"Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer (ISBN 0-385-48680-4)
"Into the Wild" is a thoughtful and highly personal investigation into the life and death of Christopher J. McCandless in Healy Alaska in 1992. Jon Krakauer was originally assigned to look into the death by starvation of Chris McCandless for an article in "Outside" magazine. As he looked deeper into the situation and found out more about Chris, he became convinced that this was not just the story of an unprepared greenhorn biting off more than he could chew.
As might be expected, the story starts with a description of a disaffected and alienated young man determined to start a new life for himself more in keeping with his beliefs than the life his well off family expects of him. He dutifully attends Emory university and graduates with honors, but has no intention of attending law school as his family intends. He even donates all the remaining money in his trust fund to a charity. He piles some personal belongings in his car and sets off to do he is not sure what.
Krakauer traces the travels of this young man through Texas, Nevada, South Dakota and other western states and finally to Alaska. He talks to some of the people Chris met and lived with and the picture that emerges is of a very stubborn and independent person but one who becomes quickly frustrated with unexpected failure.
Case in point. At one time Chris is camped in a remote area on the south shore of Lake Mead in Arizona when a flash flood covers his camp site. When the waters recede, Chris finds his car will not start so he abandons it, leaving a note giving it to anyone who finds it. When a park service ranger finds the car a few months later he manages to start the car with a simple pair of jumper cables. By all accounts Chris was very fond of this car and had sung it's praises to friends on several occasions.
To me this shows that Chris was not so independent as he liked to think he was. He is only willing to take on the kinds of problems he wanted to deal with. Now everyone does this to a large extent, but most people realize what they are doing and make arrangements for the things they choose not to do themselves. No one can do absolutely everything for themselves and, to a large extent, the web of society and economics exists to fill these gaps. I believe Chris, once he decided to take on some trial, would deny the existence of types of problems he was not prepared for. Most people learn about their own limitations and the cruel indifference of the universe as a part of growing up but Chris, apparently, never quite "got" this message.
As Krakauer continues to trace Chris' wanderings he comes to see a lot of himself in this young man. At one point Krakauer tells the story of a "quest" he had undertaken in his twenties that could easily have ended with HIS death being the subject of a magazine article. Obviously, he survived and learned from the experience and he seems to view Chris as a kindred spirit. Unfortunately, as I continued to read I became convinced that this WAS the story of an unprepared, and indeed arrogant, greenhorn biting off more than he could chew.
Krakauer goes into a fair amount of detail about the physical features of the landscape that put Chris into such a dangerous situation. Virtually all of them could have been gotten around easily by asking a few questions or taking the trouble to get a map. A case in point is the river that, swollen by the summer melt water, prevented him from walking out the way he had gone in. It turns out that there is a "cable car" crossing a few miles downstream that is clearly marked on topographic maps of the area. It would also have been possible for Chris to walk out to nearby (15 miles) Denali National Park, but without a map Chris had only a hazy idea of what surrounded him.
I found the story interesting, if a bit macabre, but in the final analysis pointless. Krakauer and Chris McCandless felt compelled to test themselves in extreme situations. One survived and one did not, but insights gained from this type of quest are highly personal, internal and not easily explained or applied to others.
JGD
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