Of all the people who have become famous after their death, Christopher McCandless, whose
story was adapted in the movie "Into the Wild," ranks among the most perplexing. His strange
life and the events that led to his untimely demise have inspired and baffled many people.
The word "wanderlust" means a "strong longing for or impulse toward wandering," according
to Merriam-Webster. This particular dictionary entry could easily have a picture of Chris
McCandless, because the young man was pretty much defined by the term. This is all the
more surprising because McCandless' early life seemed like a picture-perfect re-enactment
of the proverbial American Dream. A son of two well-off entrepreneurs, he was an outstanding
student, and appeared destined for great things.
Yet, as his sister, Carine McCandless, wrote in her book, "The Wild Truth," the family
could also be pretty toxic. Their father, Walt, drank too much and was prone to violent
outbursts. Billie, their mother, could be extremely unsupportive of her kids. There
was also the matter that Walt McCandless was still married to his first wife when Carine
and Chris were born, and actually led a double life with two different families for some
time.
Though there was happiness in the McCandless household, this background of family drama
and tragedy may very well have affected young Chris' decision to hit the road as soon as
he was able to.
Chris McCandless may have lived his school years as a fairly ordinary guy, but as Encyclopedia
Britannica tells us, he shrugged away all semblance of tradition and normalcy after
he got his bachelor's degree. First, he gave away all the money he had stashed away during
college. According to Anchorage Daily News, the precise sum was $24,292, and McCandless
gave it to Oxfam.
That's a pretty hefty pile of money to donate to a charity, especially when you consider
what the young man did next. Free of money and responsibilities, he left his family,
drove away, and took up the identity of Alexander Supertramp. McCandless used this moniker for
years on his travels and, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, used it to sign a manifesto in
which he described himself as, quote, "an extremist, an aesthetic voyager whose home
is the road."
But the transition from student to transient wasn't without its difficulties. In the early
stages of his journey, his car broke down in Arizona after getting stuck in a flash
flood. Undeterred, the young man decided to continue his journey on foot.
The most famous part of Chris McCandless' travels is the final one, but he roamed the
U.S. for a total of two years and saw many places before that final, fateful journey
along the Stampede Trail. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, at one point he even navigated
the Colorado River all the way to Mexico.
"And how did you get into Mexico in the first place?"
"Through the spillway at Morelos Dam"
Sometimes, McCandless decided to take a long stop before he resumed his travels. He worked
in Arizona for a while and spent some time in Salton City, California. His arguably most
notorious pit stop was in Carthage, South Dakota, shortly before his canoe escapades
on the Colorado River. There, he met a man named Wayne Westerberg, and worked at his
grain elevator. McCandless' relationship with Westerberg proves that he wasn't living completely
outside social norms. In fact, the two became good enough friends that before McCandless
started his final adventure, he sent Westerberg a postcard that said he intended to go "into
the wild." Both the nonfiction book written by Jon Krakauer and Sean Penn's film adaptation
use this line as their titles.
Chris McCandless didn't choose the Stampede Trail in the Alaskan wilderness completely
at random. Even before he started his nomadic lifestyle, he'd already made a road trip to
Fairbanks, Alaska, during a summer vacation, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. In his
final trip, since he didn't have too many resources or a car of his own, getting there
took plenty of effort — in fact, he hitchhiked all the way from South Dakota.
McCandless finally hit the trail on April 28, 1992. As Men's Journal tells us, it appears
that his intention was to put his skills to a true test. As such, he set off with virtually
no supplies or provisions, save for 10 pounds of rice and a small rifle. Making it in the
Alaskan wilderness seemed to be a matter of some importance to him, seeing as the writings
he left behind described the ordeal as a, quote, "climactic battle to kill the false
being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution."
"I'm not destitute. I'm living like this by choice."
Unfortunately, the challenge he imposed upon himself ended up being far too arduous for
his skills and limited equipment.
The most important visual image of Chris McCandless' sad fate is, without doubt, the bus in which
he died. Per CNN Travel, the vehicle that acted as McCandless' makeshift base camp during
his final struggle for survival is an old International Harvester that used to serve
as Fairbanks City Transit bus 142. At some point, it was decommissioned and relocated
into the deep wilderness to serve as a cabin of sorts for a road construction project.
Per Outside Online, the bus was dragged into the middle of nowhere by a tractor. Originally,
the bus was just one of several that were retrofitted to provide temporary accommodation
for workers, but the others were removed after the road project ended. Bus 142 remained where
it was because of a broken axle.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, McCandless' original intention was to keep on hiking until
he reached the Bering Sea, but the plan changed after he happened to discover the bus on his
travels. It was no doubt a fine headquarters for a young man in search of adventure, and
McCandless called it the Magic Bus in his notes. Some have noted that the area has a
pretty peculiar atmosphere, thanks to its "eerie quiet," according to Men's Journal.
Chris McCandless didn't intend to disappear forever. In fact, his plan was to return to
civilization in July 1992. However, during his time in the Alaskan wilderness, the Teklanika
River had expanded from a tiny creek to a life-threatening, raging river, courtesy of
melting snow.
McCandless saw no way to cross the river, and apparently felt he had no choice but to
continue the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and live in the bus. Unfortunately, the food he
was able to procure couldn't sustain him. As the New Yorker notes, his cause of death
was determined to be starvation, though both McCandless and "Into the Wild" writer Jon
Krakauer suspected that the wild potato seeds he consumed might have poisoned him. A note
he wrote three weeks before his death reads:
"Extremely weak. Fault of pot[ato] seed. Much trouble just to stand up. Starving. Great
jeopardy."
