# data[].attributes.body
Still, the last sad memory hovers round, and sometimes drifts across like floating mist, cutting off sunshine and chilling the remembrance of happier times. There have been joys too great to be described in words, and there have been griefs upon which 1 have not dared to dwell; and with these in mind I say: Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are
nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the
happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from
the beginning think what may be the end.
EDWARD WHYMPER, SCRAMBLES AMONGST THE ALPS
We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence
of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then
when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to
toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break our necks for home. There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the
heart’s slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times.
ANNIE DILLARD, HOLY THE FIRM
-Shows how Chris and his life has gone.

# data[].attributes.body
-"he agreed to drive Walt and Billie into the bus
on his all-terrain vehicle."
-"Under the bed at the rear of the bus, she leaves a suitcase stocked with a first-aid kit, canned food, other survival supplies, a note urging whoever happens to read it to “call your parents as soon as possible.”"

# data[].attributes.body
It is nearly impossible for modem man to imagine what it is like to live by
hunting. The life of a hunter is one of hard, seemingly continuous overland
travel... A life of frequent concerns that the next interception may not work,
that the trap or the drive will fail, or that the herds will not appear this
season. Above all, the life of a hunter carries with it the threat of deprivation
and death by starvation.
JOHN M. CAMPBELL, THE HUNGRY SUMMER
Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That’s why people discover
mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that’s why they write
symphonies. Now, you can’t advance in this direction without a certain faith. You can’t make such discoveries without spiritual equipment. And the basic elements of this equipment are in the Gospels. What are they? To begin with, love of one’s neighbor, which is the supreme form of vital energy. Once it fills
the heart of man it has to overflow and spend itself. And then the two basic
ideals of modem man—without them he is unthinkable—the idea offree personality and the idea of life as sacrifice.
BORIS PASTERNAK, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO - PASSAGE HIGHLIGHTED IN ONE OF THE BOOKS
FOUND WITH CHRISTOPHER MCCANDLESS’S REMAINS;UNDERSCORING BY MCCANDLESS
-This shows how others viewed Chris.

# data[].attributes.body
-"which poisoned him."

# data[].attributes.body
Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man’s garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor
mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste land. It was the fresh
and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever,—
to be the dwelling of man, we say,—so Nature made it, and man may use it
if he can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast,
terrific,—not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on,
or to be buried in,— no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie
there,— the home, this, of Necessity and Fate. There was clearly felt the
presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place of
heathenism and superstitious rites,—to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we... What is it to be admitted to a
museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star’s surface, some hard matter in its home! I stand in awe of my body, this matter to which I am bound has become so strange to me. I fearnot spirits, ghosts, of which I am one,—that my body might,—but I fear
bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth!
the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, “KTAADN”
-Actually explains how Chris was emotionally.

# data[].attributes.body
-"A year and a week after Chris McCandless decided not to attempt to cross the
Teklanika River, I stand on the opposite bank—the eastern side, the highway
side—and gaze into the churning water. I, too, hope to cross the river. I want to
visit the bus. I want to see where McCandless died, to better understand why."
-"he didn’t know the
first thing about surviving in the back-country."

# data[].attributes.body
/ wished to acquire the simplicity, native feelings, and virtues of savage
life; to divest myself of the factitious habits, prejudices and imperfections of
civilization; ... and to find, amidst the solitude and grandeur of the western
wilds, more correct views of human nature and of the true interests of man.
The season of snows was preferred, that I might experience the pleasure of
suffering, and the novelty of danger.
ESTWICK EVANS, A PEDESTRIOUS TOUR, OF FOUR THOUSAND MILES, THROUGH THE
WESTERN STATES AND TERRITORIES, DURING THE WINTER AND SPRING OF 1818
Wilderness appealed to those bored or disgusted with man and his
works. It not only offered an escape from society but also was an ideal stage
for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his
own soul. The solitude and total freedom of the wilderness created a perfect setting for either melancholy or exultation.
RODERICK NASH, WILDERNESS AND THE AMERICAN MIND
-Chris didn't really like the way society is.

# data[].attributes.body
-"He was surprised, therefore, to find
someone already in the steaming water, a young man who introduced himself as Alex."

