Christopher J. McCandless, who went by the name Alexander Supertramp, is still one of the most controversial adventurers of our time.
His adventure into the Alaskan tundra and terrible death have made many people think about their own lives and ideals.
Some people consider McCandless as a visionary transcendentalist who had the courage to go against the grain and look for greater significance.
Some people thought he was an idealist whose choices caused his family a lot of pain. Sadly, his search for meaning came to an end with his death in 1992, when he starved to death after being alone for months.
Christopher McCandless was born on February 12, 1968, in Inglewood, California. He grew up in a house that was always in trouble.
In her book The Wild Truth, his sister Carine McCandless spoke about how hard it was for them to grow up. The siblings lived with six half-siblings, and their parents were said to have verbally and physically abused them.
Carine says that their father, Walt McCandless, struggled with alcoholism and was often the cause of the family’s problems. Their mother, Billie McCandless, made the situation worse.
Walt’s job as a NASA rocket scientist often forced the family to move across the country. They finally moved to Virginia and stayed there long enough for Christopher and Carine to finish high school.
Christopher’s love of nature and history was clear from a young age. This was due in part to the family’s trips to the outdoors and his love of reading.
He graduated from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1990 with a degree in anthropology and history.
Carine said that her brother wanted to leave society because they had a hard childhood and he liked books like Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.
Early Travels
McCandless left Virginia in his old Datsun in the summer of 1990, not long after he graduated. He drove across the nation to California.
His automobile was in bad shape, the plates were out of date, and he didn’t have insurance, so the journey was risky.
A flash flood at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada made the car useless before the end of summer.
McCandless took off the license plates, saved what he could, and left the car behind to continue his journey on foot, even though he might have been in trouble with the law.
After that, McCandless went northwest, hitching into the Sierra Nevada mountains. During this time, he broke into a locked cabin to get food, supplies, and money.
During the winter of 1990 and into 1991, he stayed in makeshift camps with other drifters in the Sierra Nevada region, where he had to make do with very little.
After a short time trying to get back in touch with family, McCandless went to Carthage, South Dakota.
He obtained odd jobs, made friends with local farmers, and stayed in transient places, following a pattern of short-term relationships and life on the road.
McCandless set his sights northward in April 1992 since he was bored with his current job. His next stop would be Alaska, the wild, untamed land he had always dreamed of as the best place to escape and the last frontier of his quest.
Into The Wild: Alaska
Christopher McCandless was able to hitchhike an incredible 3,000 miles from Carthage, South Dakota, to Fairbanks, Alaska. He passed via Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, and Yukon in Canada. His ultimate goal was to travel on his biggest trip yet: to Denali National Park.
People who met McCandless said he was distrustful and didn’t trust other people.
He had a big bag and often wouldn’t tell people his real name. People also said he looked dirty and didn’t take care of himself. One person who saw him said he was “generally strange, weird, with a weird energy.”
Jim Gallien, a neighborhood electrician, was the last person to see McCandless alive on April 28, 1992. Gallien drove him from Fairbanks to the start of the Stampede Trail, which is close to Healy, Alaska.
Gallien saw that McCandless didn’t have enough gear, food, or experience when they were driving. McCandless told the man his name was “Alex” and that he was going to go into the wilds of Alaska.
Later, Gallien said he was quite worried that McCandless wouldn’t be able to survive in such harsh terrain.
After trudging along the snowy Stampede Trail, McCandless found an empty bus about 28 miles (45 kilometers) west of Healy.
He used this ancient car, which was hidden in a part of the trail that had grown over near Denali National Park, as a temporary shelter.
Different sources say that McCandless wanted to “head west until [he] hit the Bering Sea,” but the thick Alaskan bush made him go back to the bus.
McCandless lived off the land with 9.9 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of rice and a Remington Nylon 66 rifle with 400 rounds of. 22 caliber bullets, some books (one of which is about plants that can be eaten), basic camping gear, and personal items.
His journal entries and self-portraits show how he tried to find food plants and hunt animals including porcupines, squirrels, ptarmigans, and Canada geese.
He shot a moose on June 9, 1992, but the meat went bad within a few days.
He was so upset by what happened that he wrote in his journal, “I now wish I had never shot the moose.” One of the worst things that has ever happened to me.
McCandless wrote about his existence in the outdoors for 113 days. After more than two months at the bus, he decided to go back to civilization in July.
The Teklanika River, on the other hand, had become a strong barrier because of runoff from the Cantwell Glacier in late summer. The water was now higher and faster than it had been in April, so McCandless had to go back to the bus.
He wrote a frantic S.O.S. note on the bus when he got back to his camp:
Attention Possible Guests. Help! Please help me. I am hurt, close to death, and too feeble to walk out of here. This is not a joke; I am all alone. Please stay to help me in the name of God. I’m out picking berries nearby and will be back tonight. Thanks, Chris McCandless. August?
The Final Entry in the Journal
The last item in McCandless’s journal, which was called “Day 107,” was, “BEAUTIFUL BLUE BERRIES.” There were just slashes in the records from days 108 to 112, and on day 113, there was no entry.
At the conclusion, McCandless took a picture of himself smiling and waving while holding a message that said:
I HAVE BEEN HAPPY IN MY LIFE AND THANK GOD. Goodbye, and may God bless everyone!
A hunter looking for a place to sleep at night found the empty bus on September 6, 1992.
When he walked in, he smelled what he believed was rotten food and found “a lump” in a sleeping bag in the back of the bus.
The hunter called the police, and they came the next day. State troopers found McCandless’s body in the sleeping bag, which was already starting to smell.
In his 1996 book Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer talks about two things that might have led to McCandless’s death. The first is that McCandless was at risk of “rabbit starvation,” which is also known as protein poisoning, because he relied too much on lean meat for food.
Krakauer also thought that McCandless might have been poisoned by a deadly alkaloid called swainsonine, which is found in sweet-vetch seeds, or by a mold that can form on the seeds when he put them in a plastic bag.
A new idea was put forward in 2013. Ronald Hamilton, a retired bookbinder from the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, said that the symptoms McCandless mentioned could be related to the poisoning of Jewish captives in the Vapniarca concentration camp.
He suggested that McCandless died of starvation because he couldn’t get food or hike since his legs were paralyzed by lathyrism.
The Green and White Bus
The green-and-white bus where Christopher McCandless spent his last days became famous as a symbol of his journey.
In 1961, road workers left the 1946 International Harvester on the Stampede Trail, where it became known as “The Magic Bus.”
Walt McCandless, McCandless’s father, put a memorial plaque inside the car years later to remember his son.
Over time, the bus became a place for adventurers and hikers to go because it stood for McCandless’s beliefs or his sad narrative.
People from all over the world traveled to the lonely area, and many of them camped there to think about McCandless’s adventure.
There are several different types of media that have made McCandless’s life famous. Jon Krakauer’s nonfiction book Into the Wild tells the tale of McCandless’s life, including his reasons for going into the wild, his problems, and his death.
The book was then made into a feature picture that got a lot of praise, which helped McCandless become even more famous.
(Photo credit: Christopher McCandless Memorial Foundation / Family of Christopher McCandless / Wikimedia Commons).
No Comments