Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 25 pg. 159 – 174

            McCandless has been riding with Gaylord Stuckey to Alaska and he has been telling him about his Alaskan odyssey.  When the two arrived in Fairbanks on April 25, Stuckey bought Alex a big bag of rice.  Alex asked Stuckey if he could take him to the university so that he could study up on what kinds of plants he could eat.  When Stuckey dropped Alex off at the campus at 5:30 pm he asked the least thing Alex could do for him was send him a postcard when he gets back from Alaska, and to call his parents before he goes out.  Alex bought a used semiautomatic .22-caliber Remington with a 4-x-20 scope and a plastic stock.  He closed the deal in a parking lot paying about $125 and then he purchased four one-hundred-round boxes of hollow-point long-rifle shells from a nearby gun shop.

            Four miles west of town, McCandless got a ride from a man named Jim Gallien.  Gallien drove McCandless to the Stampede trail where he dropped him off.  He finally got to the bus beside the Sushana River.  It was outfitted for hikers and campers with bug dope, matches, and other essentials.  At first he had trouble shooting game and by May 9^th he wrote in his journal, “Famine”.  Soon afterwards he started having better luck by shooting squirrel, spruce grouse, duck, goose, and porcupine.  Alex decided to make permanent residence in the bus.  He even was able to shoot a moose on June 9^th.  He tried to smoke it to preserve the meat, but by June 14^th maggots got to it and he considered it a major tragedy.  In early July he met the first of two major setbacks.  He was about to head back to civilization when the river that he had crossed over had quadrupled in size causing him to go back to the bus.

            The author portrays McCandless as caring for all life and realizing the waste of life that he caused when he killed the moose.  Alex shows compassion to animals and when he had to hunt, he would only kill what he needed.

Into the Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 24 pg. 144 – 159

            Jon Krakauer was stuck in his tent on Devils Thumb for three days.  In there he chain-smoked and read and when he ran out of reading material he looked up at the top of his tent and started counting the stitches up to hours at end.  He also smoked a victory cigar that he was supposed to smoke at the top of the mountain, which was full of marijuana.  Krakauer tried to heat himself up some oatmeal but in the process burnt a hole in his father’s nylon tent he was borrowing.  His father is a stern man whose brash demeanor blocked his deep insecurity.  Lewis Krakauer was a man that liked to compete with the world.  To him everything was a challenge.  He wanted Jon to enroll in medical school ever since he was born.  Krakauer rebelled when he was a teen and these arguments usually ended up in the gap between them to increase.  He then became ill from polio and was sent to a mental institute.  Krakauer instead of deciding to go back to base camp, thinks he can wait one more night.  Krakauer gets lost and has to dig himself a little hole to hide in for the night.  Krakauer decided to go for the low road so he took another route that appeared to be easier.  He made it to the top.

            Chris McCandless left Carthage and headed to Canada.  There he took a pit stop at Liard River Hot spring.  There he met Gaylord Stuckey.  Stuckey offered him a ride to Alaska and Alex accepted it.

            Lewis Krakauer, Jon Krakauer’s father, seems to be a man looking for the best for his son, kind of like Chris’s father.  Lewis wanted Jon to go into the medical field but in his teenage years, he revolted.  This sounds similarly like Chris’s father and son relationship.

Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 23 pg.127-144

            Carine McCandless is Chris’s younger sister who now resides in her Virginia Beach home.  On her mantel are two photos of Chris, one when he was a junior in high school, and another when he was seven years old at Easter.  In both photos, Chris’s expression remains the same as though someone was interrupting his thoughts to take a meaningless photo.  The summer he disappeared, Chris wanted to take Carine’s dog Buck with him on a road trip.  His parents said no since Buck had just been hit by a car and was still resting.  Chris’s parents and Carine all wonder how things would have turned out if he brought Buck with him.  Chris wouldn’t think twice about putting his life in danger, but he would never risk Buck’s.  There would have been less of a chance of Chris injuring himself if Buck had gone with him.  Chris and his sister, Carine, had been very close in their childhood.  In a letter that Chris wrote about his parents, he says, “I like to talk to you about this since you are the only person in the world who could possibly understand what I am saying.  When Chris’s body was found, Carine was hysterical for five hours and couldn’t be communicated to.  Once she got over it her and her boyfriend, Chris Fish, flew to Fairbanks to gather Chris’s remains.  To relieve her stress, Carine started eating plenty of food and soon gained 10 pounds, and so did her father, Walt, who gained eight pounds.

