HUIS HORTENSE: INTO THE WILD CHRIS MCCANDLESS

Christopher Johnson (Chris) McCandless alias (Alexander (Alex) Supertramp) (El Segundo, 12 februari 1968 – Stampede Trail (Healy), ca. 18 augustus 1992) was een Amerikaans avonturier. Hij overleed in de buurt van het Denali National Park in Alaska tijdens een trektocht in het gebied. Schrijver Jon Krakauer schreef een boek over zijn leven dat in 1996 verscheen onder de titel Into the Wild. Het werd in 2007 verfilmd door Sean Penn onder dezelfde titel (Into the Wild), met Emile Hirsch in de hoofdrol.

Chris McCandless werd geboren als buitenechtelijk kind van NASA-radarspecialist Walt McCandless en diens secretaresse Wilhelmina Johnson. Walt McCandless was formeel nog getrouwd met zijn eerste vrouw met wie hij zes kinderen kreeg. McCandless en Johnson kregen nog een tweede kind, een meisje Carine genoemd. Vervolgens scheidde Walt McCandless van zijn eerste vrouw en trad hij met Johnson in het huwelijk. Het paar richtte een adviesbureau op en leidde het leven van de Amerikaanse hogere middenklasse. Chris McCandless groeide op in Annandale (Virginia). Tijdens zijn middelbareschooltijd verdiende hij geld met een fotokopieerservice en het rondbrengen van pizza's. Tijdens discussies viel hij op door zijn compromisloze socialistische standpunten, hoewel hij anderzijds een aanhanger van Ronald Reagan was. Na de middelbare school wilde hij wapens naar Zuid-Afrika smokkelen om de apartheid te bestrijden.

McCandless slaagde in 1986 voor de middelbare school en studeerde in 1990 aan Emory University af in geschiedenis en culturele antropologie. Hoewel ogenschijnlijk aangepast aan het leven van zijn ouders, stond het lege materialisme van de Amerikaanse middenklasse hem tegen. De werken van Jack London, Leo Tolstoj en Henry David Thoreau hadden veel invloed op hem. Hij droomde van een Thoreau-achtig bestaan en werd na het lezen van Walden gefascineerd door Alaska. Na te zijn afgestudeerd gaf hij al zijn spaargeld (25 duizend dollar, ongeveer 18000 euro) aan Oxfam International, verbrak het contact met zijn ouders en zijn zus en begon door de Verenigde Staten te reizen onder de zelfgekozen naam "Alexander Supertramp" (Eng. "tramp" betekent "zwerver"). Hij begon zijn tocht met zijn geliefde Datsun B-210, een auto uit 1982, maar moest deze op 6 juli 1990 achterlaten toen Detrital Walsh, een rivier in Arizona, plotseling buiten zijn oevers trad. Ten slotte vond Bud Walsh, een opzichter van de National Park service, in oktober 1990 McCandless' auto aan de linkeroever van Lake Mead. McCandless bereisde Arizona, Californië en South Dakota, waar hij bij een graanelevator werkte. Perioden waarin hij een baantje had wisselde hij af met een zwerversbestaan zonder geld en met weinig contact met andere mensen. Ook zou hij volgens dagboekaantekeningen in een kano de Coloradorivier zijn afgezakt tot de Baja California.

McCandless droomde al jaren over een tocht in de wildernis van Alaska, waar hij in zijn eigen voedsel wilde kunnen voorzien. In april 1992 liftte hij via Canada naar Fairbanks en van daar naar het dorp Healy. Jim Gallien gaf hem een lift naar de Stampede Trail. Gallien was bezorgd over "Alex" die weinig uitrusting bij zich had en geen ervaring had met overleven in de wildernis van Alaska. Hij probeerde McCandless van zijn tocht te laten afzien, of tenminste met hem naar Anchorage te reizen om daar een behoorlijke uitrusting te kopen, maar McCandless wilde hier niets van weten. Hij nam alleen een paar rubberlaarzen van Gallien aan en wat voedsel, en begon aan zijn trektocht over de Stampede Trail.