# data[].attributes.body
But we little know until tried how much of the uncontrollable there is in
us, urging across glaciers and torrents, and up dangerous heights, let the
judgement forbid as it may.
JOHN MUIR, THE MOUNTAINS OF CALIFORNIA

But have you noticed the slight curl at the end of Sam H’s mouth, when
he looks at you? It means that he didn’t want you to name him Sam II, for
one thing, and for two other things it means that he has a sawed-offin his
left pant leg, and a baling hook in his right pant leg, and is ready to kill you
with either one of them, given the opportunity. The father is taken aback.
What he usually says, in such a confrontation, is “I changed your diapers
for you, little snot.” This is not the right thing to say. First, it is not true
(mothers change nine diapers out of ten), and second, it instantly reminds
Sam II of what he is mad about. He is mad about being small when you
were big, but no, that’s not it, he is mad about being helpless when you
were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent
when you were necessary, not quite it, he is insane because when he loved
you, you didn’t notice.
DONALD BARTHELME, THE DEAD FATHER
-Felt like father lied to him

# data[].attributes.body
-"There still existed an opportunity for salvaging the expedition, however."
-"It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than
what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it."

# data[].attributes.body
/ grew up exuberant in body but with a nervy, craving mind. It was
wanting something more, something tangible. It sought for reality intensely,
always as if it were not there... But you see at once what I do. I climb.
JOHN MENLOVE EDWARDS, “LETTER FROM A MAN”

/ cannot now tell exactly, it was so long ago, under what circumstances I
first ascended, only that I shuddered as I went along (I have an indistinct
remembrance of having been out overnight alone),—and then I steadily
ascended along a rocky ridge half clad with stinted trees, where wild beasts
haunted, till I lost myself quite in the upper air and clouds, seeming to pass
an imaginary line which separates a hill, mere earth heaped up, from a
mountain, into a superterranean grandeur and sublimity. What
distinguishes that summit above the earthly line, is that it is unhandselled,
awful, grand. It can never become familiar; you are lost the moment you set
foot there. You know the path, but wander, thrilled, over the bare and
pathless rock, as if it were solidified air and cloud. That rocky, misty
summit, secreted in the clouds, was far more thrillingly awful and sublime
than the crater of a volcano spouting fire.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, JOURNAL
-People always want what they don't have

# data[].attributes.body
-"As a youth, I am told, I was willful, self-absorbed, intermittently reckless,
moody. I disappointed my father in the usual ways. Like McCandless, figures of male authority aroused in me a confusing medley of corked fury and hunger to please. If something captured my undisciplined imagination, I pursued it with a zeal bordering on obsession, and from the age of seventeen until my late twenties that something was mountain climbing."

# data[].attributes.body
The physical domain of the country had its counterpart in me. The trails I
made led outward into the hills and swamps, but they led inward also. And
from the study of things underfoot, and from reading and thinking, came a
kind of exploration, myself and the land. In time the two became one in my
mind. With the gathering force of an essential thing realizing itself out of
early ground, I faced in myself a passionate and tenacious longing— to put
away thought forever, and all the trouble it brings, all but the nearest desire,
direct and searching. To take the trail and not look back. Whether on foot, on
showshoes or by sled, into the summer hills and their late freezing
shadows—a high blaze, a runner track in the snow would show where I had
gone. Let the rest of mankind find me if it could.
JOHN HAINES, THE STARS, THE Snow, THE FIRE: TWENTY-FIVE YEARS IN THE
NORTHERN WILDERNESS
-He wanted to make his own path. He didn't want to be a burden.

# data[].attributes.body
“That summer he disappeared he’d wanted to take Buck with him. After he graduated from Emory, he asked Mom and Dad if he could come get Buck, but they said no, because Buckley had just been hit by a car and was still recovering."

# data[].attributes.body
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table
where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance,
but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the
inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU,WALDEN, OR LIFE IN THE WOODS PASSAGE HIGHLIGHTED IN
ONE OF THE BOOKS FOUND WITH CHRIS MCCANDLESS’S REMAINS.
AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE, THE WORD “TRUTH” HAD BEEN WRITTEN IN LARGE
BLOCK LETTERS IN MCCANDLESS’S HAND.

