Into the Wild

"There is absolutely nothing wrong with making science understandable to the masses."

Years ago, when I enjoyed Outside magazine, one of the main reasons I enjoyed it was the writing of David Quammen, precisely because he made difficult concepts easily understandable. I need to pick up one of his books.

+1 on David Quammen. And don't forget the late great Steven J. Gould.

Also +1 on Brian Greene. For an interesting critique of string theory, Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics is very good.

Excellent drift here…

More drift…
Longitude by Dava Sobel
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by Katie Hafner

In my opinion he "didn't do great" out there. He died. And he didn't die from some unforeseeable run of bad luck or an unfortunate accident. And he didn't die because those seeds were poisonous. That was a made up fact. He simply starved to death.

Analysis of the wild sweet peas, given as the cause of Chris's death in Sean Penn's film, turned up no toxic compounds and there is not a single account in modern medical literature of anyone being poisoned by this species of plant.

http://www.tifilms.com/wild/call_debunked.htm

He did have a map, it was just a lousy map. But it was a map good enough so he would have known there was a road he could have walked to without crossing the river.

And there was a tram across the river only 1/4 mile from where he tried to cross. A little over 400 yards! If I were trying to cross a river I would certainly walk a long way up or down stream to see if it "braided out" to make it fordable. And if I needed to to save my life I'd build a raft and cross. With any awareness at all he would have known the Park road was a day or two's hike away with no rivers to cross. He had lots of options.

He had a rifle with 400 rounds and he even shot a moose (almost certainly all the food he would have needed to survive the whole time) and wasted nearly the whole animal because he didn't know how to preserve the meat. All his hunting was completely illegal, and had he made it out alive and had been caught he would have been fined thousands of dollars and likely spent jail time.

Too bad he died, but I sure don't see him as a hero or a role model.

I have been chastised for saying this before on BPL.

He did not have the skills, experience or knowledge to survive. His passing was his own fault. He was not a hero or a role model. There is no reason to romanticize his life.

His death was unfortunate, but predictable.

I read through Ronald Hamilton's article on lathyrism from the eating the seeds of the hedysarum alpinum. I am a hard sell on that point because there have been theories flung out there about poisoning and mold and what-have-you that haven't stood up to laboratory analysis. The paper makes a convincing case that lathyrism was a contributing factor for McCandless, and it wasn't something he could have been expected to know.

He possibly would have survived had it not been for lathyrism. He almost certainly would have survived if he'd had basic wilderness skills and decent judgment. He didn't die of the toxins in the seeds, he died of starvation. Had he properly cared for the moose, or taken advantage of many other opportunities to save his life, he would almost certainly have been alive today.

It's always good to keep an open mind though. Kudos to Mr. Hamilton for his research.

+1 w/Nick

I think some people romanticize the fact that he eschewed the normal trappings of society.

But I agree with Nick as well.

Natural selection at work.

However, I also think there are very few people that could truly survive in the wild today for long term without help of others, or using mechanims of society in some manner. Possibly none.

>"and wasted nearly the whole animal because he didn't know how to preserve the meat."

+1 Buck.

When I got up here 15 years ago, I was great at temperate-climate hiking and backpacking, decent at skiing and okay at handling myself down to 10F. I had only caught one fish in my life. The only mammal I'd killed was a dog crossing the highway at night. I was pretty good with edible plants.

Once I got here, I learned:

dog mushing from my doctor.

how to dig clam, clean clams and cook them from a homeless guy.

how to catch trout and salmon with a rod&reel from friends.

how to catch salmon with a net from someone who shared his fishing site with me.

halibut fishing first on charters and then with friends.

how to be comfortable at -20F and to survive at -40F.

how to skin out and butcher bear and caribou from a Native friend. And hard-shell calming and mushrooming from his wife.

smoking fish and making jerky from friends, off the internet, trail&error and keeping notes.

In the 600,000-year history of our species, I'm sure hunter-gatherers went through such a learning process. But at a younger age, from more skilled adults and elders, and more earnestly. Leaving behind your trust fund, car keys and mattress doesn't instantly make you a Noble Savage. Years and years of learning from others and one's own trail&error gets you there. And "there" isn't a solo trip. "There" is as a contributing member of a group with varied skills and knowledge who work together (and still sometimes have to cast the youngest or oldest out on the ice flow for the good of the group).

….people are still debating McCandless.

Krakauer obviously new he had a good story here.

