The Death of an Innocent

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In 1992, four hunters discovered a decomposing human body in the Alaskan wilderness. This body was Chris McCandless, a 24-year-old who had abandoned all of his possessions and hiked into the Yukon with little more than a rifle and some books. McCandless was an intelligent, hard-working young man who came from an affluent family and graduated college with high marks. All of the opportunities of the world were surely within reach. And yet his life ended alone, starving to death in the Alaskan countryside.

The story of McCandless became an article, a best-selling novel, and eventually a movie. The tale ignited a firestorm of critique, comment, and speculation, much of which still rages on today. Who was Chris McCandless? Why did he march headstrong into the wilderness? What fate came upon him? Thankfully, these answers are relatively easy to find. They have been hidden behind public opinion and a dark family secret. But the truth about Chris is within reach, on his journey all the way up to his last day on Earth. The young man recorded everything in a personal journal.

In 1993, author Jon Krakauer published a short editorial in Outside magazine about Chris McCandless called "Death of an Innocent." It received such widespread attention that Krakauer soon expanded it into a book called Into the Wild. That novel then spawned a movie, some TV documentaries, and another book. This second book was written by Chris's sister and describes the tumultuous home life which propelled Chris to his Alaskan voyage. By pulling from all of these sources, we can earn a holistic, earnest understanding of Chris McCandless.

Chris was born into an upper-class family in Englewood, California, but eventually attended Emory University in Atlanta. Immediately upon graduating, Chris mailed his parents his final grades, which were spectacular. Indeed, he'd always been a brilliant, intelligent, and hard-working student. McCandless had all of the advantages a person could be born with, and a work ethic to make good upon these promises. At first glance, all signs may have been pointing towards a successful, fruitful life.

But Chris's graduation came and went, and by August, his parents had not heard a word from their son. Worried about his safety and whereabouts, the parents traveled to Atlanta. When they arrived at Chris's apartment, they found a "for rent" sign on the window. In fact, Chris had actually vanished from the apartment five weeks earlier. He had instructed the post office to hold his mail rather than forward it anywhere so that his parents would have no idea as to his destination.

So it was early July when, full of the rebellion of youth and unshackled by the demands of academia, Chris McCandless donated all of his remaining college fund to the charity Oxfam. He informally changed his name to the moniker Alexander Supertramp. With this new identity, Chris drove his yellow Datsun west from Atlanta and eventually arrived thousands of miles away at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Arizona. Chris steered the car off-road and drove two miles to the lake's southern shore. There, he pitched his tent and thus began the odyssey that would become both his life and his death.

Admittedly, the earliest days of Chris's adventure were marked by folly and misfortune. Two days after he arrived, seasonal rainstorms hit Lake Mead. The rainwater pushed down from the higher parts of the park, quickly flooding Chris's campsite. The rain did not destroy his car, but it had soaked the engine. After the flood, when Chris tried to start his Datsun, the engine would not turn over. His repeated attempts to start the vehicle drained the battery entirely.

If Chris walked to the paved road and asked for help with his car, that would inevitably bring a number of problems. Any towing company would need to speak to the park rangers. The authorities would have questions and likely fines for Chris, many of which would probably culminate in contacting his parents. Furthermore, his car was uninsured, his registration had lapsed, and his license was expired. So Chris decided to just leave the Datsun behind. It was another material possession which he could now reject. He removed its plates, buried them, and left his car under a tarp. He took the small amount of paper currency he had and burned it.

Still, Chris was enamored by the American West. Without a car, he hitchhiked around the region for two months. He met vagabonds and escaped arrests, but primarily reveled in the natural abundance of the area. He made his way to Lake Tahoe, hiked into the Sierra Nevada, and walked along the famous Pacific Crest Trail.

Towards the end of July, Chris found himself in Northern California. There he lived and worked with six other travelers for a man named Ernie. As it turned out, Ernie had no intention of paying Chris or the other workers. So, McCandless hit the road once again.

At the end of October, Chris caught a ride with a trucker who took him all the way to the Colorado River in Arizona. But now, Chris had his sights on a new destination: the Gulf of California in Mexico. Without identification, Chris realized that crossing the border on foot or via hitchhiking would be virtually impossible. So, McCandless made his most daring decision yet. With the little money he'd earned from odd jobs here and there, Chris bought a secondhand canoe. He would paddle 400 miles down the Colorado River to cross the border and land in Mexico.

For such an audacious plan, it went surprisingly well. Chris drifted on the river through the desert, occasionally stopping to send postcards to people he'd met on his journeys or to resupply with food and water. When his canoe reached the Morelos Dam on the Mexican border, he snuck into the country by paddling through the dam's floodgates. The plan worked and he recorded in his journal: "Alex looks quickly around for signs of trouble, but his entry of Mexico is either unnoticed or ignored. Alexander is jubilant."

