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Alex's backpack looked as though it weighed only twenty-five or thirty pounds, which struck Gallien-an accomplished hunter and woodsman-as an improbably light load for a stay of several months in the backcountry, especially so early in the spring. Gallien, a union electrician, was on his way to Anchorage, 240 miles beyond Denali on the George Parks Highway he told Alex he'd drop him off wherever he wanted. He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and "live off the land for a few months." Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be twenty-four years old and said he was from South Dakota. "Just Alex," the young man replied, pointedly rejecting the bait. "Alex?" Gallien responded, fishing for a last name. The hitchhiker swung his pack into the bed of the Ford and introduced himself as Alex. Gallien steered his truck onto the shoulder and told the kid to climb in. A rifle protruded from the young man's backpack, but he looked friendly enough a hitchhiker with a Remington semiautomatic isn't the sort of thing that gives motorists pause in the forty-ninth state. He didn't appear to be very old: eighteen, maybe nineteen at most. Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn. (Postcard received by Wayne Westerberg in Carthage, South Dakota.) If this adventure proves fatal and you don't ever hear from me again I want you to know you're a great man. It might be a very long time before I return South. Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory. Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me, Wayne. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding-and not an ounce of sentimentality. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. Digging deeply, he takes an inherently compelling mystery and unravels the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.
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Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the dries and desires that propelled McCandless. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away.
#Into the wild book free#
He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented.
#Into the wild book license#
In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself.
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His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt.