Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Into the Wild
    Into the Wild
    Into the Wild
    Ebook286 pages3 hours

    Into the Wild

    By Jon Krakauer

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die.

    "It may be nonfiction, but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order." —Entertainment Weekly

    McCandess had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Not long after, he was dead. Into the Wild is the mesmerizing, heartbreaking tale of an enigmatic young man who goes missing in the wild and whose story captured the world’s attention. 

    Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.

    Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. 

    When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding—and not an ounce of sentimentality. Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateSep 22, 2009
    ISBN9780307476869
    Author

    Jon Krakauer

    Jon Krakauer is a mountaineer and the author of Eiger Dreams, Into the Wild, (which was on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and was made into a film starring Emile Hirsch and Kristen Stewart) Into Thin Air, Iceland, Under the Banner of Heaven and Where Men Win Glory. He is also the editor of the Modern Library Exploration series. He has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. According to the award citation, "Krakauer combines the tenacity and courage of the finest tradition of investigative journalism with the stylish subtlety and profound insight of the born writer."

    Read more from Jon Krakauer

    Related to Into the Wild

    Related ebooks

    Biography & Memoir For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      How Long Does GRIEF LAST?

      Sep 23, 2021

      How Long Does GRIEF LAST?
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      At 80, Judy Blume Reflects On Feminism, #MeToo And Letting Margaret Grow Up

      Feb 12, 2018

      Judy Blume's best-selling books have shaped the way we talk about puberty, periods and female sexual experiences. Those story lines take on renewed relevance amid the #MeToo movement.

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The California Gaze

      Apr 1, 2023

      The California Gaze
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New Titles

      Oct 9, 2019

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narra-tive poem that moves with

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Colvin, Awkward-Rich, Sarginson, Grey, and More

      Dec 10, 2019

      —new titles from the likes of Jeffrey Colvin, Cameron Awkward-Rich, Saskia Sarginson, Iona Grey, and more—t The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Colvin, Awkward-Rich, Sarginson, Grey, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Travels With Cleo

      Jan 27, 2022

      Travels With Cleo
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Bill Morris

      Dec 17, 2017

      It wasn’t planned, but 2017 turned out to be a year when my reading hopscotched happily between genres, styles, and voices. Here are half a dozen highlights, arranged by where you might find them shelved in your favorite bookshop. Memoir Joan Didion’

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Those Who Left Us: Select Literary Obituaries of 2017

      Jan 10, 2018

      Poets, editors, songwriters, teachers, journalists, novelists—some great writers and some under-sung ones left us this year. Here, in chronological order of their deaths, is a selective compendium of literary obituaries from 2017.     Bhara

      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reading and Writing California

      Jun 30, 2020

      Reading and Writing California
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Story of Jack and Neal

      Mar 11, 2022

      The Story of Jack and Neal
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Outsiders, Outcasts, Hustlers: A Year Reporting on the Modern-Day Frontier

      Nov 29, 2018

      The drive north into the oilfield at night showed the faint slopes of buttes ringed in sepia and burnt orange, then a drapery of glittering lights, civilization rising. Semi-trucks blared past the traffic cones and half-built apartments and hotels. I

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Garth Risk Hallberg

      Dec 15, 2018

      That I'm no longer immortal raises questions about the pursuit I've more or less given my life to—reading: If you can't take it with you, what's the point? The post A Year in Reading: Garth Risk Hallberg appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Soloist

      Oct 19, 2018

      The Soloist
      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Whole Texas Thing

      Oct 17, 2023

      The Whole Texas Thing
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New Titles

      Dec 12, 2018

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narrative poem that moves with

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Waking Dream

      Sep 19, 2019

      A Waking Dream
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Indianola, Onward

      May 14, 2019

      Indianola, Onward
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Real Mckay

      Jun 8, 2018

      The Real Mckay
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Must See, Must Read

      May 23, 2023

      Must See, Must Read
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lone Star Stories: The 10 Best Books About Texas

      Nov 13, 2020

      a great book about Texas should not only contain historical fact, it should give readers an impression of the Lone Star state—its scents, sights, and sensations—as well as what it feels like to be a human being of fragile flesh and blood in that imme

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in (Canadian) Reading: Claire Cameron

      Dec 9, 2017

      I was on book tour for much of the year. And when I tour, I read. I’m not sure how many books I got through exactly, but I read about quantum gravity, a few different translations of Beowulf, microbiology, and cave art. I read Elon Musk’s biogr

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Into the Wild

    4/5

    5,660 ratings206 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Most Famous Books Set In Each Of The 50 States - Alaska

      A twenty-year-old man graduates college, donates his trust fund to charity, and sets out secretly to pursue his dream of living as a tramp and seeing the world. The subject of this book, is a morbidly naïve boy obsessed with a romanticized vision of freedom purveyed by the likes of Thoreau and London. He embarks on a number of ill-considered road trips and wanderings across the U.S. before setting his sights upon Alaska. He wants to "Walk into the Wild" and truly experience a life of complete freedom.

