Into the Wild

Into the Wild Plot Summary

Introduction

In April 1992, a young man walked alone into the Alaskan wilderness with little more than a rifle, a bag of rice, and a burning desire to test himself against the raw forces of nature. Four months later, hunters found his emaciated body inside an abandoned bus that had served as his final shelter. Christopher McCandless was only 24 years old when he died, but his story would captivate the imagination of millions and spark fierce debates about wilderness, risk, and the search for meaning in modern life. McCandless was no ordinary wanderer. A gifted student from a privileged background, he donated his $24,000 savings to charity after graduating from Emory University, abandoned his car, burned his remaining cash, and set out to forge a new identity as "Alexander Supertramp." His journey across America and his final Alaska expedition revealed a complex young man driven by literary ideals, a complicated family history, and an uncompromising vision of authentic living. Whether viewed as a courageous idealist or a reckless fool, McCandless's story offers profound insights into the perilous attraction of wilderness, the relationship between fathers and sons, and the sometimes fatal consequences of pursuing absolute freedom in an unforgiving world.

Chapter 1: The Quest for Freedom: Leaving Society Behind

The roots of Chris McCandless's fateful journey began long before he stepped onto the Stampede Trail in Alaska. Raised in an affluent suburb of Washington D.C., Chris was the son of Walt McCandless, a respected NASA engineer, and Billie McCandless. From the outside, his upbringing appeared privileged and stable. Yet beneath this veneer of middle-class security, tensions simmered. Chris was an intense, idealistic young man who increasingly found himself at odds with what he perceived as the materialism and moral compromises of contemporary American society. At Emory University, where he maintained a stellar academic record, McCandless became deeply influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, and Jack London. These authors' critiques of materialistic society and celebrations of self-reliant living in nature resonated powerfully with him. While other students planned careers and networked, Chris filled his journals with passionate reflections on the corrupting influence of wealth and the importance of living deliberately. His college friends noticed his growing distance from conventional ambitions. The catalyst for his dramatic break with society came shortly after his graduation in 1990. Without telling anyone of his plans, McCandless donated his remaining college fund to OXFAM America, a charity dedicated to fighting hunger. He then abandoned his yellow Datsun in the Arizona desert after a flash flood stalled it, burned his remaining cash, and cut all ties with his family. This wasn't merely youthful rebellion – it was a deliberate severing of connections to what he viewed as a contaminated world of material excess and emotional dishonesty. For the next two years, McCandless drifted across the American West, working odd jobs, camping in marginal places, and forming brief but intense friendships with the people he met along the way. He paddled a canoe down the Colorado River into Mexico. He hitchhiked through the Pacific Northwest. He lived among the homeless and the working poor. Throughout these wanderings, he maintained a strict asceticism, traveling with minimal possessions and often deliberately placing himself in challenging situations. What distinguished McCandless from other young drifters was his intellectual framework for these experiences. This wasn't aimless wandering but a deliberate experiment in living according to ideals he had synthesized from his literary heroes. In a letter to a friend, he wrote that there was "no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun." He signed his letters and journal entries as "Alexander Supertramp," creating a new identity unencumbered by the expectations and compromises of his former life. By early 1992, McCandless had set his sights on the ultimate test: surviving alone in the Alaskan wilderness. To those who tried to dissuade him, including a driver who gave him his final ride to the trailhead, he confidently proclaimed his readiness. "I won't run into anything I can't deal with on my own," he insisted. With minimal supplies and maximal determination, he walked into the wild to pursue what he called "the climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution."