For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked
and naturally prefer mercy.
G. K. CHESTERTON
-He was very happy at the time and felt content with where he was at.

# data[].attributes.body
-“He seemed mad at us more often, and he became more withdrawn—no, that’s not the right word. Chris wasn’t ever withdrawn. But he wouldn’t tell us what was on his mind and spent
more time by himself.”

# data[].attributes.body
Everything had changed suddenly—the tone, the moral climate; you
didn’t know what to think, whom to listen to. As if all your life you had been
led by the hand like a small child and suddenly you were on your own, you
had to learn to walk by yourself. There was no one around, neither family
nor people whose judgment you respected. At such a time you felt the need
of committing yourself to something absolute—life or truth or beauty—of
being ruled by it in place of the man-made rules that had been discarded.
You needed to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more
unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in
the old life that was now abolished and gone for good.
Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago passage highlighted in one of the books
found with Chris McCandless’s remains. “Need for a purpose” had been
written in mccandless’s hand in the margin above the passage.
-Chris felt a need to go into the wild.

# data[].attributes.body
-"Walt is accustomed to calling the shots. Taking control is something he does unconsciously, reflexively."
-"Both Walt and Billie are tightly wound, emotional, loath to give ground."

# data[].attributes.body
DYING IN THE WILD, A HIKER RECORDED THE TERROR
ANCHORAGE, Sept. 12 (AP)—Last Sunday a young hiker, stranded by an
injury, was found dead at a remote camp in the Alaskan interior. No one is
yet certain who he was. But his diary and two notes found at the camp tell
a wrenching story of his desperate and progressively futile efforts to survive.
The diary indicates that the man, believed to be an American in his late
20’s or early 30’s, might have been injured in a fall and that he was then
stranded at the camp for more than three months. It tells how he tried to
save himself by hunting game and eating wild plants while nonetheless
getting weaker.
One of his two notes is a plea for help, addressed to anyone who might
come upon the camp while the hiker searched the surrounding area for food.
The second note bids the world goodbye...
An autopsy at the state coroner’s office in Fairbanks this week found that
the man had died of starvation, probably in late July. The authorities
discovered among the man’s possessions a name that they believe is his.
But they have so far been unable to confirm his identity and, until they do,
have declined to disclose the name.
THE NEW YORK TIMES, SEPTEMBER 13, 1992
-Shows more details about Chris's death

# data[].attributes.body
-"By the time The New York Times picked up the story about the hiker, the
Alaska State Troopers had been trying for a week to figure out who he was.
-"When Jim Gallien saw the headline and the accompanying map indicating that the body had been found twenty-five miles west of Healy on the Stampede Trail, he felt the hairs bristle across the base of his scalp: Alex."
-“I was pretty sure it was Chris. The fact that he’d gone to Alaska, that he’d gone off by himself—it all added up.”

# data[].attributes.body
As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think. I have not
tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead,

more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and star-
sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the

unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the
discontent bred by cities. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I
feel that I belong and am one with the world around me? It is true that I
miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share
the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It
is enough that I am surrounded with beauty....
Even from your scant description, I know that I could not bear the routine
and humdrum of the life that you are forced to lead. I don’t think I could ever
settle down. I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I
would prefer anything to an anticlimax.
THE LAST LETTER EVER RECEIVED FROM EVERETT RUESS, TO HIS
BROTHER, WALDO, DATED NOVEMBER 11, 1934

What Everett Ruess was after was beauty, and he conceived beauty in
pretty romantic terms. We might be inclined to laugh at the extravagance of
his beauty-worship if there were not something almost magnificent in his
single-minded dedication to it. Esthetics as a parlor affectation is ludicrous
and sometimes a little obscene; as a way of life it sometimes attains dignity.
If we laugh at Everett Ruess we shall have to laugh at John Muir, because
there was little difference between them except age.
WALLACE STEGNER, MORMON COUNTRY
-The world can be a harsh place sometimes, isn't just all flowery.

# data[].attributes.body
-"At the end of the summer, Everett returned home only long enough to earn a
high school diploma, which he received in January 1931. Less than a month later he was on the road again, tramping alone through the canyon lands of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, then a region nearly as sparsely populated and wrapped in mystique as Alaska is today."