But after the dam, Chris found the river turning into a labyrinthian system of canals, channels, and unmaintained waterways. After attempting with only moderate success to navigate this maze, Chris encountered some Mexican officials. They provided directions to the Gulf of California, but perhaps owing to a language barrier, the directions were quite poor, and Chris soon found himself lost once again.

Chris carried his canoe across land for three days before meeting some duck hunters. They told him he was once again headed in the wrong direction, but offered to drive him and the canoe in their pickup truck to the coast. In Chris's journal, he recognized this as a "miracle." Sure enough, the hunters dropped Chris at a fishing village on the Gulf of California. There, Chris slowed down his adventure for a while. He canoed in the sea and took photos of wildlife, sunsets, and dunes.

During this time, Chris all but abandoned his journal, producing just 100 words over the course of his month on the Gulf. By the end of his time there, Chris had not spoken to or seen another person for 36 days. He survived on a five-pound bag of rice and marine life foraged from the sea. But as was the trend for McCandless, he once again grew restless.

On January 18th, Chris attempted to pass back into the United States without identification and he was apprehended by immigration authorities. He spent a night in jail and the police confiscated his .38 caliber Colt Python handgun, but Chris was released the next day.

For six weeks, Chris roamed across the Southwest. He wandered and hitchhiked from Houston to the Pacific coast. Though Chris's spirits were high, he'd lost 25 lbs and was suffering from malnutrition. Chris's journeys were taking their toll, so he settled down to rest and recuperate in his next semi-permanent residence: Las Vegas. There he got a job at an Italian restaurant and he entirely stopped his journal entries.

We don't know much about the specific circumstances, but McCandless left Las Vegas in May 1991 and arrived at Bullhead City, Arizona in October. Bullhead became perhaps the most permanent home Chris occupied since leaving college. He had a full-time job at McDonald's. He opened a savings account and he commuted to work on a bicycle. Chris applied to the job with his real name and social security number. He began squatting in an abandoned trailer near the city. The trailer, though empty, was furnished, had electric sockets, and made for a reasonable home for Chris.

In the years that followed his death, his managers and co-workers generally spoke highly of Chris McCandless. They said he was a good worker, dependable, and amicable enough. However, they also noted he had an absent, almost spacey affect about him. After clocking out, Chris didn't spend time with his co-workers. Even during idle workday conversations, he simply waxed on and on about nature and his travels, specifically about his newest plan: a journey to Alaska. And indeed, when he left Bullhead, Chris had only one destination in mind.

Of course, Chris didn't immediately make it to Alaska. He had very little money, and further, Chris believed that taking a plane up north would be cheating. So, he made his way to a place called Slab City in Southern California. Once a Navy base, but long since abandoned, Slab City was and still is a grid of concrete foundations in the middle of the desert. It's a sort of makeshift town of vagabonds, anarchists, drifters, and criminals on the run. The slabs were also home to regular swap meets where denizens and people in the surrounding areas set up booths to sell secondhand goods. McCandless got a job working in one of these booths and did well to ingratiate himself into the community. He became quite close with his employers and their friends, though Chris was still unwavering. Most of his conversation circled endlessly around his Alaskan voyage. Chris was too substantive in these plans. Every morning he trained physically for the perils of the Alaskan wilderness. He studied survival strategies and traded ideas with the denizens of the slabs. And so he soon hitchhiked out of Slab City.

Chris's next stop was Carthage, South Dakota. There, McCandless worked as a farmhand. He wasn't particularly skilled on the farm, but Chris was willing to throw himself at grunt work. He was tenacious and was perfectly happy to handle projects that no one else really wanted to do. McCandless spent his days cleaning warehouses, exterminating pests, painting buildings, and pulling weeds. Still, he spent his free time on his Alaskan plans. He continued to study survival. He sought advice from hunters and survivalists in Carthage. Chris had resolved to hunt for his food in Alaska, so he learned everything he could in Carthage about stalking game, butchering animals, and curing meat for preservation.

On April 15th, his friends and co-workers on the farm gathered to see Chris on his way. McCandless had a heavy backpack, $1,000 in his boot, and not much else. Chris's plan was to return to Carthage and work at that same farm after he was finished in Alaska. He left his journal and photo album with the farm's owners for safekeeping. But when the farmers hugged him goodbye, something seemed amiss. According to one account, "I noticed he was crying. That frightened me. He wasn't planning on being gone all that long. I figured he wouldn't have been crying unless he intended to take some big risks and knew he might not be coming back. That's when I started having a bad feeling that we wouldn't ever see Chris again."

