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Chris McCandless was an adventurer who traveled across the United States and Mexico during the early 1990's. Chris was driven by his extreme opinions of society and his wish to escape and experience the wild. He had a habit of subsisting on very little. Chris died in Alaska in 1992 after surviving for a little over a hundred days. After he died, many people called him naive, unprepared, and stupid for walking into the wild like he did.

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Chris traveled all around America. He made friends in all these places. He often returned to places to see his friends again.

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Chris was very passionate about many social justice issues, including the apartheid in South Africa. He had many opinions that were considered strange. His opinions were mostly inspired by authors like Leo Tolstoy, Henry Thoreau, and Jack London. He was very anti-materialistic. He tried to be anti-money, but never quite succeeded.

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Ida Laura Pfeiffer was born in 1797 as Ida Laura Reyer in Vienna, Austria. When she was five, her father took her on a trip to Palestine and Egypt. When she was twelve she told a French solider that she would murder Napolean in an instant if she had the chance. During her teenage years, she fell in love with her tutor. However, her mother didn't approve. When she was 22, she was forced to marry a Ukrainian doctor who was 20 years older than her. She had two sons and worked as a music teacher and seamstress. Once her sons grew up and had work, she started traveling.

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After ditching her husband, Ida traveled down the Danube River. She went to Istanbul, and then to Jerusalem. After returning to Beirut in 1844, she wrote a book called A Woman's Journey to the Holy Land. The sale of this book funded her next trip in 1845. In 1845, she first went to Copenhagen, then to Iceland. After returning to to the continent, she went to Denmark. She took a steamer north to Sweden and then to Norway. She got back to Vienna on October 4th. She then wrote her second book - Trip to the Scandinavian North and the island of Iceland. In 1846, using the funds from her second book she traveled to South America. She spent time in Brazil and Chile. She also traveled to Tahiti, China, Persia, India, and Asia Minor. She also spent a little time in Greece. She resumed travel in 1848. She went to Baghdad to tour the ancient cities of Babylon, Borsippa,  and Nineveh. After that, she went to Armenia, then to Georgia, and then she crossed the Black Sea to Russia. Her next book was a three volume set titled A Woman's Journey Round the World, which was published in 1850.

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In 1851, she left again. She went to Germany and then Britain. From England, she went to South Africa. Then, she crossed the Indian Ocean and went to the Malay Islands. Then, she went to the Sunda Islands, where she spent 18 months with the Dayak people of Borneo. She also spent time with the Batak people of Indonesia. The Batak people are cannibals. She was reported to joke with them saying she was too old to taste good. She was the first European to meet the Batak people. In 1853, she crossed the Pacific Ocean to America. She spent time in California, where she toured cities like Sacramento, San Jose, and Santa Clara. She then went to Central and South America. She stayed for a bit in Peru and Ecuador. In 1854, she boarded a ship going to New Orleans. She stayed in New Orleans for three weeks. After that, she traveled north and toured the Great Lakes Region. She returned to Vienna by mid-1855. She published My Second Trip Around the World in 1856. She then embarked on what would be her last trip. She decided that she wanted to go to Madagascar. She went to South Africa first. While there, she met a Frenchman who was involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the Queen of Madagascar - Queen Ravalona I. Queen Ravalona was the first queen of Madagascar and during her reign tried her best to distance Madagascar from the British and French who wished to colonize the island. She was known to be incredibly cruel. Her rule resulted in the death of one-third of her subjects. She has been known as "Ravalona the Cruel" and the "Mad Queen of Madagascar." She is often referred to as one of the most cruel queens in history. Unfortunately, Ida didn't know that she was involved in a coup d'etat. She was exiled from Madagascar when the Queen discovered the plot. However, while in Madagascar it's thought that Ida contracted malaria. She died in Vienna on October 27, 1858.

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After she died, her son Oscar finished her last book, called Trip to Madagascar. It was two volumes and published in 1861. Throughout her life, she wasn't allowed to be a part of the Royal Geographical Society of London because she was a woman. After her death she was elected as an honorary member of the Berlin Geographical Society and the Paris Geographical Society. Her travels became so infamous that Henry Thoreau (whom Chris McCandless was a fan of) put her in his book Walden, where he referred to her as Madam Pfeiffer. Her books continued to sell and be reprinted. People found her honesty and sense of humor entertaining.

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Both Chris and Ida were very opinionated. Throughout his life, Chris detested the idea of money. After he graduated college he gave the rest of his bank account to a non-profit fighting hunger, then he burned all his cash. He tried his best to get by on his travels without money. However, that was very hard to do and many times he had to take jobs to support himself. Ida's father was able to provide her family with a comfortable living while he was alive, however, after his death, they became very poor. This taught Ida to live with very little. It made her resourceful and even smarter. Years later, these skills enabled her to travel across the world with very little money and hardly any belongings with her.

During their respective times, people thought that both Chris and Ida were stupid. After Chris's death, many people wrote to explain just how strongly they felt about how dumb he was for trying to live in the Alaska wild (Into the Wild, Chapter Eleven). In truth, Chris was very smart and lasted much longer than other people would have. During her time in Polynesia, many Europeans told her she was stupid for seeking out the Batak people. They were known to be cannibals and everyone told her that if she interacted with them, she would die. She went anyway, suspecting something different. As she discovered, the Batak people had a robust system of government and justice that they used to run their civilization. She found out that only people seen as horrid criminals would be eaten. She was the first European to make contact with them. Both Chris and Ida had the ability to stay alive in absurd situations, up until they died.

Both Chris and Ida heavily criticized the way that the modern world worked, even being close to a century apart. Chris criticized how the world allowed people to end up homeless or hungry. Because of this, he grew to find displays of wealth disgusting. Ida heavily criticized the way non-Europeans were stereotyped and talked about. In one of her writings during her trip to California, she tells about how she didn't understand why the American government called Native Americans "savages," or how they chastized them for being violent and attacking. She argued that if what the American government had received the same treatment they'd given then they'd act in the same way. Both Chris and Ida stood for equity and equality.

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In the end, it came down to age. Chris was a young person trying to figure things out. Ida had lived life and knew exactly what she wanted and exactly what to expect. Chris was a dreamer, he tried his best not to live in the reality that everyone else did. He got frustrated with other people and their emotions, with their opinions, their prejudices, and with their expectations. Ida was a realist. She had lived long enough to know the limits of her impact. She had long accepted the ugly things in the world and chose to live and do what she pleased anyway.

Quite frankly, I think the two of them sought out different things in their lives because of the way they grew up. To be a widowed, poor, old woman in the 1800's in a lot different than to be a dude from a rich family in his twenties in 1990's America. Chris walked through life looking for hard times and challenges because other people had no choice. Ida endured the hard times for the majority of her life and forced the good things to happen anyway, once she got the chance.

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Encyclopedia.com. “Pfeiffer, Ida (1797–1858) | Encyclopedia.com.” Encyclopedia.com, Encyclopedia.com, 2000, www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/pfeiffer-ida-1797-1858. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Krakauer, Jon. Into the Wild. New York, Anchor Books, 1996, www.cusd80.com/cms/lib/AZ01001175/Centricity/Domain/8750/Into%20the%20Wild%20PDF.pdf. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Porath, Jason. “Ida Laura Pfeiffer: The Travelogue Queen.” Rejected Princesses, Rejected Princesses, www.rejectedprincesses.com/princesses/ida-laura-pfeiffer. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

WomeninExploration.com. “Ida Laura Pfeiffer.” Women in Exploration, Women in Exploration, www.womeninexploration.org/timeline/ida-laura-pfeiffer/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2023.