# data[].attributes.body
It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves
in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way
of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant
an or thought.
THEODORE ROSZAK, “IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS”

We have in America “The Big Two-Hearted River” tradition: taking your
wounds to the wilderness for a cure, a conversion, a rest, or whatever. And
as in the Hemingway story, if your wounds aren’t too bad, it works. But this
isn’t Michigan (or Faulkner’s Big Woods in Mississippi, for that matter). This
is Alaska.
EDWARD HOAGLAND, “Up THE BLACK TO CHALKYITSIK”
-Going into the wild can be healing, but not for everyone.

# data[].attributes.body
-"glorifying what some thought was a foolish, pointless death."

# data[].attributes.body
There was some books... One was Pilgrim’s Progress, about a man that
left his family, it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The
statements was interesting, but tough.
MARK TWAIN, THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN
It is true that many creative people fail to make mature personal
relationships, and some are extremely isolated. It is also true that, in some
instances, trauma, in the shape of early separation or bereavement, has
steered the potentially creative person toward developing aspects of his
personality which can find fulfillment in comparative isolation. But this does
not mean that solitary, creative pursuits are themselves pathological...
[A]voidance behavior is a response designed to protect the infant from
behavioural disorganization. If we transfer this concept to adult life, we can
see that an avoidant infant might very well develop into a person whose
principal need was to find some kind of meaning and order in life which was
not entirely, or even chiefly, dependent upon interpersonal relationships.
ANTHONY STORR, SOLITUDE: A RETURN TO THE SELF
-Chris did not have the best relationship with his parents and he didn't like to be at home because of it.

# data[].attributes.body
-"McCand-less had ambled
into the office at the Carthage grain elevator and announced that he was ready to go to work."
-"He needed to buy a pile of new gear, he explained,
because he was going to Alaska.

# data[].attributes.body
No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were
bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to
be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the
day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a
fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry,
more immortal,—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and
you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and
values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they
exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality... The true harvest of
my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of
morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow
which I have clutched.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU,
VFALDEN, OR LIFE IN THE WOODS
PASSAGE HIGHLIGHTED IN ONE OF THE BOOKS FOUND
WITH CHRIS MCCANDLESS’S REMAINS
-Chris was on the path that he thought was best for him.

# data[].attributes.body
-"Nobody, however, was affected more powerfully by his or her brief contact with the boy than Ronald Franz, who was eighty years old when their paths intersected in January 1992."

# data[].attributes.body
The dominant primordial beast was strong in Buck, and under the fierce
conditions of trail life it grew and grew. Yet it was a secret growth. His
newborn cunning gave him poise and control.
JACK LONDON, THE CALL OF THE WILD

All Hail the Dominant Primordial Beast! And Captain Ahab Too!
Alexander Supertramp - May 1992
GRAFFITO FOUND INSIDE THE ABANDONED BUS ON THE STAMPEDE TRAIL
-The wild changes people

# data[].attributes.body
-"he was holding down a full-time job,flipping Quarter Pounders at a McDonald’s"
-"never caught the slip.
Two years after he sweated over the grill in Bullhead, his colleagues at thegolden arches don’t recall much about Chris McCandless."

# data[].attributes.body
The desert is the environment of revelation, genetically and
physiologically alien, sensorily austere, esthetically abstract, historically
inimical.... Its forms are bold and suggestive. The mind is beset by light and
space, the kinesthetic novelty of aridity, high temperature, and wind. The
desert sky is encircling, majestic, terrible. In other habitats, the rim of sky
above the horizontal is broken or obscured; here, together with the overhead
portion, it is infinitely vaster than that of rolling countryside and forest
lands... In an unobstructed sky the clouds seem more massive, sometimes
grandly reflecting the earth’s curvature on their concave undersides. The
angularity of desert landforms imparts a monumental architecture to the
clouds as well as to the land....
To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and
exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic
and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.
PAUL SHEPARD, MAN IN THE LANDSCAPE:
A HISTORIC VIEW OF THE ESTHETICS OF NATURE
-Chris went into the bush to escape from reality.