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Just three days after departing South Dakota, Chris landed at the Liard River Hot Springs, on the border of the Yukon Territory. Chris did not believe himself quite prepared for the journey into the wilderness. So, he hitched a ride once again, this time to the city of Fairbanks. In Fairbanks, Chris spent much of his time in the library. Specifically, he read through a book called Tanana Plant Lore, an ethnobotany of the Dena'ina Indians of South Central Alaska. This is an extensive, dense scholarly piece which catalogs and explains the Yukon's edible plant species. McCandless purchased a used semi-automatic .22 caliber rifle with a scope which he planned on using to hunt game. Along with the rifle, Chris secured 400 rounds of hollow-point ammunition.

Feeling well prepared, Chris set out. He carried a parka, the rifle, a 10-lb bag of rice, two sandwiches, some corn chips, and a sizable collection of books. McCandless arrived at the Stampede Trail, a remote, unkempt road which leads into Denali National Park and winds through the Alaskan wilderness. Spring had begun to arrive along the trail. Most streams were thawed and flowing. The snowpack had largely melted and plant life was beginning to turn green again. So Chris McCandless began his final journey.

According to his journal, on April 29th, McCandless fell through some ice as he walked across frozen beaver ponds. It seems that Chris was largely unharmed and he continued walking down the long Stampede Trail. After 20 miles of hiking, Chris happened upon an old abandoned bus. This was quite a blessing for McCandless. The bus's former residents had left it stocked with matches, bug spray, a bed, and a stove. Chris was well aware of his good fortune. In his journal, Chris declared this "magic bus day."

Now, the bus was not his final destination. He planned to simply keep walking west until he hit the Bering Sea. But Chris decided to make use of the bus as a temporary shelter before proceeding onward. A wave of snow from the lingering winter came upon the area. According to his journal, Chris was snowed in at the bus and categorized his situation as "disaster."

Chris set out to hunt for game, but he was met with repeated misfortune. He failed to shoot a bear. He missed his shot on some ducks. According to his journal, Chris was on his "fourth day of famine" when he finally shot and killed a squirrel. But Chris McCandless was smart, capable, and adaptable. The fresh snow continued to melt, and Chris foraged for lingonberries and rose hips. His luck and skill improved with hunting. Over the next six weeks, he shot and ate squirrel, grouse, duck, geese, and other small game. That said, stalking for animals and hunting game requires a lot of energy. The snow had thawed, leaving behind a deep, muddy ground, which proved physically difficult to walk through. Chris realized that it was unlikely he could eat sufficient nutrients to sustain his body in a 500-mile walk to the Bering Sea. So, he changed his plans. After hiking 15 miles from his shelter, he turned around and decided to make the bus his home for the rest of the summer.

Perhaps to his chagrin, Chris McCandless wasn't exactly deep in the Yukon. He was 30 miles from a major highway. He was 16 miles from a large tourist attraction in Denali Park and its National Park Service workers. In any case, Alaska is a punishing, unforgiving place. One need not be at the Bering Sea to be in danger. And indeed, Chris did not see another human for the rest of his life.

So, at the end of May, Chris made the bus his home in earnest. There were four cabins within a six-mile range of Chris's location, one of which was well-stocked with food and emergency supplies. Chris did not have a map, so he did not know these existed, but even if he did, they would have been of little use. In early April, they had all been vandalized and burgled, leaving the food supplies spoiled. So whether he knew it or not, settling in the bus was a perfectly good decision. Chris wrote a list of short- and longer-term chores, including things like making a map, collecting firewood, building a bathtub, and collecting ice for refrigeration.

Following this, Chris experienced a string of hunting success. On May 28th, a duck. On June 1st, five squirrels. June 3rd, a porcupine, four squirrels, and three birds. On June 5th, he bagged a Canada goose. The pinnacle of his hunting came on June 9th when he wrote in his journal in all capital letters: "MOOSE." It was, in fact, a caribou, not a moose. Although overjoyed initially, Chris began to feel a tide of remorse after killing the caribou. It provided hundreds of pounds of meat, but Chris was just one person. McCandless believed it was morally wrong to waste meat that had been killed for food, so he spent days trying to preserve the caribou. He boiled the organs and tried to smoke most of the meat, but his efforts, according to Chris's journal, were unsuccessful. "June 14th. Maggots already. Smoking appears ineffective. Don't know. Looks like disaster. I now wish I had never shot the moose. One of the greatest tragedies of my life." Ultimately, most of the meat spoiled and Chris was forced to leave it in the forest for wolves and scavenging animals. This whole incident inspired a great sadness in Chris, and he lamented and rebuked himself for weeks on end at the animal's death. But in the days that followed, he concluded, "Henceforth we'll learn to accept my errors, however great they be."

