“Into the wild”

Pssst, one real winter and the guy dropped dead. Weak energy.

yeah i don't mean to be a snob but i've always rolled my eyes at the idea of this story, i don't know if it is just hearing so many stories when i was younger that were like similar or more intriguing

but it comes across to me this way like nothing special, I'd be interested if someone could convince me to check it out

I read the book when I was a teenager, and remember seeing the movie after it came out and iirc it was a pretty big downer. Hollywood naturally didnt do a great job at doing anything besides romanticizing a story that is little more than a decent cautionary tale, which boils down to dont be a over confident turd.

A rich kid bit off more than he could chew and died due to his own foolishness. That's pretty much the sad truth.

Theres a much more interesting story about a person who adopted his adopted last name and ended up cutting off some dudes pecker, but that's a entirely different thing.

I enjoyed the book and movie as far as it makes an interesting story. I often wondered why he (or anyone for that matter) would choose Alaska to try and be a survivalist. Alaska is brutal all year long with winters lasting practically 9 months. When it's warm, the mosquitoes suck every last ounce of blood from your body and there are swamps everywhere. Black Bears there have made a habit of eating people and the Polar Bears stalk humans as if they were walking seals. Even the moose are deadly when they feel threatened.

I was in Alaska for 8 years and lived a fairly normal suburban life and that was hard enough. Cabin Sickness or SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder from the dark days of winter make you desperate to flee to someplace where there is still warmth to a sun that shines most of the day. Months on end there is nothing but weak sun that barely rises in the southeast before setting in the southwest a couple of hours later. That was in southern Alaska. North of the Arctic Circle, there will be no sun for up to a month.

I cannot imagine anyone being able to just walk off into the bush with zero skills, zero knowledge of the area, zero tools and survival equipment and make it work. Man, he was either too ignorant or too unable to understand the peril in which he put himself. His idealism somehow beat out his common sense.

Wilderness survival isn't a lark you just decide to up and do one day. It takes skill and practice and knowledge to even have a chance at being successful. So much can and will go wrong. I admired his wandering spirit but his choices were pretty stupid. Solitude can be found in much better places.

Kenada said:

Someone showed me this movie last night. If you haven’t seen the movie it’s worth a watch. My reasons for wanting to leave resonate with the main character. While his situation isn’t a cookie cutter match with my own there are definitely similarities. The experiences the main character has in the movie show the good and bad side of life on the road. If someone wants to have a discussion about the movie, that’d be cool.

ps. I searched and didn’t find a related topic, so I do apologize If this is already a thread.

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I never read the book. I watched the movie for the first time a few months ago. A pawn shop was selling this and other dvds for 50 cents. I liked the movie. The boy was like many youngsters. He was naive yet thought he was wise. And he was full of dreams, yet lacking in the self discipline required to take the time to make a good, solid plan on how to achieve the dreams. He wanted do hurry up and do things now. Alaska wasn't going anywhere. He could have taken a couple of more years to work and learn before going up there, but what young person wants to wait a few years for something? sigh. I just wish the poor guy had known when to turn around and go back home. Or at least go back to the sweet old man that had taken him in.

Keep in mind that the story is heavily romanticized as well. I've read three book and seen the movie. They're both entertaining, but Krakauer seems too interested in painting a portrait of a fallen hero. Chris starved to death. There were no signs of poisoning. That doesn't have to ruin the story. He can still be an inspiration to people even if he was too ignorant, foolish, stubborn, and/or naive for house own good.

SlankyLanky said:

Theres a much more interesting story about a person who adopted his adopted last name and ended up cutting off some dudes pecker, but that's a entirely different thing.

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...please enlighten me

Was hard enough doing the same crap in Montana , screw Alaska.

I read the book when i was a teen. definitely a badass story of someone living out their beliefs and their dreams. the thing that mostly no one brings up is that

**he didn't ask for a hollywood movie to be made about him, or even a book**

it could have been any of us living wild like we are now, then dying in the process, and then our family decides to sell the rights to our story. now everyone holds this dude up to some standard of hero status or whatever but he was just living his life, not asking to be put in the spotlight.

The other crazy piece that is totally left out of the conversation is that he was a fucking good botanist. he knew his shit. everyone thinks he poisoned himself by misidentification but if you read up on it, it turns out he was right with his plant id. the plant that killed him, Hedysarum alpinum, is listed as edible in the guidebooks. and he didn't catch on that those seeds were actually killing him until it was too late. If he had known about the plant's toxicity in the first place he probably would have walked away fine, probably a hundred pounds lighter, but fine.

and the way that it was all discovered is even crazier. some random journalist read the account of christopher mcandless and realized that the symptoms that mccandless described in his journal were eerily similar to the accounts given describing the symptoms of jews that were fed some sketchy plant at concentration camps in nazi germany as a death experiment. the journalist wound up testing the compounds in both the plant used to kill the jewish prisoners and the allegedly non-toxic plant that mccandless said that he had been eating and low and behold, they both contained the same chemical compound responsible for the irreversible disease called lathyrism. it only strikes when ur really hungry or under a lot of stress, which is why it was never caught by any of the guidebooks. pretty tragic if you ask me.

if you just take it off the pedestal and take it as another travel account, i think it's a pretty incredible story

I was living in Anchorage when this happened. Alaskans were pretty unimpressed and the comments I heard mostly consisted of "Another stupid Cheechako, they always die."