Dit pad was in de jaren dertig aangelegd door de mijnbouwer Earl Pilgrim en leidde naar diens antimoonconcessie, op 60 kilometer van Healy. In 1961 werd het pad gedeeltelijk opgewaardeerd tot weg. Het bedrijf dat de werkzaamheden uitvoerde kocht drie oude International Harvester-stadsbussen uit Fairbanks en bracht die naar de Stampede Trail waar ze dienden als onderkomen voor de wegwerkers. Toen de werkzaamheden werden gestaakt, werden twee van de bussen mee teruggenomen. De derde bleef achter en werd door jagers wel als schuilhut gebruikt.

Na de Teklanikarivier te zijn overgestoken, stuitte McCandless op deze bus, op een overgroeid stuk van de Stampede Trail, ruim 30 kilometer van Healy. Hij vestigde er op 28 april zijn bivak in en leefde van rijst die hij had meegebracht, klein wild dat hij schoot en eetbare planten. Zijn dagelijks menu was onvoldoende om op gewicht te blijven, en in juli besloot hij terug te keren naar de bewoonde wereld. Hij vond zijn terugweg echter versperd door de Teklanika, die dankzij een toevloed van smeltwater veel hoger stond dan toen hij de rivier in april was overgestoken en inmiddels in een woest kolkende stroom was veranderd. Hij zag geen andere uitweg en keerde terug naar de bus. McCandless leefde in totaal zo'n 113 dagen in de bus. Omdat hij te zwak was, schreef McCandless een SOS-bericht voor iedereen die toevallig voorbij de bus zou komen. Het volledige echte bericht luidt als volgt:

Attention Possible Visitors. S.O.S. I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out. 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?

Op 6 september zouden Ken Thompson, Gordon Samuel en Ferdie Swanson elkaar bij de bus ontmoeten om op elandenjacht te gaan. Bij de bus troffen ze een jong stel aan dat, gealarmeerd door de stank, de bus tot op enkele meters was genaderd. Gordon Samuel wierp een blik door een gebroken ruit van de bus en zag een slaapzak waar het hoofd van McCandless uit stak.

Enkele weken eerder was McCandless op 24-jarige leeftijd overleden, vermoedelijk op 18 augustus of kort daarna. Zijn stoffelijk overschot, dat nog maar 30 kilo woog, werd naar Anchorage overgebracht, alwaar het werd onderworpen aan autopsie. De lijkschouwer kwam tot de conclusie dat McCandless was overleden door voedselgebrek. Het stoffelijk overschot werd op 20 september 1992 gecremeerd en de overblijfselen werden aan de familie overgedragen.

Boeken die McCandless heeft gelezen

The call of the wild van Jack London
Taras Bulba van Nikolaj Gogol
Walden van Henry David Thoreau
Tanaina Plantlore van Priscilla Russel Kari
Family happiness van Leo Tolstoj
Education of a wandering man van Louis L'Amour
War and peace van Leo Tolstoj
White Fang van Jack London

"Ik wilde beweging, geen rustig leven. Ik wilde opwinding en gevaar en de mogelijkheid om mij op te offeren voor mijn liefde. Ik voelde in mijzelf een overmaat aan energie, die geen uitlaat vond in ons kalme bestaan."
— Onderstreepte passage in het boek van Leo Tolstoj (Family happiness) die bij McCandless' stoffelijk overschot werden gevonden.Schrijver Jon Krakauer schreef een boek^[1] op basis van het dagboek van Chris McCandless, dat een periode van 113 dagen beslaat. Krakauer hing in zijn boek de hypothese aan dat het eten van giftige planten McCandless noodlottig was geworden, maar door de lijkschouwer werd hier geen enkel bewijs voor gevonden. In latere edities van zijn boek opperde Krakauer dat McCandless giftige zwammen heeft binnengekregen die zouden hebben gegroeid op de zaden die McCandless at. Ook hiervoor bestaat echter geen bewijs. In 2013 opperde Krakauer dat McCandless mogelijk leed aan lathyrisme opgelopen door het eten van enorme hoeveelheden zaden van Hedysarum alpinum. Vooral zeer actieve jonge mannen zouden daardoor snel verzwakken.^[2]