      His untimely death in the Alaska bush would make national news and break the hearts of his family. The author reported on the death, but resonated with the story of this dreamer. The author himself was once young, foolish, cock-sure, and reckless. The author himself once set out alone to prove something in Alaska. Unable to shake this story, he set out to research it in greater detail and this book is the result.

      I found this book sad but fascinating. It's hard not to dismiss this boy and his unfortunate end. I think it provokes a derisive reaction in me because I remember being so foolish and sure of myself. Definitely, I didn't flit with death on this scale, but I did dumb things as a teenager. Honestly, most of us only make it to adulthood unscathed by dumb luck. This is a book that serves as more than a cautionary tale, but prompts self-reflection and contemplation.
    • 3/5
      Read this book with my ninth-grade literature class. My students were initially intrigued, often times baffled by the character of Chris McCandless and his story. Jon Krakauer goes into painstaking detail, and the book catalogs the effort to find that painstaking detail. But this is largely where to book goes wrong. It doesn't feel cohesive and it often lost us as readers. McCandless' story can be inspiring but bogged down by pages of minuscule detail, loose conjecture, and stories of different adventurers that don't relate to McCandless' own, the power of witnessing McCandless' short but passionate life is all but snuffed out. You can tell that the book is not Krakauer's preferred form. As one of my students said, "this is why no one reads magazines anymore."
    • 4/5
      I saw the movie 4 months ago but the book had been on my to read list for some time. I needed a quick travel book for my book club, and this fit the bill.

      Krakauer does a good job with interplay of other adventure stories of individuals like Chris along with a story of his own adventures in Alaska. I think overall this was a good trick to spread the article out with context that made Chris into a more rounded individual. The problem is even with the photographs, journal entries, and stories from those who came in contact with Chris he remains an enigma. The very thing that drove a wedge into his family life with his father (bottling things up inside and not wanting to talk about them) creates a dilemma in trying to find out more about his two years tramping before his death.

      I think Krakauer also did a good job of exploring the aspects of Chris' personality that both upset and garnered admiration from others. I have a little of both in my mind. He was headstrong and arrogant (folks he died at 24), but he was learning more about himself and his place in the world. It wasn't until the age of 25 that I really got my act together as an adult, so I have a hard time judging Chris' life.

      A good read. I mostly read, but listened to the audiobook at times which was read well.
    • 4/5
      Once again, a well-written book by Jon Krakauer. While I don't agree with Chris' choices, I can understand them. And I agree with Krakauer's conclusion regarding cause of death. And I think there is in many (if not all of us) a desire to "return to nature." I know that, as a native of the PNW, I feel it strongly!
    • 4/5
      Kraukauer describes a little background and what happened to McCandless in the years leading up to his early death from starvation and toxicity in the wilds of Alaska. For comparison’s sake, he includes information on others who have met similar disasters. The author does a good job of presenting both the opinions of folks who thought that the young protagonist was ignorant & ill-equipped, as well as arguing how risky lifestyles are typical of young men, who generally see themselves as immortal. He includes a memoir-type chapter about his own attempts to solo climb ‘The Thumb’, that shows his own similarities to McCandless’ driven nature.
      Overall, the book is a fast, interesting and easy read, though of a serious and tragic nature.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating story of Chris McCandless, who gave up his possessions and hitchhiked across the country until finally making it to Alaska, where he starved to death in the wilderness.

      Partly inspiring, partly tragic. Certainly an interesting book that both makes me appreciate nature, and want to explore the world, but at the same time, appreciate the relationships I have, and the creature comforts of this world.
    • 5/5
      Extremely well written account of this most unusual and controversial person. I knew the story well before reading the book, but was impressed with the author’s writing style and more or less objective take.

      This is one of those rare books that you simply don’t want to put down after opening. While some have criticized the author for being an apologist, in fairness I thought both the pros and cons were presented in an objective way.

      An excellent story about a very interesting subject.
    • 4/5
      It's funny, I didn't really feel like I cared so much about the kid or his family, but I loved the writing and story-telling and the autobiographical stuff that Krakauer put in. So I really liked the book, even though I didn't really get too much involved about the subject.
    • 5/5
      I read a lot of books that I think matter generally, but very few that matter personally. I think the proof of Krakauer's central point--that the forces that drove Chris McCandless to his death are forces that many of us experience, and should seek to understand--lies in the fact that this book speaks to certain aspects of myself and of the people around me; in the fact that its major impact is not the story it tells, but the way one finds oneself relating to it.
    • 4/5
      Interesting account of a wandering educated guy, almost like Everett Ruess, who drops out from life and who ends up in Alaska and eventually starves to death by accident. He left a record of his story in the abandoned bus where he ended up. Movie is good too.
    • 4/5
      Life on his own terms