Chris continued hunting, foraging, and surviving for another six weeks before deciding that his Alaskan odyssey had come to its close. He dubbed it his "final and greatest adventure." And for reasons we may never entirely know, McCandless was ready to go home. Chris patched his jeans, shaved his face, organized his things, and took a commemorative photo of his ostensible final day in the wilderness.

On July 3rd, Chris left his bus, intent on rejoining civilization. After two days of walking, Chris arrived again at the same series of beaver ponds. When he'd seen them in April, the ponds were still frozen from the winter season and had been passable on foot. But now, in July, they had thawed. Instead of walkable sheets of ice, the ponds were now a three-acre lake. This was seemingly no terrible problem. Chris hiked up a nearby hillside around the lake to cross a river on his new route. But the seasons once again revealed the enormity of their changes. When Chris had arrived in April, the river was more of a creek. Knee-deep, cold, but easily passable on foot. Now in July, a combination of spring rain and melted mountain glaciers had flooded the river. It was opaque with sediment, hypothermia-inducing, cold, rushing dangerously fast, and 100 feet wide. The river was too deep to wade. The current would have simply swept Chris away. Not far from where he was, the river became a cauldron of bubbling white water. To attempt to cross on foot was, even for the most seasoned adventurer, a simple death sentence.

Chris McCandless did not know that about half a mile from where he stood at the riverbank, there was a disused geological station. When in use, the station was equipped with a cart and cable utilized by scientists for crossing the river and now often used by hunters for that same purpose. If Chris had known of the station, crossing the river would have been a very simple task. But he did not. So in his journal Chris wrote, "Disaster rained in river look impossible, lonely, scared."

Chris returned to the bus on July 8th. Although not to his plan, it was a good time to be in the Alaskan countryside. The warm months meant that plant and animal life were both thriving. Getting food wouldn't be too difficult. The weather, likewise, was less dangerous than in other times of the year. It rained and rained through July. During this time, Chris had tremendous success hunting. He killed 35 squirrels, nine birds, and two frogs. He also foraged well, eating wild potatoes, rhubarb, berries, and mushrooms. While certainly not in peak physical condition, he was sustaining himself. He was rail-thin and weak, but far from death. However, that suddenly changed.

A look at his journal reveals a series of ominous messages. On July 30th, Chris McCandless wrote in all capital letters: "EXTREMELY WEAK, FAULT OF POT SEED, MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP, STARVING, GREAT JEOPARDY." There are no journal entries for July 31st or August 1st. On August 2nd, he wrote of "terrible wind." On August 5th, his hundredth day in the Alaskan wild, Chris's journal reads: "in weakest condition of life. Death looms as serious threat. Too weak to walk out. Have literally become trapped in the wild. No game."

On August 12th, Chris desperately went foraging for berries. Before leaving, he tore a page from one of his books and scrawled on it a desperate SOS: "SOS. 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 did make it back to the bus where he wrote his very last journal entry: "Beautiful blueberries."

At some point during the preceding week, Chris tore a page from the memoir of Jack London. London had quoted a poem from Robinson Jeffers called "Wise Men in Their Bad Hours." The poem read: "Death's a fierce meadowlark, but to die having made something more equal to the centuries than muscle and bone is mostly to shed weakness. The mountains are dead stone. The people admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness. The mountains are not softened or troubled, and a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper."

There are many ways to interpret this poem into Chris's life. The title perhaps hints at self-assessment. Maybe McCandless saw himself as a wise man in a bad hour. But the content of the poem is more revealing. It describes the triumph of having done or created something more significant than the simple errands of human existence. It describes indeed an ultimate triumph of the natural world. Chris was dying. He knew it and had remarkably come to peace with that fact. He took one final photo which shows him brutally emaciated but smiling enthusiastically. In the picture, he held a note written on the reverse of Jeffers' poem. It read: "I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all." Chris McCandless then crawled into his sleeping bag and died.

Chris was in reasonably good health throughout his trip, even after returning to the bus. Not great, but survivable. However, in a matter of days, he plunged from relative well-being to a death so obvious even he knew it was incoming. After all, a person must be very ill to conclude with no medical knowledge that death is imminent. So, what killed Chris McCandless?