Whether you buy into the poison theory or not, McCandless' wilderness diet was lean,
comprising whatever he could forage and what small animals he managed to hunt. What's more,
some have expressed the opinion that the young adventurer might not have been all that great
at hunting, or at least not all that great at identifying what he killed. Per Reuters,
McCandless once thought he'd killed a moose, but according to Gordon Samel — one of the
hunters who found McCandless' body — it was actually a caribou. Samuel said:
"There's a big difference between a moose and a caribou. A real big difference. You'd
have to be pretty stupid not to be able to tell them apart."
The New Yorker reported that Chris McCandless' body was found on September 6, 1992. Based
on his diary markings, he'd been dead for around 19 days. Per Outside Online, the body
was discovered in a sleeping bag, decomposed and emaciated.
McCandless had clearly been aware that he was in a bad way. In fact, a desperate note
that he'd attached to the door of the bus outright read:
"Injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke."
He also used his real name to sign the note, instead of the Alexander Supertramp moniker
he'd adopted. According to The New York Times, McCandless' supplies in the bus consisted
of a rifle, a camera and some film, and a bunch of books. He had used one of the books
as a journal.
Wasting away in an abandoned bus far away from civilization seems like a tragic and
fairly awful way to go, but at least there's a chance that McCandless managed to make peace
with himself and his fate in the end. One of his final diary entries reads:
"I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless you all."
It's easy to think that Chris McCandless starved to death, considering that his normal weight
was around 140 pounds, but by the time he was found, his mortal remains weighed only
67 pounds, according to the New Yorker. Still, Jon Krakauer has long suspected that McCandless
wasn't quite as inept a survivalist as his detractors tend to assume, and that other
forces contributed to his death.
McCandless himself blamed wild potato seeds for his weakened state in the weeks before
his death. Krakauer originally suspected that there may have been a mixup, and that McCandless
had confused wild potato with the reportedly poisonous wild sweet pea. The writer later
revised his theory and attributed the young adventurer's death to a starvation-inducing
toxin known as swaisonine. In 2007, however, this theory was completely and utterly debunked
by biochemist Thomas Clausen, who tested wild potato seeds for potentially harmful stuff
and found none.
Other studies have been done over the years, but scientists have yet to come to a unanimous
conclusion.
Chris McCandless chose an ascetic life of vagrancy and poverty, about as far from the
limelight as one can get. Nevertheless, he became a famous figure whose tragic story
is widely known. As Men's Journal tells us, McCandless' post-mortem rise from obscurity
to fame involved a popular book, "Into the Wild," which was eventually turned into a
Hollywood film of the same name that was directed by Sean Penn and starred Emile Hirsch as McCandless
— you've seen plenty of clips from the film in this video.
The reason you've heard about McCandless at all is almost certainly because of writer
Jon Krakauer. Krakauer was hired to write an article about McCandless for Outside magazine,
and the writer was so intrigued by the story that he ended up spending years researching
McCandless. He told The New York Times:
"I decided I wanted to write this book because I felt like there was a lot more to tell;
there was a lot I hadn't discovered."
"Into the Wild" was published in 1996, and became a massive, though controversial success.
Krakauer fully admits that McCandless' legacy is a controversial one. He said:
"He's this Rorschach test: People read into him what they see. Some people see an idiot,
and some people see themselves. I'm the latter, for sure."
"He wasn't looking for a cheap adrenaline buzz. He was a pilgrim in a true sense, looking
to go on a journey that would change his life."
Chris McCandless' life and death have developed a bit of a legacy, but many people remain
unimpressed by his story and feel that he shouldn't be considered an idol. As Treehugger
points out, his story draws plenty of opinions both for and against, and his most vocal critics
aren't afraid to make their opinions known. Writer Craig Medred of Anchorage Daily News
has outright called McCandless a, quote, "thief" and a "bum," along with other descriptions
along those lines. Medred has also noted that McCandless committed certain unsavory acts
during his travels, such as breaking into a cabin to steal food.
Men's Journal notes that the general sentiment in Alaska appears to be that McCandless was
basically just an inexperienced kid who tried to brave the wilderness with a woeful lack
of gear and survival skills. Hunting guide Brent Keith has pointed out some of the more
severe mistakes McCandless made in his final weeks:
"I just don't get why he didn't stay down by the Teklanika until the water got low enough
to cross. Or walk upstream to where it braids out in shallow channels. Or start a signal
fire on a gravel bar."
It's certainly true that McCandless doesn't appear to have explored the river bank too
much — he reportedly failed to locate a relatively nearby hand-operated tram that
would have enabled him to cross the river with ease.
As Jon Krakauer's book became successful, the notoriety of the wanderer's final months
started living a life of its own. According to Treehugger, many people were so moved by
the story that they actually started hiking to the site of Bus 142; over the years, the
deteriorating vehicle saw more and more foot traffic from devoted McCandless fans. Things
got so bad that the people in the area started calling these travelers "McCandless pilgrims,"
and their numbers could exceed 100 per year.
The problem, of course, is that the trail between the bus and civilization hasn't gotten
any less dangerous after McCandless' death. The Teklanika River can still be incredibly
difficult to cross, and, as the BBC notes, the authorities have had to rescue many pilgrims.
Two people even died trying to reach the site. In 2020, the state of Alaska finally decided
that enough was enough. The bus was clearly important to many people, but since it was
attracting them to dangerous situations, it was clear that something had to change.
The solution was an impressive one: The bus was airlifted from its precarious position
in the wilderness and transported to a less perilous location. According to Backpacker,
Bus 142 is set to receive a new home as the centerpiece of an exhibition at the University
of Alaska's Museum of the North, in Fairbanks.
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