grateful that Helen took responsibility to get the project moving. If she hadn't, several valuable days would have been lost.

Do you take initiative like Helen? That is, do you make things happen for yourself and for your team? Or, do you wait for someone else to tell you what to do?

People who have initiative and make things happen are highly valued in the workplace. But, what is it? And how can you develop it? We'll be covering both of these questions in this article.

Defining Initiative

Researchers Michael Frese and Doris Fay define initiative as "work behavior characterized by its self-starting nature, its proactive approach, and by being persistent in overcoming difficulties that arise in pursuit of a goal."

When you show initiative, you do things without being told; you find out what you need to know; you keep going when things get tough; and you spot and take advantage of opportunities that others pass by. You act, instead of reacting, at work.

Most of us have seen initiative in action. Maybe you've seen a young manager who fills her boss's shoes when she's sick and the rest of the team is unsure what to do; or perhaps you've seen a team member proposing a process improvement plan to the executive board.

Initiative has become increasingly important in today's workplace. Organizations want employees who can think on their feet and take action without waiting for someone to tell them what to do. After all, this type of flexibility and courage is what pushes teams and organizations to innovate, and to overcome competition.

How to Develop Your Initiative

The good news is that initiative is a skill that you can develop. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Develop a Career Plan

Also, make sure that you understand your job, and your team and your organization's purpose, so that you know what you should be achieving. See our articles on Job Analysis, Team Charters and Mission and Vision Statements for more on this.

2. Build Self-Confidence

It can take courage and a strong sense of self to show initiative, especially if you fear that people may disagree with your actions or suggestions.

First, take our quiz, How Self-Confident Are You? The results will give you a good idea of your confidence levels right now. Then, if you need to, take steps to build your self-confidence.

For instance, set small goals so you can achieve some quick wins. And push yourself to do (positive) things that you'd otherwise be scared to do - this will not only help you build your self-confidence, but it will help you build the courage to accomplish bigger, scarier tasks later on.

You might also want to read our article on Positive Thinking. This, along with Visualization, can help you build your self-confidence even further.

Tip:

Some people have a real fear of speaking up, or of taking any action that's not yet authorized by the leadership team, because they're afraid of failure or rejection. If this sounds like you, see our article on overcoming fear of failure to learn how to manage your fears.

3. Spot Opportunities and Potential Improvements

People who show initiative often do so by spotting and acting on opportunities that their colleagues or leaders have not noticed. They're curious about their organization and how it works, and they keep their minds open to new ideas and new possibilities.

What would our customers (internal and external) want us to improve? What could they be doing better if we could help them? How can we improve quality?

Who else could we help by using our core competences?

What small problems do we have that could grow into bigger ones?

What slows our work or makes it more difficult? What do we often fail to achieve? Where do we have bottlenecks? What is frustrating and irritating to people on our team?

Get into the habit of looking for these things - perhaps set a repeating appointment in your diary to remind you to look for them; and, when things go wrong, think about how you can fix them.

4. Sense-Check Your Ideas

Imagine that you've come up with a creative way of breaking through a bottleneck in your customer service process. Before you head straight to your boss with your idea, stop and do some homework. Think about the costs and risks associated with the idea. (Tools like Cost/Benefit Analysis, Risk Analysis and Impact Analysis will help here.)

You've already shown initiative by coming up with a solution. Make sure that you follow this through by doing your homework on the idea. The more you have researched and considered your ideas, the higher your chances of success will be.

5. Develop Rational Persistence

When you're persisting with your idea, you'll find things much easier if you learn how to manage change effectively - this can often make the difference between success and failure for a project. It's also helpful to learn how to open closed minds, since people may already have an opinion on a subject before you even start presenting your idea.

6. Find Balance

While it's important to take initiative, it's just as important to be wise in the way that you use it. In some situations, it can be inappropriate to take initiative, and people who generate too much extra work for other people can upset others.

For instance, you might have worked with a colleague who was "gung-ho" about every idea. He was constantly pushing the team, and your boss, to lead the next project or to implement a new idea. However, some of his ideas were naïve, his persistence in taking the initiative often crossed the line into aggressiveness, and perhaps the team felt that he "rocked the boat" too much at a time when other team members were overloaded.

This is why it's so important to learn good decision-making techniques. The more you enhance these skills, the better you'll be at judging when an idea is good, and it isn't. This way, you can develop a reputation both for initiative and for good judgment - an invaluable combination!

Key Points

Initiative has become increasingly important in today's workplace. You show initiative when you act without being told what to do, persist in the face of inertia and difficulty, and see your idea through to a successful conclusion.

There are six steps you can take to develop your own initiative.

1. Develop a career plan.

2. Build self-confidence.

3. Spot opportunities and potential improvements.

4. Sense-check your ideas.

5. Develop persistence.

6. Find balance.

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Taking Initiative: Making Things Happen in the Workplace

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"There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened." - Mary Kay Ash, American businesswoman "Initiative is doing the right thing without being told."

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Dear Sister,
I know you're upset I left. "My days [are] more exciting when [I'm] penniless and [have] to forage around for my next meal." I never felt good at home. I've never told someone I have a good homelife. I cut myself off completley from you and our parents because I wanted to forget my homelife. I wanted to get away from our parents. I didn't want them to know where I was going and them somehow find me. I haven't written you in fear of revealing to much for you to tell our parents. You've always been closer to them, and I feared what would happen if I talked to you. I also wanted to experiance the life of living in the wild, and that doesn't include family or friends. I hope you will read this with an open-mind, and try to understand where I am coming from. I hope you are doing well,
Chris McCandless

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Living with intetion means something different to everyone. Overall, I believe there is a broad foundation to what living with intetion means, and everyone's idea builds off of that. Living with intention means to be deliberate and not reckless. To me, living with intent is thinking before any action I take, and any words I say. Living intentionally means to be the best I can, and be a positive outlet to everyone. Living with intention is to live my life acheiving the reason I'm here, to spread the word of God and make disciples.

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Your DNA Does Not Define You | Carine McCandless | TEDxEmory

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Testing the Boundries or Testing Fortitude?

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Testing the Boundries or Testing Fortitude?

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Chris McCandless was not reckless, I would go as far to say that he knew exactly what he was doing. Contrary to popular belief, McCandless went out there on a mission, not with a death wish, and he had full intent on coming back home once he accomplished his task. He used logic, like when he decided to not cross a river because he knew he wouldn't make it. He wasn't the first individual who set out on a journey like this. More than 100 people make this trip successfully annually. Therefore, I don't think he was reckless. He simply wanted to discover his inner purpose, and prove he could go into the wild.

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Jon Krakauer interview on "Into the Wild" (1996)

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Journalist Jon Krakauer shares his new biography, "Into the Wild," which recounts the story of Chris McCandless who left everything behind, walked into the Alaskan wilderness, and tragically perished. ""﴿───► See more on the Authors Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIZqvqbtz9I30kDK7RrKXxtLK9WxA33-T