Into the Wild

Cover of paperback, depicting the bus in which McCandless stayed.
Author	Jon Krakauer
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Biography
Publisher	Villard
Publication date	1996
Pages	224
ISBN	0-679-42850-x
OCLC Number	35559213
Dewey Decimal	917.9804/5 20
LC Classification	CT9971.M38 K73 1997

Into the Wild is a 1996 non-fiction book written by Jon Krakauer. The book depicts the two-year wilderness trek of Christopher McCandless from 1990 through 1992 and is an expansion of Krakauer's 9,000-word article, "Death of an Innocent", which appeared in the January 1993 issue of Outside.^[1] The book was adapted into a 2007 movie of the same name directed by Sean Penn with Emile Hirsch starring as McCandless.

Background

Chris McCandless grew up in suburban Annandale, Virginia. After graduating in 1990 with high grades from Emory University, McCandless ceased communicating with his family, gave away his savings of approximately $25,000 to Oxfam and began traveling, later abandoning his car.

In April 1992, McCandless hitchhiked to the Stampede Trail in Alaska. There, McCandless headed down the snow-covered trail to begin an odyssey with only 10 pounds of rice, a .22 caliber rifle, several boxes of rifle rounds, a camera, and a small selection of reading material — including a field guide to the region's edible plants, Tana'ina Plantlore. He declined an acquaintance's offer to buy him sturdier clothing and better supplies. After surviving more than 100 days, he died sometime in August and his body was found, in early September, by a group of moose hunters.

Summary

The book begins with the discovery of McCandless's body inside an abandoned bus in Alaska ()^[2][3] and retraces his travels during the two years after college graduation. McCandless shed his real name early in his journey, adopting the moniker "Alexander Supertramp". He spent time in Carthage, South Dakota laboring for months in a grain elevator owned by Wayne Westerberg before impulsively hitchhiking for Alaska. Krakauer interprets McCandless's intensely ascetic personality as possibly influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and perhaps McCandless's favorite writer, Jack London. He explores the similarities between McCandless's experiences and motivations and his own as a young man, recounting in detail Krakauer's own attempt to climb Devils Thumb in Alaska. Krakauer also relates the stories of some other young men who vanished into the wilderness, such as Everett Ruess, an artist and wanderer who went missing in the Utah desert during 1934 at age 20. In addition, he describes at some length the grief and puzzlement of McCandless's parents, sister, and friends, particularly an aged man named Ronald Franz who had befriended McCandless in the Mojave Desert and was very fond of him.

McCandless survived for approximately 112 days in the Alaskan wilderness, foraging for edible roots and berries, shooting an assortment of game—including a moose—and keeping a journal. Although he planned to hike to the coast, the boggy terrain of summer proved too difficult and he decided instead to camp in a derelict bus. In July, he tried to leave, only to find the route blocked by a melted river (tragically unfortunate as there was a hand powered tram just upstream). On July 30, McCandless wrote a journal entry which reads, EXTREMLY WEAK. FAULT OF POT. SEED... ^[4][5] Krakauer hypothesized that McCandless had been eating the roots of Hedysarum alpinum, a historically edible plant commonly known as wild potato (also "Eskimo potato"), which are sweet and nourishing in the spring but later become too tough to eat. When this happened, McCandless may have attempted to eat the seeds instead. Krakauer suggests that the seeds contained a poisonous alkaloid, possibly swainsonine (the toxic chemical in locoweed) or something similar. In addition to neurological symptoms such as weakness and loss of coordination, the poison causes starvation by blocking nutrient metabolism in the body. In the film adaptation by Sean Penn in 2007 it shows Chris confusing two different plants, and he chooses the wrong one.

According to Krakauer, a well-nourished person might consume the seeds and survive because the body can use its stores of glucose and amino acids to rid itself of the poison. Since McCandless lived on a diet of rice, lean meat, and wild plants and had less than 10% body fat when he died, Krakauer theorized he was likely unable to fend off the toxins. However, when the Eskimo potatoes from the area around the bus were later tested in a laboratory of the University of Alaska Fairbanks by Dr. Thomas Clausen, toxins were not found. Krakauer later modified his hypothesis, suggesting that mold of the variety Rhizoctonia leguminicola may have caused McCandless's death. Rhizoctonia leguminicola is known to cause digestion problems in livestock, and may have aided McCandless's impending starvation. The exact cause of the young man's death remains open to question but it appears that he most likely simply starved to death, a theory backed by the fact that McCandless's body weighed an estimated 67 pounds (30 kg) at the time he was found.

Film adaptations

The film adaptation of the same name emphasizes, and in some cases exaggerates, certain aspects of personal relationships that McCandless experienced, including his parents' domestic conflicts and his own interaction with a 16-year-old girl he encountered in his travels. Other interactions portrayed in the film, however, seem very accurate based on Krakauer's research, including the characters of Jan Burres, played by Catherine Keener, and "Ronald Franz" (pseudonym), played by Hal Holbrook. The movie's depiction of McCandless's death differs from the reality of his simply having starved to death due to low caloric intake. Penn shows McCandless confusing the seeds of H. alpinum with those of the toxic H. mackenzii.

McCandless's story is also the subject of a 2007 documentary by Ron Lamothe named The Call of the Wild. In his study of McCandless's death, Lamothe concludes that McCandless starved to death and was not poisoned by eating the seeds of the wild potato.^[6]

A survival show set in Alaska, entitled Out of the Wild, is inspired by the story.

References

External links

• Finding Into the Wild's Magic Bus, How to get there, trail conditions, GPS coordinates and preparation
• Christopher McCandless, Informative website on the story of Christopher McCandless.
• The Road Chose Me, a personal account of hiking into the magic bus, July 2009.
• Magic Bus in Winter, March 2007. YouTube.com.
• Magic Bus in Summer, August 2007. YouTube.com.
• 'Into The Wild - John Krakauer' Mini-Review on Stray Poetry
• Google Earth Community, aerial photo of the Magic Bus, Google Earth Overlay of the region and downloadable KMZ file.