In 1992, a young American named Chris McCandless walked into the Alaska wilderness with the maverick plan to live off the land. He had discarded all his worldly goods, cut off his loving family and survived thus far on odd jobs, rice, nuts and berries. McCandless was found several months later, having starved to death. He left a note scrawled on a page ripped from a Gogol novel: "I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is NO JOKE. In the name of God, please remain to save me. Thank you, Chris McCandless." His corpse weighed 67 pounds. .
Jon Krakauer, a mountain climber and writer, retraced his steps in an effort to find out why a bright, healthy, likeable young person would meet such a fate. Here's what he found. McCandless was an idealist in a culture that didn't favor idealism. He resented his parents. He was part of a long line of people who wanted to do the Thoreau thing at Walden Pond. He was sane. But most of all, he was a young man. Young men take wild risks -- that's why there's always human fodder to fight wars -- and this boy took risk-taking to the absolute limit. It makes for a riveting story, but as Krakauer himself says, when you see McCandless's mother arrive at the site of her son's protracted death, you cannot help feeling a kind of disgust for a boy who would do this to his family.
