Into the Wild

The story of Christopher McCandless is an interesting one. Profiled by Jon Krakauer in his book Into the Wild, McCandless' adventure has been brought to the big screen by Sean Penn. [The picture above is of Emile Hirsch who plays McCandless in the film.]

Outside magazine describes McCandless as...

the 22-year-old from Annandale, Virginia, who graduated from Atlanta's Emory University in 1990, donated the remaining $24,000 in his college fund to Oxfam America, cut ties to his parents, and took off on a quest to escape his privileged upbringing. For two years, he wandered North America alone as "Alexander Supertramp," abandoning his car in the Arizona desert and then riding trains and hitchhiking from California to South Dakota to Oregon to Utah to Washington to Baja and points in between. Then, in the spring of 1992, he walked into the Alaskan wilderness for his final adventure. Four months later, trapped by a swollen river that had cut him off from civilization, he starved to death in an abandoned Fairbanks city bus.

While the adventure has me interested, wandering into the barren wasteland of Alaska with no provisions just seems like a death wish. It seems like McCandless was more interested in running away than running toward something. I just don't find the idea of cutting all ties to civilization, and abandoning one's family, noble. Why must we leave our family and bank account behind to be considered a true adventurer? Perhaps he was just looking for a huge challenge and miscalculated the Alaskan wilderness. But even smart adventurer's make some safety provisions. (Compare this with Ewan McGregor, who learned survival skills and medical skills before motorcycling around the world. And McGregor didn't have to dump his family to do it.)

Think I'm wrong? You can find Krakauer's original article here and discussions about making of the film here.