            Chris’s final postcard to Wayne Westerberg said, “If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again I want you to know you’re a great man.  I now walk into the wild.”  Jon Krakauer used to be reckless and not think twice about whether or not he should risk his life climbing a mountain or not.  On one occasion, Krakauer quit his job at as a construction worker and drove to Alaska to climb the Devils Thumb.  When he was at Gig Harbor, he met a woman named Kai Sandburn, who offered him dinner for the night.  He then began his climb up the mountain.  Krakauer was only planning on spending three weeks or a month on the mountain, so he paid a bush pilot to drop six cardboard cartons of supplies to help him.  He tried two times to climb the mountain but couldn't make it.  The only way to go now was down.

            Jon Krakauer in this segment is comparing his own life as a mountain climber to that of Chris McCandless.  They were both willing to put their own lives at risk in order to complete a certain goal that they had each set for themselves.

Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 22 pg. 102 – 126

            Samuel Walter McCandless still wonders how a kid with so much compassion cause so much pain several weeks after his son turned up dead in Alaska.  Four large poster boards with photos documenting Chris’s life stand up on their dining room table.  Walt works for NASA and was the pioneering engineer for the Seasat launch.  His resume says Current U.S. Department of Defense Top Secret.  He performs consulting services aligned with remote sensor and satellite system design.  In 1957, when Walt just finished collage, the Soviets launched Sputnik 1.  Walt wanted to join the race for space so he took a job with Hughes Aircraft.  In 1959, he had five children but then his marriage became strained.  He divorced his wife Marcia.  Walt started dating a secretary named Wilhelmina Johnson, who everyone called, Billie.  The two got married and Billie gave birth to Chris.  When Chris was two, he snuck out of his house, walked across the street to a neighbor’s house, and raided their candy jar.  Billie and Walt worked out of the house in their office but they usually were too busy to monitor their kids.  Chris had to rely on his sister Carine a lot of the time.  The family traveled a lot in their motor home trailer.  Billie’s dad was like Chris where they loved the outdoors and they didn't like to kill other living creatures.  Chris had a lot of natural talent but he wouldn’t let anyone coach him.  Whenever you tried to teach him something, he put up a wall and didn’t listen.  During high school Chris would drive around giving burgers to homeless people and prostitutes and wanted to learn about their lives.  Chris was embarrassed by the way his parents spent their earnings whenever they treated themselves a little.  Chris was hired by a building contractor and was such a good salesmen that the owner offered to pay Chris’s full college tuition if he stayed in town.  Chris turned down the offer.

            One time while Chris was a little drunk, he told his dad that even though they had their differences, he was the best dad he had ever had.  On a road trip after graduation, Chris got lost in the last week and almost dehydrated in the Mojave dessert.  After his freshmen year at college he worked for his parents and invented a program to help the business.  When his parents asked how he made it work so well, he said, “Hey, it works.  That’s all you need to know.”  Chris’s relation with his parents diminished that summer when he found out that Walt’s split with Marcia was not clean and that he fathered another kid with her.  When everything came to light, Walt and Billie both put it behind them and continued on, but Chris was unable to move forward.  He couldn’t believe that his father would try to hide all of this and that separated the gap between them by a lot.  In 1990, Chris graduated college and he appeared to look happy.  A week after graduation he left his parents lives forever.

            The author portrays Chris and his father as both stubborn and do not like their thoughts to be budged.  Chris got an F in a class because he didn't listen when his teacher said to write his papers in a certain way.  His father was a leader and he would get very angry whenever his decisions were questioned.

Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 21 pg.85 – 102

            Six decades ago, a twenty-year-old Everett Ruess carved his nom de plume into the Davis Gulch wall below a panel of Anasazi pictographs.  He signed it “NEMO 1934”.  This was no doubt the same reason why Chris McCandless carved his nom, “Alexander Supertramp/ May 1992” on the wall of the bus where he was living in.  After he carved his name, he disappeared, and even after an extensive search and over sixty years, nothing has been found of him.

            Everett was born in Oakland, California, in 1914, and was the younger of two sons raised by Christopher and Stella Ruess.  The Ruess family was mainly a nomadic group that moved from Oakland to Fresno to Los Angeles to Boston to Brooklyn to New Jersey to Indiana before coming to rest in southern California at the age of 14.  Ruess began wandering the country after he had earned his high-school diploma and often starved himself since he lacked money but he was happy.

            A half-century later, McCandless sounds exactly like Ruess when he said that he is going to live the simple life for a good time to come.  Both the two men were undeterred by physical discomfort and often slept on the ground pleasantly.  Both of the two also were very near death during their explorations but were able to walk away.  Ruess carved his nom into the wall NEMO that means ‘nobody’ in Spanish.  Some people believe he fell from a cliff, others think he was murdered, but the most logical idea is that Ruess drowned.  He was probably trying to get to the Navajo reservation where he would hide himself and while crossing the river, he drowned.

