The Man Who Stepped Off the Earth: Chris McCandless

Knowing nothing about this man, I clicked on the thumbnail thinking it was about a flat earther who claimed he had fallen off the side of the earth

His sister claimed his father was a violent drunk, her half siblings also have said he was a violent drunk, even Chris said he was a violent drunk. Gee, I wonder if the father was a violent drunk?

I feel like Chris was definitely “ignorance is bliss” personified. It seems like it wasn’t his intent to be a nature survivalist, it was his intent to live life how he wanted.

Chris wasn't a fool for wanting to live his own way. He was a fool for not being prepared to do so.

Remember: no matter how much you love nature, nature is a harsh mistress and you must always be ready for the worst.

If an accused abuser says the victim is “exaggerating” …….. that means the abuse DEFINITELY happened and the aggressor just doesn’t consider it “abuse” lol. What a pos

I understand why Chris did what he did. I’ve always had the inner urge to just drop everything and go road tripping, abandon all my ties to society. And I’ve had a happy childhood. Chris had grown up in an abusive and materialistic environment; it’s no surprise he left. I just hope he died feeling happy and free.

Fun fact: You can avoid rabbit starvation by eating the organ meats and eyes of the rabbit, it has enough fats and carbohydrates to stave off starvation long enough to survive to find other things

Him writing MOOSE! is so wholesome to me you can tell how excited and happy he was to see a moose and honestly I can't blame him

yooooo I just did a project about this guy in high school like a year ago lol. I remember his name “alexander supertramp” was made that way because Supertramp was his favorite band

I knew someone who ended up similar to him. He was a guy who was great in school, friend to every classmate and our class president for a year (all in college). One day he just decided to leave and roam around the country and then even ended up living in a native community in an extremely remote country. He ended up back in the states where I saw him one time seemingly in good spirits until a few weeks later he took his own life. It seems like Chris was going down the same road. All that is left are the memories and one song recorded on a phone around a fire. They were never dumb, just guys finding their own way to live and die.

I love these patreon names, like"Stephen, Marcy, Kebin, Cody, CUMRANGER, Xavier..."

Some people may relate to the sentiment of not really wanting to kill themselves but not wanting to exist so wishing that they could just die some other way. I get those vibes from Chris. Like he didn’t want to actively end his life but he didn’t really care if he did in fact die. That’s why he didn’t want to spend time with gear and maps, he just wanted to get away immediately.

My brother did similar thing as Chris. He travelled all over the US with just himself and few possessions, hitchhiking and relying on the kindness of strangers. He struggles a lot with addiction and mental health issues and we have tried to help him to no avail. My brother has been through many US states. He has friends everywhere. We have gone years with no contact with him because he was living on farms or in forests. He comes back to my hometown every few years, stays awhile with our relatives, then leaves again. We worry for him but he is happier this way than when he stays in one place and tries to live “normally”

What I got from Chris' story is that he never intended to be seen as someone daring, he didn't commit himself to the wilderness to prove something of himself, I think he just genuinely wanted some sort of escape that he believed he would find in the immersion of nature, and I think that is a perspective that is lost to so many people and "critics"

that last photo and message really got me. regardless of how people see him, he was happy and he lived a good life. he wasn’t a perfect man, he certainly wasn’t an idol, but he did the things he did so he could write that note.

I don't think Chris was an idiot, but he was definitely ignorant of the reality of the Alaskan wilderness. It seems like he had a lot of magical thinking about his journey which caused him to ignore the advice of those more experienced than him (like refusing to pack cold weather gear). He was so focused on the spiritual nature of his journey that he just ignored the physical realities of what he was up against. In reality, had he not found "the magic bus", he would have most likely die much sooner.

You're missing the most important research on the starvation issue. Krakauer himself wrote an addendum to Into the Wild about research into ODAP and canavanine poisoning from wild potato seeds when eaten as a major part of one's diet. This type of seed was not known to be poisonous at the time and he had a guidebook on him that said they were safe to eat. ODAP poisoning leads to loss of motor function in the legs and canavanine makes your body unable to synthesize proteins properly. It's possible his poisoning was not due to his own ignorance or mistaken identification of a plant, but due to a gap in the scientific literature that was only closed in the last ten years.

As tragic as his end was. I still admire that he was able to live his life like he WANTED to and that's more than what most people could ever do.

What I wish for Chris is that he would have had a buddy by his side. Someone who could have shown him a few tricks for surviving in the wilderness. Someone who could have been with him in his loneliest moments.