Christopher McCandless

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Christopher McCandless
Chris McCandless in his camp on the Stampede Trail
Born	February 12, 1968 Washington, D.C., USA
Died	August 1992 Stampede Trail, Alaska, USA
Parents	Walt and Billie McCandless

Christopher J. McCandless (February 12, 1968 – August 1992) was an American wanderer who died near Denali National Park after hiking alone into the Alaskan wilderness with little food or equipment. Author Jon Krakauer wrote a book about his life, Into the Wild, in 1996.

1 Childhood and education
2 On the road
3 Death on Stampede Trail
4 Cultural legacy
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Childhood and education

McCandless grew up in Annandale, Virginia. His father, Walt McCandless, worked for NASA as an antennae specialist. His mother, Wilhelmina, or Billie, Johnson was his secretary and later helped Walt establish and run a successful home business.

From early childhood, his teachers noticed that he was unusually strong-willed. As he grew older, he coupled this with an intense idealism and physical endurance. In high school, he served as captain of the cross-country team, where he urged his teammates to treat running as a spiritual exercise in which they were "running against the forces of darkness....all the evil in the world, all the hatred."^[1]

He graduated from W.T. Woodson High School in 1986 and from Emory University in 1990, majoring in history and anthropology. His middle-class background and academic success masked a growing contempt for what he saw as the empty materialism of American society. In his junior year he was offered membership in Phi Beta Kappa but declined on the basis that honors and titles are irrelevant. The works of Jack London, Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau had a strong influence on McCandless, and he dreamed about leaving society for a Thoreau-like period of solitary contemplation.

[edit] On the road

After graduating from Emory in 1990, he gave his $24,000 life savings to the charity Oxfam International and began traveling across the country, using the name "Alexander Supertramp." McCandless made his way through Arizona, California, and South Dakota, where he worked at a grain elevator. His youth, intelligence, and generosity helped him to make numerous friends on the road. McCandless alternated between relatively settled periods, in which he was fairly gregarious and often worked a job, and time spent living with no money and little or no human contact, sometimes foraging successfully for food in the wild. He survived several dangerous trials during these wilderness periods, such as losing his car in a flash flood and canoing alone down remote stretches of river and along the Baja coast. McCandless took pride in surviving with a minimum of gear and funds, and generally made little preparation for his expeditions.

McCandless had dreamed of an "Alaskan Odyssey" for years; he would live off the land, far away from civilization, and keep a journal describing his physical and spiritual progress as he faced the forces of nature. In April 1992 McCandless successfully hitchhiked to Fairbanks, Alaska. He was last seen alive by James Gallien, who gave him a ride from Fairbanks to the Stampede Trail. Gallien was concerned about "Alex", who had little gear and no experience in the Alaskan bush. Gallien tried to convince "Alex" to defer his trip, and even offered to drive him to Anchorage to buy suitable equipment. McCandless refused all assistance except a pair of rubber boots, two tuna melts, and a bag of potato chips.

[edit] Death on Stampede Trail

After hiking the Stampede Trail McCandless found an abandoned bus parked on an overgrown section of the trail near Denali National Park and began his attempt to live off the land. He had carried to the bus a 10 pound bag of rice, a hunting rifle, plenty of ammunition, a book of local plant life, several other books, and some camping equipment. He assumed that he could forage for plant food and hunt game. Despite his inexperience as a hunter, McCandless successfully (and illegally) poached a moose and other game. However, his attempts to preserve the meat failed.

His journal contains entries covering a total of 113 separate days. These entries range from ecstatic to grim with McCandless's changing fortunes. After living successfully in the bush for several months, Chris decided to leave, but found the trail back blocked by the Teklanika River, which had carried a considerably lighter flow in April.

On September 6, 1992, two hikers and a group of moose hunters found this note on the door of the bus: "S.O.S. 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 McCandless. August?" His body was found in his sleeping bag inside the bus. He had been dead for more than two weeks. His official cause of death was starvation. Jon Krakauer believes McCandless died from eating the seeds of the wild potato (Hedysarum alpinum), which McCandless wrote about eating and blamed for his debilitating final illness. Although they are not commonly known to be poisonous, and the root of the plant is edible, there is evidence that the seeds contain an alkaloid which prevents glucose utilization. (Note that this is the theory that Krakauer presents in his book on McCandless, and differs from the earlier theory he related in his article for Outdoors magazine, about a second plant — Hedysarum mackenzii, a wild sweet pea plant — resembling the wild potato and known to be poisonous.)^[1]

[edit] Cultural legacy

McCandless gained a degree of fame after Jon Krakauer wrote a book about his journey, Into the Wild, in 1996. A motion picture based on the book, directed by Sean Penn and starring Emile Hirsch, is scheduled for release in 2007.

By 2002, the abandoned bus on the Stampede Trail where Christopher camped became an adventure tourist destination.^[2]. Ellis Paul wrote "The Ballad of Chris McCandless", a folk song memorializing his journey. Northern Virginia folk band Eddie From Ohio wrote the song "Sahara" (on the album "Actually Not") about McCandless. McCandless's journey also inspired an episode of the TV series Millennium^[3].

Some Alaskans have less positive views of McCandless than those who romanticize his fate. McCandless was unaware that a hand-operated tram crossed the river a quarter mile from the Stampede Trail, while a nearby shelter was stocked with emergency supplies, as described in Krakauer's book. 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 a good map he could have walked out of his predicament ... Essentially, Chris McCandless committed suicide."^[4]

Judith Kleinfeld wrote in an article entitled "McCandless: Hero or dumb jerk?" in the Anchorage Daily News, that "many Alaskans react with rage to [McCandless'] stupidity. You'd have to be a complete idiot, they say, to die of starvation in summer 20 miles off the Parks Highway."^[5]