My daughter called me from Europe last week to tell me that she’d seen Into the Wild. We talked about the local (Alaskan) reaction to the film, which was interesting to her since none of those issues are brought out in the movie. As it happens, I watched the film later that day, and I’m thinking now about how it plays here in Alaska.
Chris McCandless’ story was much like mine – up to the part where he walked off into the country to starve to death. For about 5 years during my early 20s, I drifted. I was a fruit tramp, hitching rides and harvesting crops in Washington and Arizona. I hung out in Mexico for months on end, spent a winter in an abandoned log barn in the mountains of N. Idaho (near friends) cutting wood with a bow saw to keep warm and busy. I left in April after living for 5 months on corn, beans, rice, tomatoes, flour, oats, apples, and some beavers and rabbits.
A year and a half and several “projects” later I headed to Alaska with a half-baked plan to live there on my own terms. I took classes at the university for a teaching credential because I had a kid by then and I needed a way to provide for her. I also wanted wilderness survival skills, so I joined a climbing club and learned about glacier travel, climbing snow and ice, and avalanche danger. I fell into a crevasse right after discussing with my partner whether we needed to rope up on the Castner Glacier. I hiked alone in summer and crossed a few scary rivers. But so what?
As Alaskan stories go, mine are unremarkable, maybe even typical for anyone who wanders off the beaten path. Here, we find ourselves in primitive conditions just a few minutes from most any road. We recognize the difference between rustic and remote locations, and that’s why we have trouble with Krakauer’s version of Chris McCandless’ tragic Alaska sojourn.
McCandless supposedly trained for his Alaskan odyssey, running and climbing. He pushed his limits and learned to travel light. Why, then, did he ignore the most basic and portable survival aid – knowledge? With mentors to show him the ropes, he’d have had more options when his plans started to unravel. He didn’t even have a map.
Into the Wild is interesting for what it doesn’t say about the end of Chris McCandless’s trail. McCandless is the romantic hero of the movie, rejecting social conventions and making his own path. Never mentioned in the film, though, is that the path to the old bus where he spent his summer was a mere two day walk from a major highway, along a well established mining trail. There was an old tram he could have used to cross the Teklanika River just a mile downstream from where he unsuccessfully tried to cross on his attempt to get back to the highway. Why didn’t he look for a wider, and shallower, spot to cross?
To people who understand where he was, he seems like a fugitive from the narrow confines of common sense. We wonder if he was merely a fool. Or was he insane? And why is his story being mythologized now? Krakaur’s theory that McCandless died of food poisoning is crucial for maintaining his thesis that his hero was the tragic victim of bad luck. But his theory has not withstood empirical validation.
Since the movie, there has been a great deal of public discussion about what (if anything) should be done with the bus. The general concern is that movie crazed starry eyed romantics will come similarly unprepared and require rescue or assistance. Or maybe they’ll just annoy everyone with vacuous epiphanies. For now, the derelict bus remains where it’s been for the past several decades, awaiting further discovery and celebration.
Stories are told and retold for a reason. Their meanings are shaped and nurtured by the people who tell and hear them. I’m curious what purpose this one serves. Sherry Simpson wrote:
We can’t afford to take his story seriously because it doesn’t say much a careful person doesn’t already know about desire and survival. The lessons are so obvious as to be laughable: Look at a map. Take some food. Know where you are. Listen to people who are smarter than you. Be humble. Go on out there — but it won’t mean much unless you come back.
To realize any far-fetched goal it takes an ability to sort through the objective difficulties and the subjective dangers that come from an excess of attitude. It also takes some luck. And to the degree that you stay humble and listen to other people, you make your own luck. Chris McCandless has my respect for pushing his limits to reach his ideals. He may have been shortsighted and foolish, but who among us hasn’t been guilty of that? He wasn’t skilled or lucky enough to anonymously retreat from his peak moment. Krakauer, however, doesn’t tell that story. And in Alaska the question remains, Why?
Into the Wild sources:
- Official Site;
- Death of an Innocent: Jon Krakauer’s original Outside Magazine (1993)article;
- The Cult of Chris McCandless: Matthew Power’s Men’s Journal (2007) film critique;
- A Man Made Cold by the Universe: Sherry Simpson (2003) looks for meaning in Krakauer’s story;
- I Now Walk into the Wild: from Chip Brown in the New Yorker (1993);
- Krakauer offers new theory on how McCandless died along Stampede Trail: Dermot Cole, Fairbanks Daily News Miner (2007);
- Into the Wild: The False Being Within: Craig Medred’s (2007) mental illness thesis;
- McCandless’ story isn’t really told in the book or the film Craig Medred’s Anchorage Daily News (2007) opinion column;
- Out of the Wild: by Doug Ohara (2007);
- Chris McCandless from an Alaska Park Ranger’s Perspective: by Peter Christian;
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I was also disappointed by the direction the film took the end of the story… I’d hoped it might be otherwise, but it was taken in a typical Hollywood direction (easy enough to do given Krakauer’s own mythologizing) that underestimates the audience’s capability to handle characters with contradictory motives and real human flaws.
