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.