No doubt McCandless ended up way out of his depth and acted irrationally, or stupidly if you prefer. But McCandless had been acting in pretty bizarre and sometimes dangerous ways well before he ended up in Alaska. To me, it's pretty apparent that he was (not) working through pretty serious psychological issues throughout his journey. He was a disturbed kid trying to nullify his past by reinventing himself on the road while cutting off contact with his family/friends/school back home. Of course this could never work. I think that all of this has to be at least a factor in any judgement of his actions. McCandless needed psychological help. Failing that, it's no wonder that he continued making a series of completely irrational decisions in Alaska. He was driven by an irrational agenda.

"McCandless needed psychological help. . . . he continued . . . in Alaska. "

Jeffery, That describes so many people who moved up here!

A. McCandless

B. Treadwell

David: lol!

It's a thin line between crazy and happy. I believe that's the state line of Alaska.

"needed psychological help"

That describes the majority of americans.

My employer of 5000 people is self-insured. We pay our own actual healthcare costs, just have them administered thru Blue Cross for 10% or so cut.

Anyway so they review them with us every year.

#1 expense……psychoactive drugs.

@Tom

Treadwell…….now there is someone a bit "off".

I think Treadwell is more "off" than McCandless

But they both would have survived if they had left a week or two earlier

"Treadwell…….now there is someone a bit "off"."

I think both were manifestly more than a bit "off".

That said, my Darwin comment was meant to refer only to their exceptional creativity in ensuring that their genes would not be passed on to future generations. I'm sure they were both decent, well meaning young men. Treadwell in particular, as presented in Grizzly Man, had an almost childlike sweetness about him IMO, but natural selection in the wilderness is a demanding mistress, and both failed to measure up in the end.

M B: actually "the majority of americans" don't do anything even remotely like the things that McCandless did. One of the points of Krakauer's book is to explore a kind of behavior that is very rare and often dangerous. The point that I was trying to make is that people judge McCandless as if he were just a normal but stupid kid who got in over his head. But there's more: He was courting suicide many times throughout his journey to Alaska. That's not the same thing as taking your meds and going to work or school–which he could have done and probably should have done! That's certainly what the "majority of americans" do but he was well beyond that. Something very dark and neurotic was mixed in with what he also felt at times to be his liberating journey. Again, the obvious fact that he was highly disturbed should be factored in to our assessment of his behavior. He was engaged in a vigorous battle with his own depression/despair, what have you. That seemed to be the point of his whole crazy enterprise. I think that this is more what Krakauer was interested in, and it's what makes the story compelling. That it ended badly shouldn't surprise us but that's not the point. To dismiss the story because McCandless 'didn't know jack about being in the Alaskan wilderness' represents a certain failure of imagination on the reader's part. It certainly ignores everything about Mccandless' story prior to his last days.

"To dismiss the story because McCandless 'didn't know jack about being in the Alaskan wilderness' represents a certain failure of imagination on the reader's part. It certainly ignores everything about Mccandless' story prior to his last days."

Very well said Jeffrey.

People seem to be entirely missing the point that this book is not a 'how-to' about living in the Alaskan wild, but the story of a very troubled person and his tragic path.

Now let's all go criticize Captain Ahab for being a self-obsessed curmudgeon that was willing to risk all of his relationships and the lives of his crew over some stupid whale. He really should've realized he was becoming unfit for duty much sooner and turned the command over to Starbuck or Ismael. Some people.

Fact is stranger than fiction.

Craig, I was thinking of Moby Dick too. Or Romeo and Juliet: two dumb kids die in love tryst. Old married couples wag their fingers: they got what they deserved.

Hmmm. Trying to compare an over romanticized fool to a work of fiction? Right. Not buying that.

Jeffrey, great comments about the book and movie. I found the book fascinating because it was a mystery: Krakauer knew the end and worked back, wondering how someone like McCandless got to that end. "The Last Season" by Eric Blehm is a similar book, though maybe not as good. The movie was different, about how we need human relationships to survive.

For me, the central point of the movie (which I found very moving) was that "vigorous battle" that Jeffrey mentions above, maybe not with depression, but probably with despair, with the feeling of being lost: in his family relationships, in his suburban upbringing, in finding meaning in his life. It seemed (and maybe only because Sean Penn framed the story this way) that the most important moments in his life was not what happened in Alaska but before, in his relationships with Hal Holbrook's character and Catherine Keener's character and how those connections contrasted so starkly with the connection he had with his parents. To quote another movie: "No man is an island." Come to think of it, maybe "Into the Wild" and "About a Boy" are bookends to the same theme.

Once he got to Alaska, I agree with Buck and others. Reckless with his own life and reckless with the emotions of those who loved him.

So we are to be moved by someone who faced adversity and succumbed to it?

I prefer to celebrate those who overcome adversity and succeed.