Christopher McCandless.....I love him!

This is somthing i wrote last year for college! Its about a man who gives uo everything and decides to just wander through America! Enjoy....

The story of Christopher Johnson McCandless is what I would describe as a deep, meaningful and emotional journey of self discovery and realisation of which I derive pleasure and inspiration. And if it wasn’t for the very thing Christopher was trying to get away from I would never have heard it. I stumbled across his story while killing time on my computer at home, a computer made by a large corporate company being driven by the idea and realisation of making money. A computer of which I am ashamed to admit spend too much time in front of buying into the idea of money making, becoming famous, pointless conversations and all other types of materialistic desires which drive the majority of us in today’s society. A type society that Christopher Johnson McCandless wouldn’t want to be a part of as it has no real meaning or sense of achievement, other than that of one-upmanship and boastfulness. Nevertheless I am a part of it and am making to real effort to leave.

The whole world, weather you like it or not, is driven by the idea and desire of money making. Money allows people to live the life they see in all the glossy magazines, allows people to buy all the things they may not need but want, allows people to travel anywhere in the world and stay in absolute comfort while doing so and most shockingly, and against the key lesson we’ve all been taught growing up. Money makes people Happy. Happy whit a capital H. Money ‘can’ buy you happiness. It can buy you anything you want. Christopher Johnson McCandless left all of this behind on his journey.

This isn’t going to be a self righteous piece of writing in which I will tell you how to live your life, and how the world we live in is a materialistic one and we’ve lost our way as human beings. Because its not. We all realise where our downfalls are as a modern society and accept them. As we should. Instead this is a piece of writing about a true traveler leaving this world behind and entering into a new one where he encounters what I would perceive as true life but am, to be honest, too scared to search for myself.

Who is our traveler? He is Christopher Johnson McCandless. He grew up in Virginia which is located in Fairfax County with his sister Carine, his mum Wilhelmina "Billie" Johnson and his dad Walt McCandless who worked NASA as an antenna specialist before starting a very successful consultancy company with Christophers mum. His parents were the epitome of the modern society I’ve described and were driven by image and making money with their company. At school he was perceived as an intelligent athlete and was a member of the cross country team. Signs of his unique mind were pretty apparent as even at a young age he recommended to all his cross country team mates at his school to treat their running training and events as a spiritual exercise in which they were "running against the forces of darkness and all the evil in the world, all the hatred."

He graduated from high school in 1986. The grades he had achieved enabled him to attend university. Christopher graduated from his University in 1990 where he majored in history and anthropology. The upper middle-class background Christopher was brought up with and the academic success he achieved had hidden his growing contempt for what he saw as the empty materialism of the modern Yank society. I can’t help but think that Christopher thought of his college education as a pointless formality he conformed to on behalf of his parents before he went on his travels. But it’s open to interpretation.

Christopher had $25,000 in his life savings. He saw this as more of a burden than a privilege and therefore deiced to donate all of this to the charity Oxfam International. After this he began his travels, across the vast country that lay under his feet. The traveling was a new start, a new life, away from materialism and for this he decided to use a different name, ‘Alexander Supertramp’. Our traveler made his way through the extremely warm Arizona, California and South Dakota, where he worked at a grain elevator in search of new experiences and new people. It was belived that while working this life as a grain elevator he met what you could describe as a father figure who only encouraged Christopher’s imaginative and curious part of his personality. He alternated between what could be described as settled periods, in which he conformed to normality and often worked a job (to earn some of that precious money), and time spent as ‘Alexander Supertramp’ living with no money and hardly any human contact at all, sometimes even being a proper caveman and foraging for his food in the wild. During these wilderness periods Christopher survived several dangerous and exiting trials, such as losing his car in a flash flood (which would of broken my spirits) and canoeing down remote stretches of the Colorado River down to the Gulf of California while being chased by the authorities because it is illegal to do so, which is something I would love to be able to do. He hardly made any preparation throughout his adventures and took pride in what he was achieving.

Christopher had always wanted to have an adventure in the unbearable lands of Alaska in which he would only use what the land could present him with while being far away from any help. He would however keep a journal documenting everything from his physical condition, the weather and anything he was experiencing spiritually. This way of surviving is something I am extremely impressed with. I think it shows such aspiration and imagination in our modern world. I can barely imagine life without the internet, never mind not having easily accessible food heat or entertainment! It wasn’t until April 1992 that he eventually hitchhiked to a part of Alaska to start his adventure.

After a few days hiking around this new Alaskan wilderness Christopher was in his dream. He found an abandoned bus deep in the Alaskan wilderness which was used as a hunting shelter. He converted this bus into his Alaskan home and finally was able to start living off of what only mother nature could provide. Christopher hardly had any equipment to help him survive. All he had was:

-10-pound bag of rice
-Remington semi-automatic rifle with loads of ammunition
-Book of local plant life and several other books
-Some basic camping equipment.

He was extremely inexperienced as a hunter but was fairly successful in hunting small game like porcupines and birds. With the book on local plant life, his thoughts were he could use it to identify and find all the possible edible plants he was surrounded with.

Christophers journal has 189 days worth of entries. The 189 entries range from the completely awesome to the completely grim with all of Christophers experiences and luck changing fortunes. The following July, after living successfully in his bus home for several months, he decided to leave, but found the trail back blocked by the un passably high Teklanika River. Much, much higher than it was when he passed it at the start of his Alaskan adventure. This meant he was trapped. After all his exploits living off the land away from everything he despised in the modern world, it was the very thing he desired stopping him from returning. This was bad news, Christopher was losing lots of weight and started to deteriorate.

Christophers final words in his journal were added on August the 12th. In these final words he added the torn final page from Louis L'Amour's memoir, Education of a Wandering Man with the words:

"Death's a fierce meadowlark but to die having made Something more equal to centuries Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness. The mountains are dead stone, the people Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness, The mountains are not softened or troubled And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper."

On the other side of the page, Christopher added:

"I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!"

Christophers body was found in his sleeping bag inside his bus home weighing hardly anything. Later it was discovered that Christopher had been dead for more than two weeks and the official cause of death was starvation! This starvation was brought on by incorrectly identifying an inedible plant which made him violently ill.

The story of Christopher’s is an inspiring one, and extremely sad. The journey has been told in many forms, word of mouth, television, books and most recently film. I can now add this feature to the list, although I think if you wanted to experience the story in its most pure form I would recommend the film ‘Into the Wild’ and the book that accompanies it! He was a true traveler and a real inspiration to millions.