Dankzij het boek is de bus een soort toeristenattractie geworden. De plaatselijke bevolking moet hier weinig van hebben en beschouwt McCandless voornamelijk als een apart figuur, want als hij met een behoorlijke kaart van het gebied op stap was gegaan, had hij kunnen zien dat hij de Teklanika zes mijl verderop had kunnen oversteken via een primitieve kabelbaan.

Ook Carine McCandless, de volle zus van Chris McCandless, schreef een boek over hem: The Wild Truth (november 2014). In het boek verklaart zij de extreme avontuurszin van haar broer als een vlucht voor hun beide ouders. Hun jeugd was ongelukkig door huiselijk geweld, vooral door de drankzuchtige en dominante vader

In 2007 kwam een film uit over het leven van McCandless. De film, gebaseerd op het boek van Krakauer, werd geregisseerd door Sean Penn, die tien jaar met het idee had rondgelopen. De hoofdrol wordt gespeeld door Emile Hirsch als McCandless.

Twenty-one years ago this month, on September 6, 1992, the decomposed body of Christopher McCandless was discovered by moose hunters just outside the northern boundary of Denali National Park. He had died inside a rusting bus that served as a makeshift shelter for trappers, dog mushers, and other backcountry visitors. Taped to the door was a note scrawled on a page torn from a novel by Nikolai Gogol:

ATTENTION POSSIBLE VISITORS.
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 ?

From a cryptic diary found among his possessions, it appeared that McCandless had been dead for nineteen days. A driver’s license issued eight months before he perished indicated that he was twenty-four years old and weighed a hundred and forty pounds. After his body was flown out of the wilderness, an autopsy determined that it weighed sixty-seven pounds and lacked discernible subcutaneous fat. The probable cause of death, according to the coroner’s report, was starvation.

In “Into the Wild,” the book I wrote about McCandless’s brief, confounding life, I came to a different conclusion. I speculated that he had inadvertently poisoned himself by eating seeds from a plant commonly called wild potato, known to botanists as Hedysarum alpinum. According to my hypothesis, a toxic alkaloid in the seeds weakened McCandless to such a degree that it became impossible for him to hike out to the highway or hunt effectively, leading to starvation. Because Hedysarum alpinum is described as a nontoxic species in both the scientific literature and in popular books about edible plants, my conjecture was met with no small amount of derision, especially in Alaska.

I’ve received thousands of letters from people who admire McCandless for his rejection of conformity and materialism in order to discover what was authentic and what was not, to test himself, to experience the raw throb of life without a safety net. But I’ve also received plenty of mail from people who think he was an idiot who came to grief because he was arrogant, woefully unprepared, mentally unbalanced, and possibly suicidal. Most of these detractors believe my book glorifies a senseless death. As the columnist Craig Medred wrote in the Anchorage Daily News in 2007,

“Into the Wild” is a misrepresentation, a sham, a fraud. There, I’ve finally said what somebody has needed to say for a long time …. Krakauer took a poor misfortunate prone to paranoia, someone who left a note talking about his desire to kill the “false being within,” someone who managed to starve to death in a deserted bus not far off the George Parks Highway, and made the guy into a celebrity. Why the author did that should be obvious. He wanted to write a story that would sell.

The debate over why McCandless perished, and the related question of whether he is worthy of admiration, has been smoldering, and occasionally flaring, for more than two decades now. But last December, a writer named Ronald Hamilton posted a paper on the Internet that brings fascinating new facts to the discussion. Hamilton, it turns out, has discovered hitherto unknown evidence that appears to close the book on the cause of McCandless’s death.