      I was fascinated by the author's account of a young man, Chris McCandless, who lived his life on his own terms. As part of his attempt to bypass the trappings of traditional society, he sets off on a journey to truly experience life in its simplest, most basic form. He was influenced by a number of writers, including Tolstoy, London, and Thoreau in this endeavor to find beauty, truth and joy. Unfortunately, his youthful zeal obscured some of the research and analysis required to survive in an unforgiving natural environment. I think the extent to which you would enjoy this book is directly proportional to how well you can relate to Chris McCandless' philosophy. The author clearly does, and spends a good amount of time helping the reader understand, including devoting entire chapters to people with a similar outlook. It is well written and engaging. At the end, he clarifies factors that contributed to Chris' demise by way of extremely detailed research to prove his hypothesis (and revised accordingly when new information came to light).
    • 4/5
      Why would a kid from a comfortable background subject himself to the isolation and brutality of nature? I'm still not sure, but it was interesting to read about Chris McCandless's experiences and unfortunate demise.
    • 3/5
      Into the Wild. John Krakauer. 1997. The author recounts his search for what actually happened to Christopher McCandless, a young man who set out on a hike the wilderness north of Mt. Mckinley. Four months later his body was found by a group of hunters. Krakauer, who also wrote, Into Thin Air, was asked by the editor of Outside Magazine, to write an article about his odd disappearance. Keakauer interviewed family and friends and traced McCandless’ s route. He is a good writer and the book reads like a novel. However, don’t really care for most “nature writing” and he quotes to much Thoreau for me. McCandless was a troubled young man and this is a fascinating account of what could have happened to him
    • 4/5
      This is a good story and mostly good journalism into what and how things happened with Chris McCandless. I don't think I gained much more insight than was provided in the movie of the same name. I did like that Krakauer delved a little more into his parents and their history and experience.

      I was disappointed in the several chapter divergence into Krakauer's personal experience mountain climbing. I understand the relevance, and trying to bring his experience into the story but I felt it was a little too far into conjecture and sidetracked the story more than it helped.
    • 4/5
      If you liked the movie, there is more to gain from reading the book. The author does a fantastic job of being objective and trying not to portray Christopher as a hero or a fanatic. It also takes away some of the non-factual reasons that people attribute to Chris' death. I really enjoyed reading it.
    • 4/5
      Christopher McCandless, aka "Alexander Supertramp" was a rare bird. Thanks to Jon Krakauer's bestseller and the movie that mas made from it, the doomed vagabond's story is well known. Looking to live a less encumbered, more authentic life, McCandless traveled by himself to the Alaskan wilderness, intending to live off the land. In his idealism and naiveté, he wasn't well prepared for the realities of Alaska's beautiful but unforgiving environment. He survived just over 100 days before succumbing to starvation and perhaps poisoning.

      There really isn't all that much to say about McCandless, so this book is padded with stories of other naïve wanderers and a long description of one of Krakauer's less-than-successful mountain climbing expeditions. Nonetheless, I found this book gripping, even though I knew how it would end.
    • 4/5
      Like many people, I suppose, I found out about this one when the movie came out. Unlike many people, I generally insist on reading the book before I see the movie (so long as I know it's a book first). Krakauer gives a very fair account of this head-strong, well-meaning but ultimately naive young man. He addresses both the fascination and scrutiny surrounding the life of McCandless giving it an honesty I really appreciated. I feel as if, had I read this a few years ago when I was as similarly head-strong like McCandless, it would have totally changed my world. It reflects aspects of my life and the lives of many people I have known over the years. Now, I can just appreciate it as a tale reflecting the journey and disappointment of idealism in so many young people. And I'm glad I read it first--it's so personal, it should be experienced on the page. Now off to the movie....
    • 5/5
      It is very easy to either idolize Chris McCandless as a hero leaving a capitalist, unpersonal and cold society or to condemn his as a naive and in the end stupid youth with a romantic dream and no knowledge about his dangerous endeavour. I've seen both and, in my head, I have done both. Jon Krakauer manages to do neither but to give us insight into both claims and in the process leaves it up to our own interpretation. This, I think, is just the right way to write about the live of Chris McCandless, to not just tell his story but also make us think about his motives and his actions while maintaining the necessary tact and respect for Chris and his family.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating book about Chris McCandless and others like him who forsake the modern world for the wilds, for risk, and for adventures that push their lives to the limits and sometimes beyond. It's a pretty quick read that references a lot of the material Chris read, a lot of the people he came in contact with and tries to paint a picture of him as a real person with faults and virtues. The only thing I'd have liked to see in this book that wasn't there is a copy of his journals and a more extensive list of the things he was reading and the portions he highlighted or noted/commented on in the margins. That might have shed more light on his mental processes.
    • 3/5
      When I finish a book I usually look at the reviews of other goodreaders and when I find an interesting review I follow the writer so that I see other reviews. So I follow about 40 reviewers. I was astonished that 10 of them had either read this book or were planning to - I don't think I've ever seen so many for a single book! I found it hard going and hard to care for the young man beyond a general sadness for a young life cut short. It only engaged me properly around half way through when the author started comparing him to other wanderers in the wilderness and then to his own dangerous wanderings. His obsession with the details of Chris/Alex's short life came into focus and the book felt less like a rather peeping Tom look into someone's very private life.
    • 5/5
      It is hard to explain my fascination with characters such as Chris McCandless and Everett Ruess. This book is a wonderful exploration of Chris' life. Read it first, then see the movie. You will want to see so much more of this incredibly interesting world.
    • 5/5
      This book I approached with trepidation, wondering what could have possessed the young man to do what he had done that led to his horrible demise. The author used his passionate drive to understand and answer that question. In reconstructing the timeline of Chris' lost years we find that the years were anything but lost. The determination shown by the author to answer the questions about the boy's death, finally lays to rest the criticisms people have heaped on him posthumously.