Chris's note pins the blame squarely and obviously on potato seeds, reading, "Fault of pot seeds." While helpful, this diagnosis is decidedly imprecise. So, it has produced a number of theories. One of Chris's friends in South Dakota suggested that he may have purchased some potato seeds before going to Alaska with the intention of planting a vegetable garden in the wilderness. The theory goes that he never got around to planting the garden and instead ate the seeds out of desperation. Potato seeds are in fact poisonous. When eaten, they can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and headaches. They can increase heart rate and blood pressure to dangerous levels. But to achieve this level of poisoning, Chris would have needed to eat pounds and pounds of the potato seeds. There's no reason to believe Chris carried or ate such an absurd, massive quantity of potato seeds in Alaska. It is possible, but tremendously unlikely. Furthermore, his journal mostly discusses his diet and food. Nowhere in the journal does he mention eating large amounts of potato seeds.

Before embarking on the Stampede Trail, Chris intensely studied the book Tanana Plant Lore. The book discusses a species of wild potato called Hedysarum alpinum, which grows all throughout the region. Indigenous Alaskans harvested, cooked, and consumed these wild potatoes regularly. The springtime is the ideal season for these potatoes, but they become dry and tough during the summer. According to Chris's journal and a photo he took, he ate these potatoes in July. But also in that month, as the potatoes fell out of season, he started to consume the seeds as well. It was in late July when his "fault of pot seed" journal entry appears.

There's another species which grows in Alaska called Hedysarum mckenzie. Although these are wild peas rather than potatoes, the plants are virtually indistinguishable from one another. These wild peas are extremely toxic. Native Alaskans took great care to avoid confusing them with the wild potatoes, likely because they knew of the poison. Other naturalists have documented this phenomenon, noting that Hedysarum mckenzie had almost killed natives who mistakenly ate the plant. As a newcomer to the Alaskan wilderness, it seems likely that Chris McCandless could have misidentified the plant. So this was the theory espoused and accepted by Jon Krakauer in his original article for Outside magazine. It became the widely accepted theory among journalists and the general public.

But when Krakauer wrote his follow-up book, Into the Wild, he came upon a new idea. As Krakauer notes, it is a strange mistake for Chris to make. For weeks, Chris consumed the potato seeds without mistaking them for peas. Both species grow in the same area, and it is almost certain McCandless came upon each in his foraging. Furthermore, the page in Tanana Plant Lore which discusses the toxic peas is literally the very next page after the one detailing the potato seeds. The book indeed makes special note of the minute differences between the potato seeds and the toxic peas. It was a book Chris studied quite intensely, so it seems unlikely that he would have somehow just entirely skipped this section.

Krakauer believes it was not the wild peas, but in fact the wild potato seeds that killed Chris. At first glance, this is a strange theory. Tanana Plant Lore does not describe the potato seeds as toxic. Furthermore, as Krakauer notes, no scientific, botanical, or medical literature has ever described these potato seeds as being poisonous. So where did Krakauer get this theory? Like many of its relatives, this species of potato seed produces strong concentrations of usually toxic chemical compounds called alkaloids. These alkaloids coat the seeds to prevent animals from eating them in the late summer. If ingested, the potato seeds' alkaloids would produce a number of effects, but would not immediately kill a person. Instead, this particular toxin has the dangerous effect of preventing the body from turning food into storable, usable energy. It basically makes a person starve no matter how much food they eat. If an animal or a person is already malnourished, these toxins affect the body faster and more intensely. When Krakauer had these potato seeds tested for this specific alkaloid, his theory was all but confirmed: they were indeed present.

So, the most likely theory is just that Chris McCandless died from eating potato seeds during the wrong time of the year. But perhaps more truly, he died from the sheer, unrelenting, and labyrinthian power of the natural world. We might be tempted to say that if Chris had studied harder or learned more, he would have known better. But the presence of alkaloids in those seeds is so profoundly exact and niche that, as Krakauer notes, even an experienced botanist could have made the same mistake.

So we have the story of Chris McCandless, but it is a story which can be interpreted many ways, which can be and has been used to paint a diverse range of pictures of the young vagabond. Some will derisively say he was just an arrogant young man suffering from a fatal case of affluenza. Others may be more reductive and call him simply stupid. But if there is one thing we can be certain of, people, it is that they are not characters or caricatures. People are products of environments, moved by an infinitely complex hurricane of emotions, thoughts, qualities, and events. Chris McCandless was no exception.

Given the fact that I, of course, never truly knew Chris McCandless, the best I can do in estimating his character is just that, an estimation. But much of his life is in the public record: journal entries, deeds, relationships, family history. So I think this estimation is a relatively decent one. McCandless was born into a wealthy family. His father, Walt, was a successful aerospace engineer and consultant. The McCandless family lived in an upper-middle-class suburb in Virginia where they seemed to exist as a utopian nuclear family. But this was a carefully crafted illusion. And in fact, the family was racked by nightmarish turmoil. But that is a topic we will return to shortly.