To appreciate the brilliance of Hamilton’s investigative work, some backstory is helpful. The diary and photographsRECOVERED with McCandless’s body indicated that, beginning on June 24, 1992, the roots of the Hedysarum alpinumplant became a staple of his daily diet. On July 14th, he started harvesting and eating Hedysarum alpinum seeds as well. One of his photos depicts a one-gallon Ziploc bag stuffed with these seeds. When I visited the bus in July, 1993, wild-potato plants were growing everywhere I looked in the surrounding taiga. I filled a one-gallon bag with more than a pound of seeds in less than thirty minutes.

On July 30th, McCandless wrote in his journal, “EXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT[ATO] SEED. MUCH TROUBLE JUST TO STAND UP. STARVING. GREAT JEOPARDY.” Before this entry, there was nothing in the journal to suggest that he was in dire straits, although his photos show he’d grown alarmingly gaunt. After subsisting for three months on a marginal diet of squirrels, porcupines, small birds, mushrooms, roots, and berries, he’d run up a huge caloric deficit and was teetering on the brink. By adding potato seeds to the menu, he apparently made the mistake that took him down. After July 30th, his physical condition went to hell, and three weeks later he was dead.

When McCandless’s body was found in the Alaskan bush, Outside magazine asked me to write about the puzzling circumstances of his demise. Working on a tight deadline, I researched and wrote an eighty-four-hundred-word piece, published in January, 1993. Because the wild potato was universally believed to be safe to eat, in this article I speculated that McCandless had mistakenly consumed the seeds of the wild sweet pea, Hedysarum mackenzii—a plant thought to be toxic, and which is hard to distinguish from Hedysarum alpinum. I attributed his death to this blunder.

As I began expanding my article into a book and had more time to ponder the evidence, however, it struck me as extremely unlikely that he’d failed to tell the two species apart. He wrote his diary on blank pages in the back of an exhaustively researched field guide to the region’s edible plants, “Tanaina Plantlore / Dena’ina K’et’una: An Ethnobotany of the Dena’ina Indians of Southcentral Alaska,” by Priscilla Russell Kari. In the book, Kari explicitly warns that because wild sweet pea closely resembles wild potato, and “is reported to be poisonous, care should be taken to identify them accurately before attempting to use the wild potato as food.” And then she explains precisely how to distinguish the two plants from one another.

It seemed more plausible that McCandless had indeed eaten the roots and seeds of the purportedly nontoxic wild potato rather than the wild sweet pea. So I sent some Hedysarum alpinum seeds I’d collected near the bus to Dr. Thomas Clausen, a professor in the biochemistry department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, for analysis.

Shortly before my book was published, Clausen and one of his graduate students, Edward Treadwell, conducted a preliminary test that indicated the seeds contained an unidentified alkaloid. Making a rash intuitive leap, in the first edition of “Into the Wild,” published in January, 1996, I wrote that this alkaloid was perhaps swainsonine, a toxic agent known to inhibit glycoprotein metabolism in animals, leading to starvation. When Clausen and Treadwell completed their analysis of wild-potato seeds, though, they found no trace of swainsonine or any other alkaloids. “I tore that plant apart,” Dr. Clausen explained to Men’s Journal in 2007, after also testing the seeds for non-alkaloid compounds. “There were no toxins. No alkaloids. I’d eat it myself.”

I was perplexed. Clausen was an esteemed organic chemist, and the results of his analysis seemed irrefutable. But McCandless’s July 30th journal entry couldn’t have been more explicit: “EXTREMELY WEAK. FAULT OF POT[ATO] SEED.” His certainty about the cause of his failing health gnawed at me. I began sifting through the scientific literature, searching for information that would allow me to reconcile McCandless’s adamantly unambiguous statement with Clausen’s equally unambiguous test results.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, when I stumbled upon Ronald Hamilton’s paper “The Silent Fire: ODAP and the Death of Christopher McCandless,” which Hamilton had posted on a Web site that publishes essays and papers about McCandless. Hamilton’s essay offered persuasive new evidence that the wild-potato plant is highly toxic in and of itself, contrary to the assurances of Thomas Clausen and every other expert who has ever weighed in on the subject. The toxic agent in Hedysarum alpinum turns out not to be an alkaloid but, rather, an amino acid, and according to Hamilton it was the chief cause of McCandless’s death. His theory validates my conviction that McCandless wasn’t as clueless and incompetent as his detractors have made him out to be.

