Back in August of last year I mentioned John Krakauer's book Into the Wild and urged you to read it.
"What would possess a gifted young man recently graduated from college to literally walk away from his life? Noted outdoor writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer tackles that question in his reporting on Chris McCandless, whose emaciated body was found in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992." - from Amazon.com
In a nutshell, Krakauer "saw in the cross-continent wanderings of [Chris] McCandless and his final, tragic Alaska death the footprints of 'the grip the wilderness has on American imagination, the allure high-risk activities hold for young men of a certain mind, the complicated, highly charged bond that exists between fathers and sons.'” - source
Wednesday I watched Sean Penn's film version on DVD.
The film portrayed Chris McCandless as a heroic figure and, according to Wikipedia, "By 2002, the abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail where McCandless camped had become a tourist destination."
But film-making is an art ... and the necromancer's craft, like story-telling and schizophrenia, often has little to do with the thorny issue of Real Life:
"Unlike Krakauer and many readers of his book, who have a largely sympathetic view of McCandless, some Alaskans have negative views of both McCandless and those who romanticize his fate. Because he had no maps, McCandless was unaware that a hand-operated tram crossed the impassible river only 6 miles from the Stampede Trail. There were also cabins stocked with emergency supplies within a few miles of the bus, although they had been vandalized and all the supplies were spoiled, possibly by McCandless himself, as detailed in Lamothe's documentary.
"Alaskan Park Ranger Peter Christian wrote: 'I am exposed continually to what I will call the ‘McCandless Phenomenon.’ People, nearly always young men, come to Alaska to challenge themselves against an unforgiving wilderness landscape where convenience of access and possibility of rescue are practically nonexistent […]
"When you consider McCandless from my perspective, you quickly see that what he did wasn’t even particularly daring, just stupid, tragic, and inconsiderate. First off, he spent very little time learning how to actually live in the wild. He arrived at the Stampede Trail without even a map of the area. If he [had] had a good map he could have walked out of his predicament […] Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide.” [emphasis added]
"Judith Kleinfeld wrote in the Anchorage Daily News that 'many Alaskans react with rage to his stupidity. You'd have to be a complete idiot, they say, to die of starvation in summer 20 miles off the Park's Highway.'" -quoted text passages sourced here
His body was found in his sleeping bag inside the bus, weighing just 67 pounds.