# data[].attributes.body
-“This piece of shit has been abandoned. Whoever can get it out of here can have it.”
-"he arranged all his paper currency in a pile on the sand—a pathetic little stack of ones and fives
and twenties—and put a match to it."

# data[].attributes.body
/ wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted
excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt
in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.
LEO TOLSTOY, “FAMILY HAPPINESS”
PASSAGE HIGHLIGHTED IN ONE OF THE BOOKS
FOUND WITH CHRIS MCCANDLESS’S REMAINS

It should not be denied... that being footloose has always exhilarated us.
It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and
law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has
always led west.
WALLACE STEGNER, THE AMERICAN WEST AS LIVING SPACE
-This helps to kind of explain why Chris went into the wild.

# data[].attributes.body
-"He used to sit right there at the end of the bar and
tell us these amazing stories of his travels. He could talk for hours."
-"He was the hardest worker I’ve ever seen. Didn’t matter what it was,
he’d do it: hard physical labor, mucking rotten grain and dead rats out of the
bottom of the hole—jobs where you’d get so damn dirty you couldn’t even tell
what you looked like at the end of the day. And he never quit in the middle of
something. If he started a job, he’d finish it."

# data[].attributes.body
Chris's half brother, and the one who identified his body.

# data[].attributes.body
Drove Chris to Lizard Hot Springs.

# data[].attributes.body
Jon's father. Had a similar relationship with his son as Chris and his father did.

# data[].attributes.body
The author of the book. He sees many of his nomadic tendencies in Chris, and almost idolizes him.

# data[].attributes.body
Chris's sister. They were extremely close, as they often confided in each other when their parents fought.

# data[].attributes.body
Chris's mother, and someone who was very attached to Chris.

# data[].attributes.body
Chris's father. Was extremely critical of Chris, and constantly argued with his wife. Many believe he's the sole reason Chris started wandering, as he restricted Chris all his life, and made Chris resent him.

# data[].attributes.body
The police officer who responded to Jim's call.

# data[].attributes.body
Krakauer goes with Billie and Walt to the bus, where they reminisce about Chris and leave behind an honorary plaque.

# data[].attributes.body
Chris, after being in Alaska for a couple months, finally decides it's time to leave. However, his attempts to cross the now rapidly flowing river fail, and he shrinks back defeated. He is starting to get sick from eating a plant that he thought wasn't poisonous, and Krakauer investigates to find out that Chris may have eaten wild poison peas, an extremely similar looking plant to the safe wild potato. Chris is in his final hours, where he dies in the bus of starvation.

# data[].attributes.body
Back to Krakauer, who leads a team to look for the Bus. They find it, and with it there are so many signs of Chris's life, from old animal bones to the machete scabbard given to him by Ronald Franz. They cook and sleep at the camp.

# data[].attributes.body
Chris finally ventures out into the wild. He happens upon the bus, where he will reside for most of his time in Alaska.

# data[].attributes.body
Krakauer reminisces about his poor relationship with his father as he leaves Devils Thumb, unsuccessful. After more preparation, he tries again and this time reaches the summit. He then thinks about how Chris maybe used this venture as a form of suicide.

# data[].attributes.body
A nomadic man, similar to Chris. He traveled through the Davis Gulch, and was never seen again.

# data[].attributes.body
Lived away from society in a log cabin. Starved to death.

# data[].attributes.body
Went to live with nature. A rare example of a nomadic person living among nature without meeting his doom.

# data[].attributes.body
Moved to Fairbanks, Alaska to do photography. Forgot to arrange someone to pick him out from the wilderness, and died.

# data[].attributes.body
A man who, known for his expeditions (including climbing the infamous Mt. Hunter), ran for office two separate times.

# data[].attributes.body
A mayor of a small town who killed himself. Was selfish and hated almost everybody.

# data[].attributes.body
A man who had lost his family to a horrific accident. Saw Chris as a son, and loved him.

# data[].attributes.body
The supportive assistant manager of the McDonalds Chris worked at.

# data[].attributes.body
A questionably sane man who offers to let Chris stay with him, but then promptly kicks him out.

# data[].attributes.body
Krakauer tells a similar experience that he had compared to Chris; he had been dropped off at a peak called the Devil's Thumb in Alaska. He was determined to climb it, but was running low on supplies as a snowstorm was coming in, and he believed that his supply plane wouldn't make it to him and he'd starve to death.