      This book was well written, thoughtful, insightful, and enthralling. I, literally, could not put it down. True literature takes a small point or incident and illuminates it so that we all can see its significance
      in the cosmic scheme, so that we understand for whom the bells toll.
    • 2/5
      An well research (to the point of going into inconsequential details) book exploring an interesting topic of why kids feel the need to escape civilisation to discover themselves using an example of a few misguided souls who end up as Darwin award contenders. Rather pointlessly tries to glorify them as something more than people with little imagination who can't think of any other way to feel free than to wander around aimlessly. You can climb a mountain or you can be part of the team that goes to the moon. I think the latter is the one with more imagination.
    • 3/5
      I had never heard of Chris McCandless or seen the film when I came across this book. For me, just striding out into the wilderness has to be the ultimate adventure and to try and piece together his final days before he eventually succumbed to hunger and the elements.

      The author of the book originally discovered the story whilst working as a reporter and published a story in a magazine, but later decided he wanted to research further and release a book.

      It follows the life of Chris who to be honest doesn't exactly come across as a particularly nice person and seems at time arrogant. But he is a young man with his own path to lead. He treks across America pretty much as a loner until he decides to tackles the Alaskan wilderness. Various 'friends' are interviewed that he met on his travels and bit by bit we build up a picture of Chris and routes taken.

      I enjoyed the book, however I'm not sure it wouldn't have been better as a more of an extended essay rather than a full novel, sometimes I just felt as if there was too much filler to try and pad out the pages. Obviously the author has done his research and this shines through, it is just that the book failed to interest me as much as I'd hoped.
    • 4/5
      Immediately following his graduation from college in the early 1990's, Christopher McCandless shunned his family and almost all his material possessions (including his savings), got into his Datsun, and traveled throughout the western U.S., living largely off the land, picking up odd jobs here and there to earn a little cash to enable him to keep traveling. Eventually he ended up in the wilderness of Alaska, where he ultimately met his demise.

      I'd had this audiobook on my shelf for a while, unread, until just recently, when the news reported that the infamous "bus" was being airlifted out of Alaska due to the number of people needing to be rescued who had gone in search of it, a few of whom actually died. That prompted me to want to know the backstory and thus I pulled it off the shelf and started reading.

      This is certainly a sad and cautionary tale. Many people have criticized Chris McCandless for his ignorance in attempting something out of his depth. Indeed, he was a smart kid in a lot of ways, but somewhat ignorant when it came down to reality. While many may not agree with his methods or ideology, you do have to admire him for his unselfishness nature. It's just too bad that it all ended the way it did.

      As for this book in particular, I didn't find it nearly as gripping as Kraukauer's Into Thin Air. There was a lot of filler in this one that wasn't really necessary, although some readers may appreciate the history and parallels to the author's life more than I did. Still, definitely worth the read. And now I'm off to watch the movie.
    • 2/5
      I read this for the "A Biography" part of my 2018 reading challenge. I didn't enjoy it, I found it slow and his timeline was too scattered. I also think Chris McCandless was inept and unprepared and shouldn't have been out there in the first place.
    • 3/5
      I have a lot of different thoughts on this book, but basically none are truly positive. I wonder how to separate what I feel about Chris from my thoughts on the book itself. And where to start.

      I will start with the fact that in my opinion this book should never be written. There is simply nothing to talk about. First of all, Chris was nothing special. There are hundreds of young people like him who feel that nobody understands them and who run away from the world to find their own purpose in life. The streets of big cities and homeless shelters are full of such stories. If you think about it, you will probably remind yourself a person who, just like Chris, had everything but at one point gave up all this to chase after some elusive dream or a great adventure, or just fell to the bottom by alcohol or drugs. Chris did not escape into addiction but escaped to test his skills in a remote area. Why should I read about Christopher Johnson McCandless?

      Secondly, this book and the film based on it somewhat glorify Chris's decisions and actions. They give them some heroic undeserved meaning. In my opinion, there is nothing heroic about it, only youthful bravado, ample of ambition and great arrogance. Nothing that we should give more meaning than it is. Chris was of an age when many (if not most) young people reject the models of the world they live in. His life philosophy is close to anarchism, laissez-faire and nature philosophy. There is nothing special or new about it. Many young people think alike. Trying to make Chris special, just because he decided to experience the summer in the wilds of Alaska in his youthful arrogance thinking that he did not have to prepare for it in any way, is completely inappropriate.