Chapter 2: Alexander Supertramp: Creating a New Identity

The transformation from Christopher McCandless to Alexander Supertramp didn't happen overnight. It was a deliberate reinvention, carefully crafted as Chris sought to distance himself from his former identity. The name itself was significant – "Alexander" suggesting the great explorer and conqueror, while "Supertramp" embraced the very condition most people fear: homelessness and rootlessness. But for McCandless, this new persona wasn't about descent but transcendence. Through Alexander Supertramp, he could become the literary wanderer-philosopher he aspired to be. This new identity came with new principles. McCandless developed a personal ethos that rejected materialism, embraced physical hardship, and sought authentic connections outside conventional social structures. He traveled with astonishingly few possessions – often just a rifle, a camera, a few books, and basic camping supplies. When offered money or gifts, he frequently declined them or reciprocated with disproportionate generosity. Wayne Westerberg, who employed McCandless at a grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota, remembered him as extraordinarily hardworking yet completely detached from financial ambition: "He was the hardest worker I've ever seen. Didn't matter what it was... And he never quit in the middle of something." The paradox of Alexander Supertramp was that while McCandless sought solitude and self-reliance, he formed meaningful connections with people along his journey. Jan Burres, a traveling bookseller who befriended him, recalled, "He had a good time when he was around people, a real good time." Yet these relationships were always temporary by design. McCandless would share his philosophy, work diligently, demonstrate care and generosity, but inevitably move on before attachments became too deep or demands too binding. His new identity required constant movement – physical and emotional. Books played a crucial role in shaping Alexander Supertramp. In his backpack, McCandless carried works by Tolstoy, London, and Thoreau, heavily annotating their pages and drawing inspiration for his own adventure. These weren't just reading material; they provided the philosophical foundation for his new identity. When Ronald Franz, an 80-year-old man who had grown attached to McCandless, asked to adopt him as a grandson, Chris deflected the request, later writing to urge the elderly man to "get out of Salton City and hit the road" to find his own adventures. Physical transformation accompanied the psychological one. Photographs from his journey show McCandless becoming progressively leaner, his face weathered by exposure, his appearance increasingly austere. In a symbolic gesture during his Alaska sojourn, he photographed himself holding his California driver's license and social security card before burning them. "I'm now Alexander Supertramp," he wrote, "Returning to western civilization in my next life." The irony, of course, was that even as he rejected civilization, his documentary impulse – keeping journals, taking self-portraits, writing letters – revealed a desire to have his journey witnessed and understood. Perhaps most tellingly, Alexander Supertramp was defined by what he rejected. He scorned careers, material wealth, governmental authority, and social conventions. His identity was constructed in opposition to what he saw as the empty materialism and moral compromises of mainstream society. In one of his last communications before entering the Alaskan wilderness, he wrote to a friend: "I now walk into the wild... No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild." In that declaration was both the culmination of his identity transformation and the foreshadowing of its tragic conclusion.