            When the New York Times picked up the story on Chris, the Alaska State troopers had been trying for weeks to figure out who he was.  When Chris died he was wearing a blue sweatshirt with a logo of a Santa Barbara towing company, but when contacted they said they know nothing about how Chris came into possession of it.  Jim Galllien heard about the news and immediately knew that was Alex that had died.  When the Chris’s family was finally located, they had no idea Chris had been doing this and now he is dead.

            Jon Krakauer’s constructed this segment to show the reader the strange similarity between Ruess and Chris’s expeditions even though they were separated by about 70 years.  Both the two were reckless risk-takers, and were lucky on many occasions but ultimately met their fate in the wilderness that they so adored.  Krakauer does cross-examination to show how close the two people act like.

 

Into The Wild

Jon Krakauer Cycle 17 Reading Assessment 1-23

Christopher Johnson McCandless was brought up in a prosperous family in Washington D.C.  After graduating high school, he disappeared, donated all $24,000 in savings to charity, ditched his car, burned the rest of his money in his wallet, and wandered around the U.S. looking for experiences.  His decomposed body was found in an abandoned bus in Alaska, in the middle of the bush.

Jim Gallien met Chris on his journey, and he stopped to give Chris a lift.  When Gallien asked what his name was Chris said, “Alex” and left it at that without saying any last names.  Chris pointed on a map where he wanted to head, and a red dashed line pointed all the way from Stampede Trail, forty miles into the bush.  Chris wanted to live of the land and had with him, a .22 caliber rifle and a ten-pound bag of rice.  His family or friends didn’t know what he was up to and he told Gallien that he hasn’t talked to them in over two years.  Gallien dropped off Chris at the trailhead, but before Chris left, he gave him his number, his lunch, and his old rubber boots for Chris to use.  This happened on April 28, 1992 and it was the last time Gallien saw Chris alive.  In 1961 a company was allowed to upgrade the Stampede trail into a passable road.  Workers stayed in three junked buses that had small stoves and a couple of bunks.  In 1963, the project stopped and the company took two buses out of the wilderness but left the third for trappers and hunters in the area to rest in.  The bus is still there and occasionally there would be a visitor, but in early September of 1992, six people in three separate parties visited it on the same afternoon.  Ken Thompson and a couple of his other employees were driving their motor vehicles over the many streams and different terrain.  When they drove through the bush and saw the bus, a hiking couple was standing there.

They said that something bad was in the bus, so Thompson went to check it out.  In it they found Chris McCandless’s body decaying after what looked like having been there for two weeks.  They called the Alaska troopers to helicopter the body away.  During the autopsy, McCandless weighed sixty-seven pounds and most likely died of starvation.  Chris had no identification on him, except for his signature on a note asking for help on the outside of the bus.  Wayne Westerberg gave Chris a lift to the Saco Hot Springs also in Chris’s journey.  Wayne offered Chris a job at the grain elevator and Chris was the hardest worker ever.  Chris’s family life is revealed a little bit more.  His family lives in Virginia, his dad worked for NASA designing satellites, and he had a 3.72 GPA.  Chris also had purchased a used yellow Datsun, which he took on lengthy solo trips across the country.  Chris decided to change his whole name and everything and start new.  He would be called Alexander Supertramp, master of his own destiny.

Amalgam – n. a mixture or blend.

Chris McCandless seems to be the type of person who likes to take risks and experience the wilderness around him.  There probably is a conflict between him and his family since Chris hasn't sent them any letters ever since he left.  He also doesn’t care for the government that much since when he was asked whether he had a hunting license or not he replied, “Hell no.  How I feed myself is none of the government’s business.  Fuck their stupid rules.”  Chris just doesn’t like the way people are so greedy and everything so he wants to go into the wild and see if he can handle it himself.