Hamilton is neither a botanist nor a chemist; he’s a writer who until recently worked as a bookbinder at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania library. As Hamilton explains it, he became acquainted with the McCandless story in 2002, when he happened upon a copy of “Into the Wild,” flipped through its pages, and suddenly thought to himself, I know why this guy died. His hunch derived from his knowledge of Vapniarca, a little-known Second World War concentration camp in what was then German-occupied Ukraine.

“I first learned about Vapniarca through a book whose title I’ve long forgotten,” Hamilton told me. “Only the barest account of Vapniarca appeared in one of its chapters …. But after reading ‘Into the Wild,’ I was able to track down a manuscript about Vapniarca that has been published online.” Later, in Romania, he located the son of a man who served as an administrative official at the camp, who sent Hamilton a trove of documents.

In 1942, as a macabre experiment, an officer at Vapniarca started feeding the Jewish inmates bread made from seeds of the grass pea, Lathyrus sativus, a common legume that has been known since the time of Hippocrates to be toxic. “Very quickly,” Hamilton writes in “The Silent Fire,”

a Jewish doctor and inmate at the camp, Dr. Arthur Kessler, understood what this implied, particularly when within months, hundreds of the young male inmates of the camp began limping, and had begun to use sticks as crutches to propel themselves about. In some cases inmates had been rapidly reduced to crawling on their backsides to make their ways through the compound …. Once the inmates had ingested enough of the culprit plant, it was as if a silent fire had been lit within their bodies. There was no turning back from this fire—once kindled, it would burn until the person who had eaten the grasspea would ultimately be crippled …. The more they’d eaten, the worse the consequences—but in any case, once the effects had begun, there was simply no way to reverse them …. The disease is called, simply, neurolathyrism, or more commonly, “lathyrism.”…

Kessler, who … initially recognized the sinister experiment that had been undertaken at Vapniarca, was one of those who escaped death during those terrible times. He retired to Israel once the war had ended and there established a clinic to care for, study, and attempt to treat the numerous victims of lathyrism from Vapniarca, many of whom had also relocated in Israel.

It’s been estimated that, in the twentieth century, more than a hundred thousand people worldwide were permanently paralyzed from eating grass pea. The injurious substance in the plant turned out to be a neurotoxin, beta-N-oxalyl-L-alpha-beta diaminoproprionic acid, a compound commonly referred to as beta-ODAP or, more often, just ODAP. Curiously, Hamilton reports, ODAP

affects different people, different sexes, and even different age groups in different ways. It even affects people within those age groups differently …. The one constant about ODAP poisoning, however, very simply put, is this: those who will be hit the hardest are always young men between the ages of 15 and 25 and who are essentially starving or ingesting very limited calories, who have been engaged in heavy physical activity, and who suffer trace-element shortages from meager, unvaried diets.

ODAP was identified in 1964. It brings about paralysis by over-stimulating nerve receptors, causing them to die. As Hamilton explains,

It isn’t clear why, but the most vulnerable neurons to this catastrophic breakdown are the ones that regulate leg movement…. And when sufficient neurons die, paralysis sets in…. [The condition] never gets better; it always gets worse. The signals get weaker and weaker until they simply cease altogether. The victim experiences “much trouble just to stand up.” Many become rapidly too weak to walk. The only thing left for them to do at that point is to crawl….