Cheechackos, a deprecating term for newcomers to Alaska, come to Alaska seeking riches or isolation or escaping from something and failure is often the outcome even for the well prepared. I remember another incident where some black bears approached a homesteading family in an isolated area. The man, having no gun, put his wife and children on the roof of their small cabin while he took a skiff across a lake to summon help. By the time help arrived, the family had all been killed and fed upon by the bears. They think humans are yummy and can be more dangerous than the enormous brown Grizzly Bears. We always carried firearms when camping, hiking and fishing as help was often hours away and the wilderness is just 3 steps off the road.

I appreciate that he followed his own way but no, that couldn't of been any of us. I've taken some dumb risks but the entire scenario he walked into was just stupid. Walking across a frozen river... Freezing on an uninsulated bus when you're surrounded by snow (one of the best natural insulators), killing animals you have no clue how to preserve, the list just goes on and on. I honestly think being from Virginia and spending most his time on the west coast he really just had no concept of winter. Instead of learning like a sane person, he went straight for the super advanced level while woefully unprepared. Even with lots of winter camping experience, surviving an entire Alaskan winter is a serious undertaking. Most people with any common sense would say fuck no. Even the Eskimos had a tendency to drop dead from starvation during the winter.

This movie really hits home with me as my oldest step son, after just turning 18 saw this movie and was really motivated by it, little to our knowledge. He had moved out and was living with some of his buddies in town. One day he just disappeared. Left town... His roomates called and asked if he had come back home and told us he had packed up and left the house. Later they told us about his infatuation about the movie and watching it with him several times. We started to get worried as we couldn't reach him via phone and asking other friends if they seen him. We called the local hospital, jail, etc with no luck, it was a town of about 70,000 people, so not too big. Finally called the state police and asked if they could keep an eye out for his car and asked what else we could do to try and locate him. Not much since he was considered an adult. He was not the kind of guy that would run off to Alaska??? We would go camping as a family and enjoyed the outdoors, but he was not usually the wilderness type, enjoyed creature comforts to much like TV and hot showers.
We checked with other family members that lived out of town and no one had seen or heard from him. We kept calling and leaving messages with no reply. Finally had to turn it over to the higher power and pray.
Finally after 3 or 4 of weeks we heard from him. He had drove to New York City, got his car impounded and was living in a homeless shelter. This was a couple of years after 911. He said he wanted to stay and see if he could make a go of it there but wanted us to know where he was and that he was ok. He stayed in touch through Facebook as he could over the 3 or 4 years he was there. He did get a job working with some of the food truck vendors and shared an apartment with a few friends he made while in the shelter. He got into photography and has some great shots of NYC. He finally did return to the Midwest and is still there today living in the same town as my ex and my step daughters family. My partner and I were in the middle of going out separate ways at the time. I started traveling myself shortly after that and never got to sit down with him to see if that movie really had to do with his leaving or not.
But the moral of the story is... I think one could get into trouble just as easily in New York as they could in Alaska. 😆
Seriously, I was so glad to hear he was safe and sound when he called and it was amazing the level of maturity he came back home with after those years away. Some times ya just gotta pray and know that Spirits taking care of things. You know they say, " God don't have no grandkids, he takes care of his own". Wow, what a flashback. Hadn't thought of that movie in a long time. Happy trails to you all and safe travels.

So true my friend, so true

Kenada said:

What

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I was actually replying to coltsfoot above you. My bad, shoulda been more specific.

Beegod Santana said:

I appreciate that he followed his own way but no, that couldn't of been any of us. I've taken some dumb risks but the entire scenario he walked into was just stupid. Walking across a frozen river... Freezing on an uninsulated bus when you're surrounded by snow (one of the best natural insulators), killing animals you have no clue how to preserve, the list just goes on and on. I honestly think being from Virginia and spending most his time on the west coast he really just had no concept of winter. Instead of learning like a sane person, he went straight for the super advanced level while woefully unprepared. Even with lots of winter camping experience, surviving an entire Alaskan winter is a serious undertaking. Most people with any common sense would say fuck no. Even the Eskimos had a tendency to drop dead from starvation during the winter.

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Yeah, maybe saying it could have been any of us is a little far fetched. With that said tho, i know some pretty gnarly folks who have gotten into some crazy shit from time to time and i think its pretty spectacular that they are still breathing. ive certainly bitten off more than i could chew in my lifetime and feel lucky to alive right now. but yeah, im not gonna say he wasnt ridiculously idealistic. but i also think that's how alot of us started out. and i also just dont think that there's anything inherently wrong with that. like i said, he was just tryina live his lofty ideals, not tryina be a hero. that was hollywood's doing

side note: i had a friend who went into the alaskan wilderness alone 8 years ago and never came back and his body was never found. unlike mccandless, he knew his shit and had a lot of experience doing long solo trips in the wilderness. his name was thomas seibold. its still a mystery what happened to him. i guess it wasn't good enough of a story for hollywood to make a shitty movie about. but he was really an incredible person.