Chapter 3: Wilderness Adventures: Testing His Limits

McCandless's wilderness adventures began long before his fatal Alaska expedition. After abandoning his car in the Mojave Desert, he hitchhiked, hopped freight trains, and paddled a canoe down the Colorado River into Mexico. These journeys weren't random wanderings but deliberate tests of his resourcefulness and courage. When stranded by flash floods or threatened by rapids, he viewed these dangers not as setbacks but as essential challenges that gave his existence meaning and clarity. The wilderness became McCandless's classroom, where he learned primitive skills through trial and error. On the shores of the Gulf of California, he spent several weeks subsisting on five pounds of rice and fish caught with a crude rod and line. This experience gave him confidence that he could survive in Alaska with similarly minimal provisions. Though he frequently misjudged risks, he demonstrated remarkable adaptability. When his canoe was nearly swept out to sea by powerful currents in Mexico, he managed to beach the craft on a jetty, narrowly avoiding disaster. Rather than deterring him, such close calls only intensified his belief in his ability to overcome nature's challenges. His relationship with wild animals revealed another dimension of his wilderness philosophy. McCandless was deeply conflicted about killing for sustenance. When he finally shot a moose in Alaska, his journal reflects profound anguish over his failure to properly preserve the meat: "I now wish I had never shot the moose. One of the greatest tragedies of my life." He meticulously documented his hunting successes and failures, viewing them not merely as practical matters but as moral tests. This ethical dimension distinguished him from typical outdoorsmen; for McCandless, wilderness survival was inseparable from spiritual purification. The people McCandless met during his travels often tried to prepare him for Alaska's unique dangers. Jim Gallien, who gave him his final ride to the Stampede Trail, warned him about the challenges of the northern wilderness and tried to convince him to accept better equipment. McCandless listened politely but remained convinced of his readiness. This pattern repeated throughout his journey – experienced outdoorsmen recognized his determination but worried about his preparations. McCandless, however, was pursuing something beyond mere survival; he sought a pure confrontation with wilderness on what he considered its own terms. As his final Alaskan adventure progressed, McCandless established a camp in an abandoned bus along the Stampede Trail. His journal during this period alternates between triumph and struggle. "DAY 100! MADE IT!" he wrote jubilantly, only to add, "BUT IN WEAKEST CONDITION OF LIFE. DEATH LOOMS AS SERIOUS THREAT." Even as his body weakened from insufficient nutrition, his spirit remained engaged with the wilderness around him. He continued photographing animals, collecting edible plants, and documenting his experiences with an attentiveness that reveals genuine joy in his surroundings despite his deteriorating physical condition. What made McCandless's wilderness adventures distinctive was not their technical difficulty – many have survived longer in more challenging conditions – but the philosophical framework he brought to them. He viewed nature not merely as an environment to be mastered but as a testing ground for his ideals of simplicity, self-reliance, and authenticity. In his journal entry after reaching the abandoned bus, he wrote, "Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road... No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild." In this framing, his journey became not just a physical expedition but an existential quest to discover what remains when all societal constraints are stripped away.

Chapter 4: Relationships Along the Way: Impact on Others

Though McCandless deliberately severed ties with his family, his journey was far from solitary. The people he encountered along his route formed a kind of surrogate family, each affected by the intense, fleeting connections he formed with them. Wayne Westerberg, who employed McCandless at his grain elevator in Carthage, South Dakota, became perhaps his closest friend on the road. "There was something fascinating about him," Westerberg recalled. Unlike many drifters, McCandless was well-spoken, hardworking, and intellectually engaging. He spent evenings discussing books and ideas, surprising those who expected a typical hitchhiker. To Westerberg's crew, he became "Alex," a reliable worker and philosophical companion who promised to return after his Alaskan adventure. Women were particularly drawn to McCandless's intensity and idealism. Jan Burres, a middle-aged itinerant who met him in the Pacific Northwest, developed an almost maternal relationship with him. "He was kind of like my son," she said, noting how she worried about his safety and tried to provide him with warmer clothing, which he often resisted accepting. Several young women developed crushes on him, attracted to his unusual combination of vulnerability and self-assurance. Yet McCandless appeared to maintain a deliberate distance from romantic entanglements, perhaps viewing them as distractions from his quest for meaning. Perhaps the most poignant relationship was with Ronald Franz, an 80-year-old retired Army veteran living alone in the desert near Salton City, California. Franz had lost his wife and only son to a drunk driver decades earlier, and his encounter with McCandless awakened long-dormant paternal feelings. He taught Chris leatherworking, drove him to his destinations, and eventually asked if he could adopt him as a grandson. McCandless deflected the request but stayed in touch through letters. In his final communication to Franz, he urged the elderly man to "get out of Salton City and hit the road" to find his own adventures – advice that Franz, remarkably, attempted to follow despite his advanced age. McCandless's charisma created a complex legacy of both admiration and guilt among those who knew him. Jim Gallien, who gave him his final ride to the Stampede Trail, later expressed regret that he hadn't been more forceful in dissuading the young man or better equipping him. "I wish I'd taken his driver's license and told him I'd mail it back to him after he came out of the woods," he said. Similarly, Ronald Franz initially responded to news of McCandless's death by renouncing God, feeling betrayed that his prayers for the young man's safety had gone unanswered. What made these relationships particularly striking was their asymmetry. Those who met McCandless often found themselves profoundly moved by the encounter, while he maintained an emotional independence that allowed him to walk away. He was generous with his attention and insights but guarded about his deeper motivations and family history. Many who met him sensed a wound behind his intensity but couldn't fully access it. As Westerberg observed, "Alex was into challenges in a big way," and these challenges extended to the emotional realm, where he tested his ability to connect deeply with others while maintaining the freedom to depart. The true paradox of McCandless's journey was that while he articulated a philosophy of radical self-reliance, he constantly relied on the kindness and resources of those he met. His independence was, in many ways, enabled by the very social structures he criticized. Yet the authenticity of his quest and the intensity of his engagement left most of those he encountered feeling enriched rather than exploited by the experience, creating a network of people who would later become both the narrators and the custodians of his story.