After Hamilton read “Into the Wild” and became convinced that ODAP was responsible for McCandless’s sad end, he approached Dr. Jonathan Southard, the assistant chair of the chemistry department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and persuaded Southard to have one of his students, Wendy Gruber, test the seeds of both Hedysarum alpinum and Hedysarum mackenzii forODAP. Upon completion of her tests, in 2004, Gruber determined that ODAPappeared to be present in both species of Hedysarum, but her results were less than conclusive. “To be able to say that ODAP is definitely present in the seeds,” she reported, “we would need to use another dimension of analysis, probably by H.P.L.C.-M.S.”—high-pressure liquid chromatography. But Gruber possessed neither the expertise nor the resources to analyze the seeds with H.P.L.C., so Hamilton’s hypothesis remained unproven.

To establish once and for all whether Hedysarum alpinum is toxic, last month I sent a hundred and fifty grams of freshly collected wild-potato seeds to Avomeen Analytical Services, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for H.P.L.C. analysis. Dr. Craig Larner, the chemist who conducted the test, determined that the seeds contained .394 per cent beta-ODAP by weight, a concentration well within the levels known to cause lathyrism in humans.

According to Dr. Fernand Lambein, a Belgian scientist who coördinates the Cassava Cyanide Diseases and Neurolathyrism Network, occasional consumption of foodstuffs containing ODAP “as one component of an otherwise balanced diet, bears not any risk of toxicity.” Lambein and other experts warn, however, that individuals suffering from malnutrition, stress, and acute hunger are especially sensitive to ODAP, and are thus highly susceptible to the incapacitating effects of lathyrism after ingesting the neurotoxin.

Considering that potentially crippling levels of ODAP are found in wild-potato seeds, and given the symptoms McCandless described and attributed to the wild-potato seeds he ate, there is ample reason to believe that McCandless contracted lathyrism from eating those seeds. As Ronald Hamilton observed, McCandless exactly matched the profile of those most susceptible to ODAPpoisoning:

He was a young, thin man in his early 20s, experiencing an extremely meager diet; who was hunting, hiking, climbing, leading life at its physical extremes, and who had begun to eat massive amounts of seeds containing a toxic [amino acid]. A toxin that targets persons exhibiting and experiencing precisely those characteristics and conditions ….

It might be said that Christopher McCandless did indeed starve to death in the Alaskan wild, but this only because he’d been poisoned, and the poison had rendered him too weak to move about, to hunt or forage, and, toward the end, “extremely weak,” “too weak to walk out,” and, having “much trouble just to stand up.” He wasn’t truly starving in the most technical sense of that condition. He’d simply become slowly paralyzed. And it wasn’t arrogance that had killed him, it was ignorance. Also, it was ignorance which must be forgiven, for the facts underlying his death were to remain unrecognized to all, scientists and lay people alike, literally for decades.

Hamilton’s discovery that McCandless perished because he ate toxic seeds is unlikely to persuade many Alaskans to regard McCandless in a more sympathetic light, but it may prevent other backcountry foragers from accidentally poisoning themselves. Had McCandless’s guidebook to edible plants warned that Hedysarum alpinum seeds contain a neurotoxin that can cause paralysis, he probably would have walked out of the wild in late August with no more difficulty than when he walked into the wild in April, and would still be alive today. If that were the case, Chris McCandless would now be forty-five years old.

Jon Krakauer’s most recent books are “Three Cups of Deceit,” “Where Men Win Glory,” and “Under the Banner of Heaven.”

Above: Chris McCandless’s final photo, a self-portrait holding his farewell note.Photographs courtesy the family of Chris McCandless.

Christopher Johnson McCandless was born February 12, 1968 in El Segundo, California. His parents are Walt McCandless and Wilhelmina Johnson (who was known as Billie) and his sister is Carine.

Walt also had children from his first marriage and they were living in California, although Walt was still legally married to his first wife when Chris and Carine were born. (This is something that Chris found out later which infuriated him to the point where he thought his life had all been a lie)

In 1976, Walt was offered a job with NASA as an antenna specialist so they moved to Virginia and his mother worked as a secretary at Hughes Aircraft. Later Walt and Billie started a consultancy firm which became very successful. But it seems working and living together affected their marriage resulting in arguements in front of Chris and Carine which cause them to distance themselves from their parents.