Throughout his schooling days and college career, McCandless was an outstanding student. He was extremely intelligent, as many people who encountered him on his travels would later remark. But still, Chris seemed to resent his privileged upbringing. He lived a rather Spartan life at college. His room was furnished with a mattress on the floor, a few milk crates, and a single table. You see, he had a strong repulsion to material goods and luxuries despite, or probably because of, his upbringing. After graduating college, he donated his remaining college fund to Oxfam, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger. When his parents attempted to buy Chris a new car as a graduation present, McCandless was incensed. He had a decade-old Datsun with 128,000 miles on it, which he insisted was a perfect car. He wrote in a letter to his sister, "I can't believe they'd try and buy me a car. I've told them a million times that I have the best car in the world. A car that has spanned the continent from Miami to Alaska. A car that has, in all those thousands of miles, not given me a single problem. A car that I will never trade in. A car that I am very strongly attached to. Yet they ignore what I say and think I'd actually accept a new car from them. Going to have to be real careful not to accept any gifts from them in the future because they will think they have bought my respect." Clearly, Chris loved his Datsun. But I think it's fair to say the rejection of a new car was more than the shabby temper tantrum of an affluent young man. The prospect of a new car seemed to strike Chris as emblematic of a larger, more grotesque problem with his family and the culture of material possessions. It was precisely this culture which Chris endeavored to reject.

It is tempting, and perhaps not entirely misguided, to say Chris McCandless was ungrateful and arrogant. He was born with all of the advantages and opportunities a person could ever hope for and simultaneously happy to cast them aside entirely. It's difficult to reckon with the idea of someone being born with all of these advantages and rejecting them for those in life who were born into any iota of struggle. Such a decision may be somewhere between ludicrous and offensive. But at least he truly rejected those things. Many people posture with this rejection while keeping a safety net around, acting one way for the sake of fashion or perception, but existing more truthfully in another. Chris did not write to his parents for money. In moments of emergency, he did not seek refuge in his family's status. He did not bank on some existential backup plan. At the very harshest, Chris's rejection of his background could be cast as unreasonable. But certainly, this rejection was whole and it was truthful.

McCandless was a kind young man. He was courteous and, despite leaning on the deeds of strangers as he hitchhiked, Chris repeatedly refused favors and handouts. He developed deep relationships with the people he met, often communicating for years via post after leaving them behind for his next destination. Chris could be spacey and distant, but this was displayed alongside a tendency for gregariousness. A friend of Chris's from Slab City told Krakauer, "He had a good time when he was around people, a real good time. At the swap meet, he'd talk and talk and talk to everybody who came by. He must have met six or seven dozen people in Nyland, and he was friendly with every one of them. He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around."

Chris too was hardworking. The various odd jobs he took on his travels. Chris's employers generally regarded him as reliable and not afraid of getting his hands dirty. While he was not talented at each temporary vocation, he was dependable and put forth genuine effort. One of his temporary employers said of Chris, "I've given jobs to lots of hitchhikers over the years. Most of them weren't much good. Didn't really want to work. It was a different story with Chris. He was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Didn't matter what it was, he'd do it. Hard physical labor, mucking rotten grain, and dead rats out of the bottom of the hole. Jobs where you'd just get so damn dirty you couldn't even tell what you looked like at the end of the day. He never quit in the middle of something. If he started a job, he'd finish it. It was almost like a moral thing for him. He was what you'd call extremely ethical. He set pretty high standards for himself."

But beyond these very palatable qualities, Chris McCandless overflowed with intensity. He was stubborn and, like many young people, tremendously idealistic. Chris admired and took inspiration from aesthetic and transcendental authors, pouring over their works and emulating the qualities of self-reliance, anti-materialism, and good hard work. With this in mind, we can know that Chris's venture into Alaska was not one taken lightly. He was intelligent and well-read and reasonably down-to-earth. As Krakauer notes, Chris did not anticipate the Yukon as being some utopian wilderness which would accommodate him with ease. Quite the opposite. He knew that it would bring pain, struggle, and hardship. This is exactly what Chris sought for.

We must too consider that Chris was in fact very ambitious, but he possessed a unique sort of ambition, not chained to career and material things. It was not that Chris took his advantages for granted or failed to see their significance. More accurately, Chris's desires in life were drastically misaligned with these advantages. He had been equipped at birth prodigiously, sure, but equipped for a life he had no interest in leading. He was given tools for a job entirely separate from the one he hoped to accomplish. Generally, the professional world provides guardrails which prevent young people from doing anything too self-destructive in the aims of their ambition. A first-year banker cannot ruin a company. An early-career lawyer cannot spring mass murderers from jail. The entry-level tradesman is generally not tasked with constructing a palace from scratch. But because Chris's ambitions were so far from the monorail of our society, he did not have these aforementioned safeties. Our systems do not protect the young adventurer in the way they do a young banker, lawyer, or tradesman. So Chris was able to run full steam ahead, carrying with him the ignorance and folly of youth.

