Into the Wild

Jim Gallien gives a hitchhiker calling himself 'Alex' a ride to the edge of the Stampede Trail. He's worried — the young man is unprepared for the Alaskan bush — but drives him anyway. Weeks later he hears Alex died.

The moose hunters find the body. The SOS note. The journal. Krakauer reconstructs the final weeks from McCandless's photographs and entries. He weighed 67 pounds.

Krakauer traces McCandless backward to Wayne Westerberg's grain elevator in Carthage, where Chris worked and was beloved. Westerberg describes him as the best employee he ever had.

McCandless kayaks the Colorado River to Mexico, lives briefly in the Salton Sea desert, and is nearly deported crossing back into the US. His freedom is exhilarating — and increasingly reckless.

McCandless befriends Jan Burres, a rubber tramp who sells trinkets at swap meets, and her boyfriend Bob. Jan becomes a mother figure. He helps her at swap meets. He leaves without warning.

McCandless befriends 81-year-old Ron Franz, an Army veteran and leatherworker. Franz offers to adopt him. McCandless declines and delivers an extraordinary letter about the meaning of freedom. Franz is destroyed by the news of his death.

Krakauer inserts himself: he describes young men throughout history who sought death or oblivion in wilderness — Ruess, Waterman, McCunn. He argues McCandless belongs to a tradition, not an aberration.

Krakauer reveals his own parallel story: at twenty-three, he attempted a solo first ascent of the Devil's Thumb in Alaska, was nearly killed, and understands McCandless from the inside.

Krakauer visits Chris's parents and sister in Virginia. Walt McCandless built a NASA career and a secret second family. Chris discovered the deception at eighteen. The wound never healed.

Krakauer reconstructs the 113 days in the bus: the moose, the plants, the shrinking journal. McCandless tries to hike out but the Teklanika River is impassable. He returns to the bus. He dies.