Chris was a good student with A average grades and he was also a good runner leading a team of cross country runners.
But, he was very stubborn and strong willed. He would train his cross country team mates hard taking them on practise runs in places where it was easy to get lost. But he saw it as a challenge and saw running as a form of spiritual exercise. An example of his stubbornness was receiving an F for one subject becuase he refused to write an article in the particular way that the teacher had asked.

He graduated from High School in 1986 and shortly after took off on an solo adventure for the summer arriving back 2 days before he was due to start college. He arrived at college scruffy compared to his well dressed room mate. His room mate dropped out several weeks later but Chris went on to get exellent grades. He graduated from Emory University in 1990 but saw titles and honors as immaterial and irrelevant. Later he would say that university is a 20th century fad and not something to aspire to.

Shortly after graduation, he gave the remaining money from his education fund to Oxfam. The cheque written by Chris on 15th May 1990, totalled $24000. He then left quietly from home to begin his adventures and assumed the name Alexander Supertramp of which he got from the book The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by William H. Davies from 1908. When asked by someone where his family were, he would reply that he didn't have a family anymore.

He travelled through various states of America in his car (which he left after it was caught in a flash flood) and by train, hiking, canoeing and of course walking. The challenge to himself was toTRAVEL WITH

the least amount of belongings as possible and as little money as possible. He had no map and no agenda, just the will to travel.

His dream was the Alaskan adventure and he would tell this to those he met along the way. Some people he worked for on odd jobs would try to convince him to stay and some would insist on giving him supplies to help with the journey.
He seldom accepted.

He reached his final destination on April 28, 1992 in Fairbanks Alaska.

Four months later he would perish from a combination ofERRORS

and his body was found in an abandoned old Fairbanks
City Transit Bus numbered 142 which was located on the Stampede Trail.

He kept a journal along the way and took self portraits now and then. His final self portrait was a picture of him holding a farewell note in his left hand and waving with his right hand. He was but 30kg in weight and eventually died of starvation and possibly poisoning from fungus on some fruit he had eaten.

His body was found by hunters 19 days after he died and later his parents would visit Bus 142 to leave a memorial

Jon Krakauer (A writer from Outside magazine) did an article on Chris in January 1993 and later wrote the book which
in 2007 became the movie 'Into the Wild' by Sean Penn.

Chris'es actions have caused many different debates on safety in the wild and what not to do and many have said that
what he did amounted to suicide. But, he has also had a lot of praise for his courage and spirit of adventure. Bus 142 has become somewhat of a tourist attraction, with many visiting every year and posting Youtube vidoes and pictures on the internet.

There is also a documentary on the Chris McCandless story. You can read more here.

Christopher McCandless Journal Entries for his Alaskan Adventure -

Day 2: Fall through the ice day. Day 4: Magic bus day. Day 9: Weakness. Day 10: Snowed in. Day 13: Porcupine day.... Day 14: Misery. Day 31: Move bus. Grey bird. Ash bird. Squirrel. Gourmet duck! Day 43: MOOSE! Day 48: 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. Day 68: Beaver Dam. Disaster. Day 69: Rained in, river looks impossible. Lonely, Scared. Day 74: Terminal man. Faster. Day 78: Missed wolf. Ate potato seeds and many berries coming. Day 94: Woodpecker. Fog. Extremely weak. Fault of potato seed. Much trouble just to stand up. Starving. Great jeopardy.

Day 100: Death looms as serious threat, too weak to walk out, have literally become trapped in wild—no game.Day 101-103: [No written entries, just the days listed.] Day 104: Missed bear! Day 105: Five squirrel. Caribou. Day 107: Beautiful berries. Day 108-113: [Days were marked only with slashes.]

Christopher McCandless by the water