The Story is Still Alive- INTO THE WILD

Spending countless hours reading blogs, websites, and other social media sites, I kept seeing remarks about Into The Wild. One afternoon I was in the boy's room cleaning up the bookcase and happen to find a book titled Into The Wild. I figured one of the boys had the book as a reading assignment in school and this book was what folks were referring to.


Into The Wild is written by Jon Krakauer the same author that wrote Into Thin Air which was a personal account of the Mt. Everest Disaster.

In a nutshell Into The Wild is about Christopher Johnson McCandless, a young man that had just graduated college and gave away $25,000 of his savings to charity and abandoned most of his possessions. He changed his name and dropped out of sight and cut off contact with his family. He took on a transcendent lifestyle with the quest of living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. McCandless did live in the Alaskan wilderness for sixteen weeks until a couple of mistakes took a turn for the worst. Four months later his remains were found by hunters.

Into The Wild is a must-read for any modern-day adventurer. The only part of the book that I did not like and the author was upfront about was the author's "fragments of narrative drawn from my own youth". I was put off by this and only wanted to get back to the McCanless story.

There are two camps of thought in the McCandless story. One of his courage to take on the Alaskan wilderness and his transcendent lifestyle. The others think he was arrogant, an idiot, and a wacko. I am with the second camp.

One interesting thing that happens before I finished the book was I found some new posts about McCandless. Which still makes this story alive. The first place I found an updated story was on a link here Hiking In Finland. Second I found another post here woodtrekker.

I believe most of us at one point or another dream about going off and doing our own things that we would love to do on our own terms. I guess it is living carefree and living the adventure. So I will give it to McCandless for taking the big step and living that dream. But thinking you can take on the Alaskan wilderness with no more than what's on your back was delusional.

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