# data[].attributes.body
Krakauer interviews Carine McCandless, who was the closest person to Chris. She admits to have developed an eating disorder due to Chris's death.

# data[].attributes.body
We learn about Chris's psychological dip in college; he became a recluse who rarely left his dorm. In the moments leading up to his departure after college, Krakauer believes it was because of his father that Chris decided to leave.

# data[].attributes.body
Krakauer interviews Chris's father, Walt. Walt expresses the fact that Chris was troublesome for him growing up. He then delves into Chris's childhood, stating that Chris was incredibly smart and talented at a young age.

# data[].attributes.body
After false police calls and investigation, officials finally get in contact with McCandless's half brother. He identifies the body as Chris, and then leaves to tell his family.

# data[].attributes.body
This chapter tells the story of Everett Reus, a wanderer with a story similar to Chris.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a reflection chapter on what people though of ones like Chris; many residents of Alaska felt wanderers were insane and idiotic.

# data[].attributes.body
Chris ends up in South Dakota, where he works at a grain elevator to make enough money for his trip back to Alaska.

# data[].attributes.body
Chris starts wandering again and meets Ronald Franz, an older man who's tragic past robbed him of his purpose in life. After Chris stays with him for a while, he convinces Franz to live a nomadic lifestyle to regain the youth he lost.

# data[].attributes.body
Gave Chris a ride, got to know who he was for a little bit.

# data[].attributes.body
The person who found Chris's abandoned car.

# data[].attributes.body
A hired Private Investigator looking for Chris.

# data[].attributes.body
Offered Chris a job on the his ranch while he was wandering.

# data[].attributes.body
The man who gave Chris a job in Alaska.

# data[].attributes.body
Jack London is King
Alexander Supertramp
May 1992
GRAFFITO CARVED INTO A PIECE OF WOOD DISCOVERED
AT THE SITE OF CHRIS MCCANDLESS’S DEATH

Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees
had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they
seemed to lean toward each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A
vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless,
without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of
sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of a laughter more terrible
than any sadness—a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx,
a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It
was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the

futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-
hearted Northland Wild.

JACK LONDON, WHITE FANG
-This shows Chris and his love for nature and how it came to be.

# data[].attributes.body
-"The third bus was
left about halfway out the trail to serve as backcountry shelter for hunters and
trappers."
-"S.O.S. I NEED YOUR HELP. I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO
HIKE OUT OF HERE I AM ALL ALONE, THIS IS NO JOKE."
-"But because he had
been carrying no identification, the authorities didn’t know who he was, where
he was from, or why he was there."

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April 27th, 1992
Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me Wayne.
Arrived here 2 days ago. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon
Territory. But I finally got here.
Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It might be a very long time
before I return South. If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear
from me again I want you to know you ‘re a great man. I now walk into the
wild. Alex. P
POSTCARD RECEIVED BY WAYNE WESTERBERG
IN CARTHAGE, SOUTH DAKOTA
-Chris made it to his location and was excited to live on his own.

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-"He peppered Gallien with thoughtful questions about the
kind of small game that live in the country, the kinds of berries he could eat—
”that kind of thing.”"
-"Gallien briefly considered stopping and telling the authorities about Alex, then thought better of it."

# data[].attributes.body
Chris stayed in Bullhead, Arizona for 2 years, where he worked as a fast food worker at his local McDonalds and earned a small sum of money.

# data[].attributes.body
Chris leaves Alaska, abandons his car, burns his money, and starts wandering across the

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Flashback to before, Chris graduates college, gets rid of everything he has and runs away to Alaska for the first time. He works at a grain mill in Carthage.

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Chris's remains were discovered in the bus he resided in. They believe his death was caused by starvation.

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Another person who discovered Chris's body

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Another person who discovered Chris's body

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Woman who discovered Chris's body

# data[].attributes.body
Chris enters Alaska, and is struggling to survive due to being underprepared.

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An electrician who gave Chris a ride in Alaska. Last person to see him alive.