Chapter 5: The Alaskan Odyssey: Final Challenge

By April 1992, McCandless had positioned Alaska as the ultimate testing ground for his philosophical experiment in simple living. He referred to it as his "great Alaskan odyssey" in letters to friends, framing it not as a casual adventure but as the culminating challenge of his two-year journey. After getting a ride from Jim Gallien to the head of the Stampede Trail on April 28, McCandless walked into the wilderness carrying minimal supplies: a 10-pound bag of rice, a rifle, a camera, some ammunition, and a few books. His preparation was deliberate in its sparseness – he wanted to test whether he could truly live off the land. The abandoned Fairbanks bus #142, which became his shelter, stood about 20 miles into the wilderness. McCandless reached it after a two-day hike through lingering spring snow. When he discovered this unexpected sanctuary, he wrote triumphantly in his journal, "Magic Bus Day." The rusting vehicle, left decades earlier as a backcountry shelter for hunters and trappers, offered protection from the elements and became his home base. Inside its walls, he established a simple routine – reading, writing in his journal, and venturing out to forage and hunt for food. The early weeks of his Alaskan sojourn mixed hardship with exhilaration. His journal entries alternate between reports of "weakness" and "disaster" during food shortages and ebullient celebrations when hunting proved successful. When he managed to climb a small mountain near the bus, he recorded simply, "CLIMB MOUNTAIN!" – the exclamation point revealing his joy. He photographed wildlife, read his beloved books, and maintained detailed records of his daily activities. The extended daylight of the Arctic summer provided ample time for exploration, and initially, his experiment seemed to be succeeding. By June, however, the precariousness of his situation began to emerge. His greatest triumph and subsequent tragedy came when he shot a moose – a potentially abundant food source. "I now wish I had never shot the moose. One of the greatest tragedies of my life," he wrote after failing to properly preserve the meat in the warm summer weather. This failure haunted him deeply, not merely as a practical setback but as a moral failing. Unlike many hunters who might have shrugged off such an error, McCandless was devastated by the waste of animal life, revealing the ethical framework that guided his wilderness experiment. The turning point came in early July when McCandless decided to hike out. After nearly three months in the wild, he had gained confidence and accumulated significant experiences. His photos show a thin but seemingly satisfied young man ready to return to civilization with stories to tell. But when he reached the Teklanika River, which he had easily crossed in April when it was frozen, he found it transformed into a raging torrent from summer glacial melt. Unable to cross, he retreated to the bus, writing in his journal, "Disaster... Rained in. River look impossible. Lonely, scared." This moment of vulnerability stands in stark contrast to his earlier bravado. What followed was a slow descent into starvation, possibly accelerated by toxic wild potato seeds that prevented his body from metabolizing what little food he could find. By late July, his journal entries became sparse: "Extremely weak. Fault of pot[ato] seed... Much trouble just to stand up. Starving. Great jeopardy." His final substantive entry on August 12 reads simply, "Beautiful blueberries." Soon after, he took a final self-portrait holding a farewell note that begins, "I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all!" The photo shows an emaciated young man, but his expression contains a strange serenity rather than despair. He died alone in his sleeping bag inside the bus, his body discovered by moose hunters four weeks later. The great irony of McCandless's Alaska adventure was that salvation lay tantalizingly close – a Park Service cabin stocked with emergency supplies stood just six miles away, and a detailed map would have shown him other escape routes across the river. But without such information, trapped by circumstances he couldn't overcome with mere determination, the wilderness experiment reached its tragic conclusion. His final journey revealed both the power and the limitation of his philosophical approach to nature – inspiring in its courage but ultimately unforgiving of the margins of error he had deliberately made so thin.