      In my opinion Chris is a man who was extremely lucky in life and was completely unable to appreciate it. Even if his relations with his parents were not always the best, there is no doubt that he was loved by his family. During his travels he met many very good people who treated him like a son and would gladly accept him in the family. But he decided to reject it all because he thought that he had to live his great adventure and reject everything related to life in society. He broke the hearts of so many people, even his sister who he declared he loved so much. It is a pity that he apparently understood this when it was definitely too late. It is a pity that his arrogance, inclination to reckless actions and conviction of his own infallibility led to his senseless death when help was basically within his reach. For me it is a senseless death of a young man who could use some psychological help.

      As for the book itself, it is not as good as I expected. I don't know why, but I didn't feel that I was reading a real biography of a real man, this book has something of fiction story to me. Perhaps this is due to the fact that little is known about Chris's life during this period and there is not much to write about. Krakauer tried to recreate Chris’s life from scraps of information but in my opinion with unsatisfactory results. What, if you think about it, is not the fault of Krakauer himself. There was simply nothing dramatic or mysterious about Chris's life. Nothing to wait for holding your breath. That's why the most interesting for me were two chapters in which the author describes his own trip to Devil's Thumb. This story is full of emotions and drama that the rest of the book lacks.

      I don't identify with Chris, I can't even respect him. And this book failed in interesting me with his life. Maybe one day I will watch a movie that is supposedly very good. I rate this book 2.5 stars. One day I will probably read another book by this author to see if it's just a matter of this story or I generally don't like this author’s style.
    • 3/5
      I read this book out of curiosity many years after it had first been published. I was familiar with the name of the author Krakauer having seen it pop up on a number of books, mostly recalling, "Into Thin Air." I had not heard anything about the subject of the book, Chris McCandless, or the publicity surrounding his death from 'Outdoor" magazine.

      So with this fresh slate I really did not have an opinion one way or other in picking up the book and seeing what would come out of it. It was a captivating read and it was clear to me Krakauer is a talented author. My opinion on Chris McCandless and his fate is somewhat mixed. It appears there was a fairly vocal group who castigated his fool hardiness for going into the bush naively unprepared. And that is understandable in seeing what he did. But beyond that Chris is really not that much different then many many young men who end their young lives let's say accidentally through their reckless or naive behavior.

      Maybe what makes McCandless's death noteworthy is his blind adherence or compulsion to show the world his devotion to a life of pure allegiance to nature and the free will of men over their perceived oppression of society, in particular government. His estrangement with his family is also evident of his strong reactions to what he simply would not believe in.

      Though he was probably not mentally ill in his compulsion they still led to his blindness to common sense and eventually led to his death. I felt little sympathy in that respect. Yes it was tragic and he does not appear to have had a death wish, but his belief in his own omnipotence to blend in with nature is his pure approach to things in fact led to his demise.

      Krakauer certainly covers every aspect of the story thoroughly and it gives one a lot to think about in our own strong beliefs. I found it interesting how he breaks away from the narrative toward the end and relates his own adventures as a youthful fellow in a compulsive mission to scale a peak in the same region. It was like he wanted to relate how he too understood the strong motivation behind McCanless's actions.

      The book wraps up with a afterward addition on a great debate and inquiry a to what caused his actual death. The postulate being poisoning rather than straight starvation. Regardless his own actions led to his own death and though sad, a lesson hopefully for younger people with similar principle driven motives to beware.
    • 4/5
      In thought, Christopher McCandless/Alexander Supertramp's idea of donating all your money to charities, and running off to the wilds of Alaska, sounds like a plausible idea. In reality, for him it was a foolish way to go. The people he met on the way to Alaska all considered him a friend and thought he was a way cool dude.

      Imagine how his life would have turned out, if he had been prepared for the elements and had some provisions.
    • 4/5
      I picked up a copy of this on a recent trip to Alaska which really enhanced the book (having just been very near to where Chris was). This is a great memoir especially when you consider how much effort the author had to go through to piece together an largely undocumented account. This book will make you take a minute to think about how people think and act and if there are leanings for all of us from someone who simply wanted to go into the wild.

    Book preview

    Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer

    Chapter One

    THE ALASKA INTERIOR

    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.

    POSTCARD RECEIVED BY WAYNE WESTERBERG IN CARTHAGE, SOUTH DAKOTA

    Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn. He didn’t appear to be very old: eighteen, maybe nineteen at most. A rifle protruded from the young man’s backpack, but he looked friendly enough; a hitchhiker with a Remington semiautomatic isn’t the sort of thing that gives motorists pause in the forty-ninth state. Gallien steered his truck onto the shoulder and told the kid to climb in.

    The hitchhiker swung his pack into the bed of the Ford and introduced himself as Alex. Alex? Gallien responded, fishing for a last name.

    Just Alex, the young man replied, pointedly rejecting the bait. Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be twenty-four years old and said he was from South Dakota. He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and live off the land for a few months.