Into The Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 20 pg.61 – 85

            In March, McCandless walked into the office at Carthage grain elevator and said he was ready to work.  Wayne Westerberg was lining up his paperwork when Alex came in with a backpack over his shoulder.  He said he was staying only until April 15 in order to get enough money to put together a grubstake.  Alex worked for four weeks in Carthage doing jobs that nobody else wanted to tackle: mucking out warehouses, exterminating vermin, painting, scything weeds.  Alex was invited to eat dinner with Westerberg’s girlfriend every night and Alex would sometimes cook for them.  Chris McCandless and his father Walt McCandless were both stubborn and high-strung.  Walt was the type to exert control while Chris was the type that wanted to be independent so conflict was inevitable.  Chris told his sister that a few months after graduation he’s going to act like he is seeing their perspective on things and then at the right moment, he’d just walk away and never speak to them again.  Chris never had a real girl friend but he would get letters from some girl he met on the road.  Alex rather is with nature than with the opposite-sex.  Alex was the type of person to live out his beliefs.  On his final night in Carthage, Alex partied hard at the bar with everybody and to everyone’s surprise he got on the piano and began to play country-tunes, ragtime, and Toney Bennett numbers.  On the morning of April 15, McCandless departed with only a large backpack and about a thousand dollars in his boot.  On April 18, McCandless wrote to Westerberg saying he was at the border to Canada, and he was going to head north to Alaska.  On April 27, 1992, McCandless wrote again to Westerberg and to Jan Burres and Bob saying that this is the last they’ll hear from him and that he now walks into the wild.

            The article about Chris McCandless in the Outside magazine made many people question Chris’s sanity.  Alaskans made many of the negative comments and some wrote that Chris was a nut in their book.  A man named Jan Burres complained saying that he has seen over the past 15 years many nuts like McCandless.

            Krakauer writes his perspective about why Chris acted this way, but he also includes the readers of the articles perspectives that think that McCandess and he are nuts.  The reason I believe he is doing this is to show that everyone has a different view on this topic.

Into the Wild

By Jon Krakauer Cycle 19 pg. 46-61

            Jon Krakauer had gotten a letter for his article about Chris (referred as Alex) McCandless’s fate from a man who stated that he knew Chris and that if he could get any facts about his death.  Ronald Franz met Chris when he was eighty years old in 1992 and offered Chris a lift in Salton City, which is about fifty miles away from Palm Springs.  Chris told Franz that lived by Oh-My-God-Hot springs but Franz didn't know where that was even though he lived in these parts for six years. Oh-My-God-Hot was about a two hundred person community beyond the fringe, and was a post-apocalypse vision of America.  There were hippies and other people all living out of their cars by a geothermal well that was piped into a pair of shallow steaming pools.  Franz had spent most of life in the army and on New Years Eve of 1957, while he was away, a drunk driver hilled his wife and only child in a car accident.  After that Franz felt lost and started to unofficially adopt Okinawa boys and girls, eventually having fourteen in total, and paying for two to go to schools in Japan and Philadelphia.  When Franz met McCandless his parenting instincts went into effect again.  Franz gave McCandless rides to do laundry and to grill some steaks while McCandless said he was just doing it until spring so that he could go to Alaska.  Franz taught Chris how to be a leatherworker, and Chris soon made himself a leather belt that had his initials, C.J.M., a skull and crossbones, a two lane blacktop, a no u-turn sign, a thunderstorm making a flash flood that floods a car, a hitchhiker’s thumb, an eagle, the Sierra Nevada, salmon in the Pacific, Pacific coast Highway, the Rocky Mountains, Montana wheat fields, South Dakota rattlesnake, Westberg’s house, Colorado River, a gale in the Gulf of California, a beached canoe by a tent, Las Vegas, initials T.C.D., Morro Bay, Atoria, and the letter N for North.  Early in February, McCandless said he was going to San Diego to make money, so Franz offered him a lift.  On Feb 19, McCandless called Franz and told him a happy 81^st birthday.  McCandless remembered the date because he turned 24 seven days earlier.  On February 28, he mailed a postcard to Jan Burres saying he was heading for Alaska by March 1^st.  On March 5^th, Chris sent a card to Burres and Franz saying that he was in Seattle as a hobo, and that a boxcar guard threatened to shoot Chris for catching a ride.  Chris said that he had the last laugh since he went back on it 5 minutes later.  A week later Chris came back to Franz’s place since there was no work up in the Northwest and since he was arrested for jumping on a boxcar again.  Chris’s friend Westerberg offered Chris back his job in Grand Junction, Colorado and Chris accepted.

Fringe – the outer extreme part of an area, group, or sphere of activity.

            Ronald Franz (not his real name since he wishes to remain anonymous) shows a compassion for McCandless that no other person has.  Franz’s loss of is wife and only child have left a void in his mind and heart that McCandless has seemed to fill.  Franz thinks of McCandless as his grandson and wants him to prosper and do something with his life.  He is showing great care to McCandless for everything he does.