Chapter 6: Tragedy in the Wild: Understanding His End

The circumstances of McCandless's death sparked immediate controversy that continues decades later. When his emaciated body was discovered in September 1992, weighing only 67 pounds, the immediate response from many Alaskans was scorn. Local park rangers, hunters, and wilderness guides saw him as woefully unprepared – lacking proper maps, adequate food supplies, and the knowledge needed to survive in the demanding northern wilderness. One Alaskan resident wrote, "His ignorance, which could have been cured by a USGS quadrant and a Boy Scout manual, is what killed him." This perspective framed McCandless as an arrogant outsider who had fatally underestimated the land. The exact cause of McCandless's death remained uncertain for years. Initial autopsy results suggested simple starvation, but his journal's reference to "potato seeds" eventually led to a more complex understanding. Evidence suggests he may have been poisoned by alkaloids in wild potato seed pods (Hedysarum alpinum) that prevented his body from metabolizing nutrients, accelerating his starvation even when food was available. This finding complicates the narrative of mere incompetence – McCandless had successfully identified edible plants for months before consuming the toxic seeds, a mistake even experienced botanists might have made given the limited information in his plant guide. His final days reveal a young man fully aware of his dire situation. By early August, McCandless was too weak to hunt or forage effectively. He posted an S.O.S. note on the bus door: "I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here... in the name of God, please remain to save me." Yet even in extremity, he maintained his journal and documented his experience. His last photograph shows an emaciated but strangely peaceful young man holding a farewell note. There's no evidence he attempted suicide or surrendered to despair – instead, he faced his end with a stoic acceptance that aligned with his philosophical outlook. What makes McCandless's death particularly haunting is how close he came to survival. Had he possessed a detailed topographic map, he would have known about a hand-operated tram crossing the Teklanika River just a half-mile downstream from his failed crossing point. Had he waited until late August, the river likely would have subsided enough for safe passage. His mistakes were real but small – the narrow margin between life and death highlighting the unforgiving nature of wilderness rather than confirming his recklessness. As one wilderness guide noted, "He figured out how to live in the country; he just didn't figure out how to get out." For his family, the tragedy was compounded by the deliberate distance Chris had maintained. They hadn't heard from him in over two years and learned of his identity only after weeks of uncertainty following the discovery of his body. His mother Billie later reflected, "The fact that Chris is gone is a sharp hurt I feel every single day... Some days are better than others, but it's going to be hard every day for the rest of my life." His sister Carine, who had been closest to him, refused to accept characterizations of her brother as suicidal or deliberately self-destructive, insisting instead that he simply "had made a few mistakes." Beyond the physical circumstances of his death lies the more profound question of what McCandless was seeking in his solitary wilderness sojourn. One of his final acts was underlining a passage in Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago": "And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness..." Next to this, he wrote, "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED." This poignant annotation suggests that perhaps, in his final days, McCandless was reconsidering the radical individualism that had driven his journey, recognizing a fundamental human need for connection that transcends even the most determined quest for self-reliance.

