happy 56th birthday chris mccandless

February 12, 2024 a bit late i know....

Chris after he cut his hair on July 3, 1992, preparing for his return to civilization after spending the summer in the Alaskan Bush

I first learned of Christopher McCandless in my senior year of high school. We read Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer for my non-fiction english class, taught by one of my favorite teachers Mr. DiBernardo. Since the book was assigned for class, I only read chapters sporadically but within the chapters I read I deeply resonated with his endeavors. I finished the book after we were done reading it in class. I wanted to experience his journey at my own pace and not for an assigned grade. I finished the book within three days. I could not put it down. I was marking up passages with sticky notes (it was a school book) and I was making mental notes of all the books Krakauer cited in his opening passages for each chapter. Chris’s story astounded me, to come up with an alias and leave everything you knew behind you all for the call of nature, was a seed that had been planted in my brain but never could find its tendrils in my conscious mind. Chris was someone my 17 year old self looked up to and deeply respected. His story, along with Jeanette Wall’s Glass Castle, proved to me that not only is non-fiction not the lame, droning genre I thought it was, but all of the stories I read in fiction I could find in real life (for the most part).

The second time I read Into the Wild was when I had just come back from my freshman year of college, once again enthralled by Chris’s journey. I had reunited with my then long-distance boyfriend and spent time reading it with him on my back deck. He was not a huge reader and opted for manga most of the time instead. I learned my lesson from trying to get him to read Lolita, so we sat. I explained Chris’s journey to him before I started reading, which I will also do later in this essay, and he was in awe but also found his voyage dumb. It took me around 8 days to finish the book for the second time. I still vividly remember starting it. I was sleeping over my godmother’s house in Massachusetts, after just coming home from the beach. I was laying down on the slightly deflated air mattress, with the window open. The sun was still high in the sky and as I finished the third chapter. After putting the book down to go downstairs and rejoin my family, I heard a bird chirping loudly. This brought me so much joy, that I marked the occasion on my Instagram and memorialized it in my highlights. I finished it a week later on my back deck, shielding myself from the unforgiving heat. When I turned to the last page, tears were falling from my face. He should have known better, I thought to myself. There is no way he could have perished from something he should have known about…Right?

Chris McCandless, born February 12th, 1968, grew up in Virginia with a younger sister, his father, and step-mother. His goal was to adhere to his father’s wishes and graduate from law school to appease him. Chris graduated from Emory Law in 1990 and immediately after his graduation, he up and left for his journey across the country with nothing but his pack of supplies and his dog. Chris occasionally stayed in touch with his family, sending them postcards from various locations. To those he met, he was known as Alexander Supertramp. He used this alias for the entirety of his voyage up until his final destination, the Alaskan bush. It is speculated he used Supertramp because while tramp was used a negative word to describe women (and still is), it also is used as a way to describe a wanderer, one who has no true place to go.

Chris solely wanted to live off the bare essentials and the land. He had a deep appreciation for nature and respected all of its creatures. Chris found not only inspiration but a reason for existence through nature. Critics of his plight call him stupid and underprepared for trying to take on the Alaskan bush with no true equipment. While this may be true, he was not a man of little intelligence. Chris carefully studied plants and which ones were edible, poisonous, or had medicinal properties. Chris sadly passed in Fairbanks, Alaska inside of an abandoned bus, Bus 142 to be specific. There are many speculations as to how Chris perished, most famously Jon Krakauer’s at the end of Into the Wild, he speculated Chris ate poisonous seeds from a potato which ended up killing him. Krakauer received much hatred from his articles in Outside, many arguing he was advocating for people to embark on a similar journey as Chris. I appreciate Krakauer’s characterization of Chris. He understood how his voyage, particularly into the bush, was foolish, with such a light pack and little supplies, but he understood the greater spiritual meaning of this journey for Chris. Krakauer did not ignore the critics and rather featured them in his novel. Ignoring the emotional and spiritual impact of a journey like Chris’s is where the source of hatred comes from. The public is afraid of a return to nature. To go back to your most primitive state, strip yourself bare of everything you know, and reckon with the supernatural force of the Earth, is scary for people. Everyone has the thought of giving up on modern civilization and returning to the wild. The difference is in those who would actually do it. And those who do…are labelled recluses, psychotic, out of their minds, etc… There is such a stigma against people who just want to immerse themselves in what we as a human race were blessed with, and I find it rather shocking. We sit behind our screens all day (I am not excluded from this we) and would rather experience the world from the comfort of our homes, then go out.

Maybe I idolize Christopher McCandless a little too much. At the end of the day, he was a boy who felt lost and found himself in nature. And I like that. I would rather be inspired by someone who was supposed to be a nobody, than someone who received their notoriety for nefarious reasons (not to say I do not have a fair share of celebrities that I enjoy following because of their nefarious doings). Chris McCandless did not have plans on being famous. He had no plans but to read Henry David Thoreau and explore his country. I believe that everyone in life should take an adventure like Chris, perhaps more well-thought out and less life-threatening, but to return to nature. Not only as a pilgrimage for the soul but a reminder of how blessed we are to exist on this planet. A planet that was perfectly made for humans. That is still growing and evolving like us. So, happy birthday Chris! May you rest in peace.

If you want to learn more about Chris’s story please head to this link.