    Gallien, a union electrician, was on his way to Anchorage, 240 miles beyond Denali on the George Parks Highway; he told Alex he’d drop him off wherever he wanted. Alex’s backpack looked as though it weighed only twenty-five or thirty pounds, which struck Gallien—an accomplished hunter and woodsman—as an improbably light load for a stay of several months in the backcountry, especially so early in the spring. He wasn’t carrying anywhere near as much food and gear as you’d expect a guy to be carrying for that kind of trip, Gallien recalls.

    The sun came up. As they rolled down from the forested ridges above the Tanana River, Alex gazed across the expanse of windswept muskeg stretching to the south. Gallien wondered whether he’d picked up one of those crackpots from the lower forty-eight who come north to live out ill-considered Jack London fantasies. Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing.

    People from Outside, reports Gallien in a slow, sonorous drawl, "they’ll pick up a copy of Alaska magazine, thumb through it, get to thinkin’ ‘Hey, I’m goin’ to get on up there, live off the land, go claim me a piece of the good life.’ But when they get here and actually head out into the bush—well, it isn’t like the magazines make it out to be. The rivers are big and fast. The mosquitoes eat you alive. Most places, there aren’t a lot of animals to hunt. Livin’ in the bush isn’t no picnic."

    It was a two-hour drive from Fairbanks to the edge of Denali Park. The more they talked, the less Alex struck Gallien as a nutcase. He was congenial, and seemed well educated. 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.

    Still, Gallien was concerned. Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. His gear seemed exceedingly minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior, which in April still lay buried under the winter snowpack. Alex’s cheap leather hiking boots were neither waterproof nor well insulated. His rifle was only .22 caliber, a bore too small to rely on if he expected to kill large animals like moose and caribou, which he would have to eat if he hoped to remain very long in the country. He had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, no compass. The only navigational aid in his possession was a tattered state road map he’d scrounged at a gas station.

    A hundred miles out of Fairbanks the highway begins to climb into the foothills of the Alaska Range. Alex pulled out his crude map and pointed to a dashed red line that intersected the road near the coal-mining town of Healy. It represented a route called the Stampede Trail. Seldom traveled, it isn’t even marked on most road maps of Alaska. On Alex’s map, nevertheless, the broken line meandered west from the Parks Highway for forty miles or so before petering out in the middle of trackless wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. This, Alex announced to Gallien, was where he intended to go.

    Gallien thought the hitchhiker’s scheme was foolhardy and tried repeatedly to dissuade him: I said the hunting wasn’t easy where he was going, that he could go for days without killing any game. When that didn’t work, I tried to scare him with bear stories. I told him that a twenty-two probably wouldn’t do anything to a grizzly except make him mad. Alex didn’t seem too worried. ‘I’ll climb a tree’ is all he said. So I explained that trees don’t grow real big in that part of the state, that a bear could knock down one of them skinny little black spruce without even trying. But he wouldn’t give an inch. He had an answer for everything I threw at him.

    Gallien offered to drive Alex all the way to Anchorage, buy him some decent gear, and then drive him back to wherever he wanted to go.

    No, thanks anyway, Alex replied, I’ll be fine with what I’ve got.

    Gallien asked whether he had a hunting license.

    Hell, no, Alex scoffed. How I feed myself is none of the government’s business. Fuck their stupid rules.

    When Gallien asked whether his parents or a friend knew what he was up to—whether there was anyone who would sound the alarm if he got into trouble and was overdue—Alex answered calmly that no, nobody knew of his plans, that in fact he hadn’t spoken to his family in nearly two years. I’m absolutely positive, he assured Gallien, I won’t run into anything I can’t deal with on my own.

    There was just no talking the guy out of it, Gallien remembers. "He was determined. Real gung ho. The word that comes to mind is excited. He couldn’t wait to head out there and get started."

    Three hours out of Fairbanks, Gallien turned off the highway and steered his beat-up 4 × 4 down a snow-packed side road. For the first few miles the Stampede Trail was well graded and led past cabins scattered among weedy stands of spruce and aspen. Beyond the last of the log shacks, however, the road rapidly deteriorated. Washed out and overgrown with alders, it turned into a rough, unmaintained track.

    In summer the road here would have been sketchy but passable; now it was made unnavigable by a foot and a half of mushy spring snow. Ten miles from the highway, worried that he’d get stuck if he drove farther, Gallien stopped his rig on the crest of a low rise. The icy summits of the highest mountain range in North America gleamed on the southwestern horizon.

    Alex insisted on giving Gallien his watch, his comb, and what he said was all his money: eighty-five cents in loose change. I don’t want your money, Gallien protested, and I already have a watch.

    If you don’t take it, I’m going to throw it away, Alex cheerfully retorted. I don’t want to know what time it is. I don’t want to know what day it is or where I am. None of that matters.

    Before Alex left the pickup, Gallien reached behind the seat, pulled out an old pair of rubber work boots, and persuaded the boy to take them. They were too big for him, Gallien recalls. But I said, ‘Wear two pair of socks, and your feet ought to stay halfway warm and dry.’