Chapter 7: Legacy and Lessons: What His Story Teaches Us

Nearly three decades after his death, Chris McCandless's story continues to polarize. To his detractors, he represents dangerous naiveté – a cautionary tale about the fatal consequences of romanticizing wilderness without respecting its realities. To his admirers, he embodies a courageous rejection of materialism and conformity, someone who lived deliberately according to his convictions, however imperfectly. This divided response reflects something essential about his story: it functions as a kind of cultural Rorschach test, revealing our own values and assumptions about risk, freedom, and the place of wilderness in modern life. McCandless's legacy lives most powerfully through those who knew him. Wayne Westerberg still speaks of him with affection and regret. Ronald Franz, inspired by his young friend, briefly attempted his own wandering life before age forced him to settle down again. His parents, Walt and Billie, eventually made a pilgrimage to the bus where their son died, leaving a memorial plaque and emergency supplies for future travelers. While they continue to grieve their loss, they've come to a deeper understanding of what drove their son's quest. As Billie observed during their visit to the bus, "He must have been very brave and very strong, at the end, not to do himself in." The physical site of McCandless's death became itself a contentious part of his legacy. For years, the "Magic Bus" on the Stampede Trail attracted hundreds of pilgrims annually, some woefully unprepared for the challenging terrain. Between 2009 and 2020, numerous rescue operations were required for visitors attempting to reach the site, and two people drowned trying to cross the same river that trapped McCandless. These incidents prompted Alaskan authorities to remove the bus by helicopter in June 2020, ending its role as an improvised shrine but not diminishing its symbolic power in the imagination of those drawn to McCandless's story. Perhaps the most valuable lesson from McCandless's journey concerns the tension between self-reliance and interdependence. While he sought radical independence, his travels were sustained by the kindness of strangers who fed him, employed him, and transported him. His final journal entries suggest a growing recognition that "happiness is only real when shared." This insight doesn't invalidate his quest for authenticity but rather completes it, acknowledging that meaningful freedom exists not in isolation from human connection but in choosing the terms of that connection consciously and honestly. McCandless's story also illuminates our complicated relationship with wilderness in the modern era. As wilderness has increasingly become a recreational space rather than a place of subsistence or peril, we risk approaching it with dangerous romanticism. Yet McCandless's genuine reverence for nature's transformative power reminds us of something essential that can be lost in our air-conditioned, digitally mediated lives – the clarifying effect of direct encounter with natural forces beyond our control. His fatal journey asks us to consider what we gain and lose in our increasing insulation from natural rhythms and challenges. In the end, Chris McCandless remains an ambiguous figure – neither pure hero nor mere fool, but a complex young man whose brief, intense life continues to resonate. His sister Carine perhaps summarized his legacy best: "He was looking for more adventure and freedom than today's society gives people." Whether we see wisdom or recklessness in his choices, his unwavering commitment to living according to his deepest values challenges us to examine the compromises and contradictions in our own lives, and to ask ourselves whether we too might need a journey – literal or metaphorical – into the wild.

Summary

Chris McCandless's life and death embody a timeless tension between freedom and belonging, risk and security, idealism and practicality. His journey into the Alaskan wilderness represents something more profound than a reckless adventure – it was a deliberate experiment in living according to principles he had distilled from literature, philosophy, and his own experience of modern American life. Though his physical journey ended in tragedy, his spiritual quest resonates because it confronts questions that many feel but few act upon: How much comfort and security are we willing to sacrifice for authenticity? What obligations do we owe to society versus to our own deepest convictions? Is it possible to escape the compromises of contemporary life without creating new, perhaps more dangerous ones? The most valuable insight from McCandless's story may be that freedom and connection exist not in opposition but in delicate balance. His final annotation – "HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED" – suggests a hard-won wisdom emerging from his solitary ordeal. For those inspired by his courage and dismayed by his fate, McCandless offers neither a model to emulate nor a cautionary tale to dismiss, but rather an invitation to examine our own lives with similar intensity and honesty. His legacy challenges us to question the unexamined assumptions that guide our choices, to consider what truly constitutes a life well-lived, and to approach both wilderness and human relationships with appropriate reverence for their power to transform and sustain us.

About Author

Loading...

Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer is an American writer and mountaineer, well-known for outdoor and mountain-climbing writing.https://www.facebook.com/jonkrakauer

Read more

Related Books by Jon Krakauer

Loading...

Under the Banner of Heaven

Jon Krakauer

A Story of Violent Faith

★★★★☆4.0