It would also be tempting and arguable to say that Chris was just arrogant. We could say he was clearly unprepared for this Alaskan adventure and, as a consequence of hubris, he died in the wilderness. I think this is a strange combination of correct and misguided. In my experience, youth and arrogance are part and parcel. Where there is youth unlearned and unaffected by the realities of the world, there is too some form of arrogance. I don't think this is always bad. Arrogance can bring to pass realities that may have been otherwise extinguished by cowardice or worry. But the binary relationship of youth and arrogance is almost universally true in one shade or another. We must not hold this too severely in case against anyone, including Chris McCandless.

Chris was also in many ways very successful in Alaska. He survived for 113 days equipped with nothing but his own abilities and knowledge. It was likely only owing to an unknown, unpublished factoid that he died. Aside from this one unfortunately fatal mistake, Chris did survive in Alaska with relative success. I don't generally like to wade into analysis of contemporary media, but here it does prove a point very well. In the modern television program alone, qualified and often expert survivalists are sent into the wilderness. They are allowed to take with them a number of critical tools for survival, and the longest person to stay is given a massive cash prize. Of these dozens and dozens of fully qualified contestants, all of whom are experienced and equipped with a buffet of survival tools, the longest remaining entrant stayed in the wilderness for 100 days, about two weeks shorter than McCandless. Other contestants have won the competition after as little as 40 days. This may not be a perfect comparison, but it does illustrate the point. Chris McCandless was 22 years old. He had no incentive other than his own desires. We could be harsh and say he was ill-equipped, inexperienced, or underprepared. But still, he was more successful than many contemporary experts have been in this sort of endeavor.

At this point, we have a pretty good estimation of Chris McCandless as a person, but there is still one massive piece missing from this puzzle. We are all products of our environments. Chris was no exception, and his environment reveals absolute mountains about McCandless himself and his motivations. Chris McCandless had a number of influences. As mentioned, his heroes were authors like Tolstoy and Thoreau: these affluent men who rejected luxury in favor of hardship and monkish existences. Chris McCandless was indeed born into a sort of luxury, a house of prosperity. But it was exactly this background which propelled him to reject material things to venture into Alaska.

In 2015, Chris's sister, Carine McCandless, published the book The Wild Truth. In this work, Carine tells a story which is notably absent from Krakauer's famous book: The abuse-laden childhood of Chris McCandless. Karine relayed this information to Krakauer when he was researching for Into the Wild, but she did not give her blessing for him to include the material. It was a story she later said that she wanted to tell on her own. I think this is a reasonable desire. Indeed, when Karine published her book, Krakauer publicly applauded the work. In any case, this material radically and certainly changes the story of Chris McCandless.

Chris and Karine's parents were Billie and Walt McCandless. When Walt met Billie, he was already married to a woman named Marsha. Walt also had a child with Marsha. The married Walt told Billie he would be leaving his wife, but this wasn't true. In reality, Marsha had been trying to leave Walt for some time, but Walt was an alcoholic, abusive husband. The physical abuse was tremendous. At one point, he fractured a vertebrae in Marsha's back, prompting their 13-year-old son to call the police. Billie eventually became pregnant with Chris, but instead of leaving Marsha, Walt entered into a bigamous relationship. For years, he was married to both Billie and Marsha at the same time before Marsha eventually fled the abusive home. The entirety of this did little to quell Walt's fury. Throughout Chris and Karine's childhood, Walt beat Billie and their children relentlessly. He was a violent alcoholic who lorded over the family home with an iron fist. The parents got into yelling, violent arguments. Walt hurled insults at Billie, chased her around the home, and threw her into walls. On one occasion, he attempted to choke Billie to death. Billie screamed to the children, begging for help. In response, Walt beckoned the children into the room so they could see, "what your mother is making me do." Each day after arriving home from work, Walt screamed a barrage of orders to the children and admonished Billie if she was not dressed properly. He required she wear a short skirt, high heels, and have her hair and makeup pin-precise. Walt constantly berated Billie. He told her she would be nothing without him. He reminded her that he was a genius while she didn't even have a college education. According to Karine's book, Walt screamed things like, "I put the first American spacecraft on the moon. You've never done anything important."