I recognize that McCandless was foolish, but like you I also respect what he tried to do. Many people live their entire lives without taking even a single dangerous leap and then spend too much of that extra time engaged in armchair criticism of those around them. In the end, McCandless was “simply” human with all of the attendant foibles.
Nice catch with Simpson’s piece. I’d read it years back in the Anchorage Press. Incidentally, she’s married to one of my best friends… everything she writes is pretty damn good. You two would get along pretty well I think
“Into the Wild” stirs deep feelings within me. I too had an “Alexander Supertramp” attitude and I live in Alaska. When I was younger, I sold everything I had after getting out of the Army. I hitch-hiked from coast-to-coast as a loner meeting with others during Grateful Dead tours or Rainbow gatherings. I gave up many of my middle-class upbringings for eclectic Eastern philosophies and anti-establishment ideals.
However, I never gave up my common sense. Whether I was sleeping in vacant lots in Los Angeles with roving packs of gangs, near the freeway in the Florida Everglades, or on the side of the road in Alaska, I always took precautions to make sure I would wake to another day. Sometimes I was forced to give up my ego and listen to the advice of others. Chris McCandless seemed to have a sense of adventure without common sense.
Understand that I’m not passing judgment, but only providing commentary. I have actually been to the bus twice. I originally went after Krakauer wrote Chris’s story. I was bar tending in Fairbanks, AK and there was a lot of criticism from Alaskans about the events that led to Chris’s death. Healy (which is where the Stampede Trail begins) is only 1.5 hours from Fairbanks and I wanted to see what Chris would have faced.
With some of my youthful ignorance and an open mind, I drove to 8 Mile Lake and walked in. I’ve been there once in the summer and once in the winter (at -20F). I never went into the bus. My interest was much more about the survivability of the area. From first hand experience, the area is beautiful and deadly. However, Chris McCandless never should have died the way that he did. There were countless ways to survive his situation, but sitting in a bus writing self-fulfilling prophecies and poetry was not an intelligent or responsible way to ensure that there would be more days or years of adventure.
As a father of four now, my strongest emotions when reviewing this story again is for his family. I understand some of his thoughts about anti-society, anti-parents, and living a life of adventure. But, the key is “living”. Even though no one has written a book about what I have done, I am much happier to be able to share my stories and pass on my experiences to my children. Had Chris survived his ordeal (and not been stricken with a disease or involved in any other random life threatening event), he would have much to offer and probably many more stories to share.
P.S. – I have found that getting older and having children does not necessarily preclude someone from continuing a life of adventure. As a rural teacher in bush Alaska, my family and I have discovered that adventure may be found just in the process of the “daily grind”. And personally, I have discovered that the adventure is much more fun when my family in involved.
Great post. I saw the movie only last week and have been thinking about it too. McCandless came to AK the year before I did. I was in my early 20′s, on a different path, but also searching. His story has turned so personal for so many Alaskans that he doesn’t seem to inhabit it anymore.
on being prepared.
I don’t think arming himself with enough knowledge was the central point of Chris McCandless. More that the centrality of his character was based on placing himself into situations where he might not survive, but ended up surviving anyway by figuring out his way through it. Over and over again. It was the way he lived. Put yourself into the unknown. Find your way out again. Being well prepared and having it all thought out would almost be degrading to this entire way of thinking. A map is beside the point.
Of course people die every day like this. The amazing point to Chris’ story was that he kept surviving these situations anyway, over and over again. Call it luck or stupidity or whatever you want. But there had to have been another element – something inside of him – that kept seeing him through and allowed him to survive these repeatedly dangerous adventures. The self confidence and assuredness to be able to face the dark and be afraid, but to take a step forward anyway. Anyone who has had one or two of those moments in their lives understands the strength they lend later on.
I don’t mean to be judgmental in my assessment of his motives. Adventurers do this all the time. They impose limits on themselves, the amount of support they require, the route taken, etc. to manage the level of difficulty. To many of us, dying of starvation in an area that wasn’t even remote is inexplicable. I have a hard time seeing him as an innocent victim, as Krakauer and Sean Penn have rendered the character in the film.
I saw the movie yesterday and about half way through I remember thinking that the character was exhibiting characteristics of schizophrenia. I’m not a doctor, I only have a bachelor’s in psych., but by the end of the movie I really think his condition deteriorated because of all of that time alone, cutoff from the rest of the world. I have seen this happen to my own brother.
I lived in Fairbanks from 1994 to 1997 and I am surprised he didn’t freeze to death in that bus. I’m sure he would have if it had not been for the wood stove.
I thought it was a good story, overall. I didn’t really get the impression that anyone was trying to make him a hero, just merely tell a story. I’m not saying that Krakauer got all the facts straight or that I believe all of it, just that it is an interesting story from a psych majors view.
Thanks for this, Doug. You’ve just linked to it via Twitter after I tweeted that I’d just finished watching it.
To be honest, the film made me cry. Why? Well, after a Philosophy degree I felt that my story could have been a less dramatic version of his. What saved me? Meeting my wife and getting married.
What I thought was a sign of strength – wanting to be free from social relationships and live just with nature and books – is actually a sign of weakness and, to some extent, abnormality. If nothing else, this film really brought this out.
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