Into the Wild

Jon Krakauer Cycle 18 Reading Assignment 23-46

            In October 1990, three months after McCandless left Atlanta, a National Park Service ranger named Bud Walsh was sent into the wilderness of Lake Mead National Recreation Area to give an estimate of how rare the bear-paw poppies were in that location.  While he was resting on a hill he saw a blue tarp covering a vast object sticking out of the soil.  When he pulled off the tarp he found an old yellow Datsun with a note on the window that said, “ This piece of shit has been abandoned.  Whoever can get it out of here can have it.”  Inside of it were a guitar, a razor, $4.50, and 25 lbs. of rice.

            The Datsun was Chris McCandless’s.  He had arrived in the area on July 6 and ignoring posted warnings, he drove out to the sand riverbed.  It was 120 degrees Fahrenheit outside, yet Chris set up camp there.  On one night, a thundercloud appeared overhead and caused a flash flood.  Chris had enough time to get his tent and belongings out of the way before the surge hit.  The wave wasn’t strong enough to push the Datsun away so all the water did was get the engine wet.  Chris tried to start up the engine right after the flood but the engine was wet so all it did was just drain his battery.  Faced with the decision of abandoning the car or looking for help with the rangers, he decided to ditch the car.  He saw it as a positive way to shed unnecessary weight so he burned his $125 and buried his rifle.  He loaded a few stuff into his backpack and began to hitch hike around Lake Mead on July 10, but due to the heat he almost got heat stroke.  Luckily for him a passing boater gave him a lift to Callville Bay.  He hiked through Sierra, Nevada ad at the end of July he got a ride from a man who called himself Crazy Ernie.  Ernie offered Chris a job at his ranch in Northern California and Chris accepted.  After working there for 11 days, Chris knew that he wasn’t going to get paid so he stole a bike and pedaled into Chico.

            Chris went to Arcata, California and a pair of drifters picked him.  On August 10, McCandless was ticketed for hitchhiking and strangely he gave his parents real address.  His parent had no idea where he was, but once they got the ticket in the mail, they were really concerned about what Chris was doing.  One of the neighbors was the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, and he told the family of a private investigator named Peter Kalitka.  Kalitka contract worked for the CIA and DIA so he was the best there was.  He started the search for Chris with the ticket lead in California and chased down any lead form Europe to the northern part of Africa.  In December he learned from inspection of tax records that Chris had given his entire college fund to OXFAM.

            As Kalitka was looking for Chris, he was already hitching east across the Cascade Range, and into Montana.  Outside of Cut Bank he met Wayne Westerberg and began to work for him.  Once Wayne was jailed, Chris left for a warmer area.  On October 28, he got a ride from a long-haul trucker into Needles, California.  He then walked to Topock, Arizona and bought a secondhand aluminum canoe so that he could paddle down the Colorado River into the Gulf of California.  Chris paddled through the U.S. Army’s highly restricted Yuma Proving Ground.  On December 2, he reached the Morelos Dam and the Mexican Border.  He snuck through the floodgates and then got confused in the irrigation canals.  On December 10 after being lost, Alex gets a ride from some duck hunters who drop him off in El Golfo de Santa Clara.  He paddled down the coast and on December 14, he hauled the canoe up the beach, climbed a sandstone bluff, and set up camp.  He stayed there for 10 days, until high winds made him go into a cave where he stayed for 10 more days.  On January 16, 1991, Chris ditches the canoe after it is beached and then heads north.  He was caught trying to sneak back into the U.S. without an I.D. so he was jailed but was let out because of a story he made up.  On February 3, Chris went to Los Angeles to get an I.D. but had to return to the road since there was to many people.  On February 24, seven and a half months after ditching the Datsun, he unearths the items that he buried with it.  He then lived on the street with the bums in Las Vegas.

            Chris stopped writing his personal journal so not much is known after he left Las Vegas in May 1991.  He probably spent July and August on the Oregon coast where he complained the fog and rain was intolerable.  In September he hitched down US Highway 101 into California.  In early October he was in Bullhead City, Arizona.  Chris stayed in Bullhead for two months and in a letter to Westerberg in October he said, “It’s a good place to spend the winter and I might finally settle down and abandon my tramping life for good.”  When Chris wrote this while he was holding a full time job as a burger flipper at McDonald’s on the main drag.  Chris got to live in a mobile trailer that a lunatic named Charlie was able to live in but didn’t own.  He also visited Burres and helped him at flea markets since he was a vendor.  Chris had to leave because he wanted to head to Alaska.

            “It’s a good place to spend the winter and I might finally settle down and abandon my tramping life, for good.  I’ll see what happens when spring comes around, because that’s when I tend to get really itchy feet.”  This is what Chris is saying about Bullhead City and how he might want to stay in it for good.  He is saying that usually in the spring if he stays in one place for to long, he’ll want to go elsewhere.  Chris is indecisive and is unsure where to stay and for how long.