    How much do I owe you?

    Don’t worry about it, Gallien answered. Then he gave the kid a slip of paper with his phone number on it, which Alex carefully tucked into a nylon wallet.

    If you make it out alive, give me a call, and I’ll tell you how to get the boots back to me.

    Gallien’s wife had packed him two grilled-cheese-and-tuna sandwiches and a bag of corn chips for lunch; he persuaded the young hitchhiker to accept the food as well. Alex pulled a camera from his backpack and asked Gallien to snap a picture of him shouldering his rifle at the trailhead. Then, smiling broadly, he disappeared down the snow-covered track. The date was Tuesday, April 28, 1992.

    Gallien turned the truck around, made his way back to the Parks Highway, and continued toward Anchorage. A few miles down the road he came to the small community of Healy, where the Alaska State Troopers maintain a post. Gallien briefly considered stopping and telling the authorities about Alex, then thought better of it. I figured he’d be OK, he explains. I thought he’d probably get hungry pretty quick and just walk out to the highway. That’s what any normal person would do.

    Chapter Two

    THE STAMPEDE TRAIL

    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

    On the northern margin of the Alaska Range, just before the hulking ramparts of Mt. McKinley and its satellites surrender to the low Kantishna plain, a series of lesser ridges, known as the Outer Range, sprawls across the flats like a rumpled blanket on an unmade bed. Between the flinty crests of the two outermost escarpments of the Outer Range runs an east-west trough, maybe five miles across, carpeted in a boggy amalgam of muskeg, alder thickets, and veins of scrawny spruce. Meandering through the tangled, rolling bottomland is the Stampede Trail, the route Chris McCandless followed into the wilderness.

    The trail was blazed in the 1930s by a legendary Alaska miner named Earl Pilgrim; it led to antimony claims he’d staked on Stampede Creek, above the Clearwater Fork of the Toklat River. In 1961, a Fairbanks company, Yutan Construction, won a contract from the new state of Alaska (statehood having been granted just two years earlier) to upgrade the trail, building it into a road on which trucks could haul ore from the mine year-round. To house construction workers while the road was going in, Yutan purchased three junked buses, outfitted each with bunks and a simple barrel stove, and skidded them into the wilderness behind a D-9 Caterpillar.

    The project was halted in 1963: some fifty miles of road were eventually built, but no bridges were ever erected over the many rivers it transected, and the route was shortly rendered impassable by thawing permafrost and seasonal floods. Yutan hauled two of the buses back to the highway. The third bus was left about halfway out the trail to serve as backcountry shelter for hunters and trappers. In the three decades since construction ended, much of the roadbed has been obliterated by washouts, brush, and beaver ponds, but the bus is still there.

    A vintage International Harvester from the 1940s, the derelict vehicle is located twenty-five miles west of Healy as the raven flies, rusting incongruously in the fireweed beside the Stampede Trail, just beyond the boundary of Denali National Park. The engine is gone. Several windows are cracked or missing altogether, and broken whiskey bottles litter the floor. The green-and-white paint is badly oxidized. Weathered lettering indicates that the old machine was once part of the Fairbanks City Transit System: bus 142. These days it isn’t unusual for six or seven months to pass without the bus seeing a human visitor, but in early September 1992, six people in three separate parties happened to visit the remote vehicle on the same afternoon.

    In 1980, Denali National Park was expanded to include the Kantishna Hills and the northernmost cordillera of the Outer Range, but a parcel of low terrain within the new park acreage was omitted: a long arm of land known as the Wolf Townships, which encompasses the first half of the Stampede Trail. Because this seven-by-twenty-mile tract is surrounded on three sides by the protected acreage of the national park, it harbors more than its share of wolf, bear, caribou, moose, and other game, a local secret that’s jealously guarded by those hunters and trappers who are aware of the anomaly. As soon as moose season opens in the fall, a handful of hunters typically pays a visit to the old bus, which sits beside the Sushana River at the westernmost end of the nonpark tract, within two miles of the park boundary.

    Ken Thompson, the owner of an Anchorage auto-body shop, Gordon Samel, his employee, and their friend Ferdie Swanson, a construction worker, set out for the bus on September 6, 1992, stalking moose. It isn’t an easy place to reach. About ten miles past the end of the improved road the Stampede Trail crosses the Teklanika River, a fast, icy stream whose waters are opaque with glacial till. The trail comes down to the riverbank just upstream from a narrow gorge, through which the Teklanika surges in a boil of white water. The prospect of fording this latte-colored torrent discourages most people from traveling any farther.

    Thompson, Samel, and Swanson, however, are contumacious Alaskans with a special fondness for driving motor vehicles where motor vehicles aren’t really designed to be driven. Upon arriving at the Teklanika, they scouted the banks until they located a wide, braided section with relatively shallow channels, and then they steered headlong into the flood.