After years of abuse, Chris and Karine learned to hide at the sight of their father's car arriving home. If Chris or Karine missed their chores or teased one another, the children were made to choose the weapon of discipline. They routinely combed through Walt's collection of belts, looking for the one which would hurt the least. But even this choice was a lie. If Chris or Karine selected the wrong belt, Walt would make them pick another. Once a weapon had been selected, Walt spanked the children with the leather belt in a drunken rage. Karine described him as having a "terrifying smile like an addict in the climax of a high."

After high school graduation, Chris told his father that he wanted to travel through the summer. Chris said he was tired of the structure of life, that he had grown weary of everything being predetermined and set out for him. Chris wanted to get out and enjoy the world for a few weeks. Walt was furious. He insisted that Chris give a moment-by-moment itinerary for his plans. He told Chris that he was irresponsible and stupid, despite the son having been a straight-A student, a star athlete, and having worked two jobs all the while. As the shouting match concluded, Chris turned his back to leave. Walt rushed forward and punched Chris right in the center of his spine.

As is often the case, this abuse happened behind a carefully constructed facade of perfection. After beating the children, Walt required a family supper where they discussed his work, school, family vacations, or anything else except the violent abuse. Walt was careful to avoid leaving visible marks on his children. He paraded his perfect family around at Sunday church services and community events. If the children ever said anything to him about the abuse, Walt said they were just being dramatic and that they needed to be more grateful for the advantages they had, for the money he brought to the family. Meanwhile, Billie directly blamed Chris for all of this abuse. She regularly reminded Chris that when she got pregnant with him, that alone had doomed her and the family to all of this suffering. This logic is of course mortally flawed, but drilled into the head of a youth, it would certainly be taken as fact.

The temper only cooled consistently on one type of occasion: family camping trips. The parents never fought on these trips. The abuse halted. The parents shifted their attention to the activity at hand. They taught their children how to identify trails, how to lace up hiking boots, what kind of clothing to wear, which plants were safe to touch, and how to build a fire. Walt sang songs. He entertained the children with stories about space aliens and taught Chris how to roast marshmallows.

In her book, Karine also discusses how Chris coped with his father's abuse. After being paraded around at church or local events, forced to ignore the sufferings at home, the siblings often walked back to their house. Chris took Karine on long detours through the woods, where he reveled in the natural surroundings. Karine writes, "Chris loved to look at every type of plant, animal, and bug he hadn't seen before on the trail and point out those he did recognize. He enjoyed walking along small streams, listening to the water as it traveled, and searching for eddies, where we could watch the minnows scurry amongst the rocks. On one Shenandoah trip, while we were resting at a waterfall, eating our chocolate-covered granola bars, and watching the water pummel the rocks below, he said, 'See, Karine, that's the purity of nature. It may be harsh in its honesty, but it never lies to you.'"

Walt McCandless has claimed that Karine is just lying about the abuse, that the stories are entirely fictional. I do not believe him. The viewer of this video can use their own discretion.

Chris's life of privilege and luxury did not to him represent opportunity, but instead pain. It seems as if he reached a breaking point where he no longer found his domestic battle to be worth fighting. Instead, he simply wanted to get away. Most specifically, he yearned for the wilderness, for the only place he was ever truly happy.

Much has been suggested about Chris McCandless. The most classic of these ideas has been to paint Chris's journey as one of hubris. He was an arrogant young man who did not understand nature or his own limits and so he died in Alaska. I think this interpretation is a compound sort of failure which does not accurately describe the protagonist of the story nor the concrete events. Chris did very well in Alaska. He survived for a very long time. As a person, it may be true that he was arrogant, but this was not a defining trait of Chris McCandless. Rather, he had an unfortunate and ultimately fatal combination of qualities: a sense of ambition unguarded by the material world, an arrogance found so commonplace in youth that it is almost unremarkable, and a childhood which poisoned his impression of contemporary society.

The story and life of Chris McCandless is rife with contradictions. Chris was running from something, but he was too running towards something. He disdained the people who knew him the best, but collected a veritable family on his travels. He was prepared and skilled in survival, but consciously chose to be unequipped in the most elementary ways. A simple map would have saved his life. Years after Chris's death, his former neighbor at the trailer park described McCandless: "He seemed like a kid who was looking for something. Looking for something, just didn't know what it was."

I don't think Chris McCandless wanted to die in Alaska. But I do believe he was prepared to die. He shouldered a mortal risk which was no stranger to him. It was a risk he understood quite deeply, and the consequence of his death was one that he accepted and even embraced in his final days. Nature was his closest companion in life. And so when it came to him as death, perhaps McCandless had found what he was searching for. Perhaps he had found peace.