    I went first, Thompson says. The river was probably seventy-five feet across and real swift. My rig is a jacked-up eighty-two Dodge four by four with thirty-eight-inch rubber on it, and the water was right up to the hood. At one point I didn’t think I’d get across. Gordon has a eight-thousand-pound winch on the front of his rig; I had him follow right behind so he could pull me out if I went out of sight.

    Thompson made it to the far bank without incident, followed by Samel and Swanson in their trucks. In the beds of two of the pickups were light-weight all-terrain vehicles: a three-wheeler and a four-wheeler. They parked the big rigs on a gravel bar, unloaded the ATVs, and continued toward the bus in the smaller, more maneuverable machines.

    A few hundred yards beyond the river the trail disappeared into a series of chest-deep beaver ponds. Undeterred, the three Alaskans dynamited the offending stick dams and drained the ponds. Then they motored onward, up a rocky creek bed and through dense alder thickets. It was late afternoon by the time they finally arrived at the bus. When they got there, according to Thompson, they found a guy and a girl from Anchorage standing fifty feet away, looking kinda spooked.

    Neither of them had been in the bus, but they’d been close enough to notice a real bad smell from inside. A makeshift signal flag—a red knitted leg warmer of the sort worn by dancers—was knotted to the end of an alder branch by the vehicle’s rear exit. The door was ajar, and taped to it was a disquieting note. Handwritten in neat block letters on a page torn from a novel by Nikolay Gogol, it read:

    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. IN THE NAME OF GOD, PLEASE REMAIN TO SAVE ME. I AM OUT COLLECTING BERRIES CLOSE BY AND SHALL RETURN THIS EVENING. THANK YOU, CHRIS MCCANDLESS. AUGUST?

    The Anchorage couple had been too upset by the implication of the note and the overpowering odor of decay to examine the bus’s interior, so Samel steeled himself to take a look. A peek through a window revealed a Remington rifle, a plastic box of shells, eight or nine paperback books, some torn jeans, cooking utensils, and an expensive backpack. In the very rear of the vehicle, on a jerry-built bunk, was a blue sleeping bag that appeared to have something or someone inside it, although, says Samel, "it was hard to be absolutely sure.

    I stood on a stump, Samel continues, reached through a back window, and gave the bag a shake. There was definitely something in it, but whatever it was didn’t weigh much. It wasn’t until I walked around to the other side and saw a head sticking out that I knew for certain what it was. Chris McCandless had been dead for two and a half weeks.

    Samel, a man of strong opinions, decided the body should be evacuated right away. There wasn’t room on his or Thompson’s small machine to haul the dead person out, however, nor was there space on the Anchorage couple’s ATV. A short while later a sixth person appeared on the scene, a hunter from Healy named Butch Killian. Because Killian was driving an Argo—a large amphibious eight-wheeled ATV—Samel suggested that Killian evacuate the remains, but Killian declined, insisting it was a task more properly left to the Alaska State Troopers.

    Killian, a coal miner who moonlights as an emergency medical technician for the Healy Volunteer Fire Department, had a two-way radio on the Argo. When he couldn’t raise anybody from where he was, he started driving back toward the highway; five miles down the trail, just before dark, he managed to make contact with the radio operator at the Healy power plant. Dispatch, he reported, this is Butch. You better call the troopers. There’s a man back in the bus by the Sushana. Looks like he’s been dead for a while.

    At eight-thirty the next morning, a police helicopter touched down noisily beside the bus in a blizzard of dust and swirling aspen leaves. The troopers made a cursory examination of the vehicle and its environs for signs of foul play and then departed. When they flew away, they took McCandless’s remains, a camera with five rolls of exposed film, the SOS note, and a diary—written across the last two pages of a field guide to edible plants—that recorded the young man’s final weeks in 113 terse, enigmatic entries.

    The body was taken to Anchorage, where an autopsy was performed at the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory. The remains were so badly decomposed that it was impossible to determine exactly when McCandless had died, but the coroner could find no sign of massive internal injuries or broken bones. Virtually no subcutaneous fat remained on the body, and the muscles had withered significantly in the days or weeks prior to death. At the time of the autopsy, McCandless’s remains weighed sixty-seven pounds. Starvation was posited as the most probable cause of death.

    McCandless’s signature had been penned at the bottom of the SOS note, and the photos, when developed, included many self-portraits. 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.

    Chapter Three

    CARTHAGE

    I 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

    Carthage, South Dakota, population 274, is a sleepy little cluster of clapboard houses, tidy yards, and weathered brick storefronts rising humbly from the immensity of the northern plains, set adrift in time. Stately rows of cottonwoods shade a grid of streets seldom disturbed by moving vehicles. There’s one grocery in town, one bank, a single gas station, a lone bar—the Cabaret, where Wayne Westerberg is sipping a cocktail and chewing on a sweet cigar, remembering the odd young man he knew as Alex.

    The Cabaret’s plywood-paneled walls are hung with deer antlers, Old Milwaukee beer promos, and mawkish paintings of game birds taking

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1