This is incorrect. Jon Krakauer who wrote Into the Wild pulled this out of his ass. The dude just starved cuz he had no idea what he was doing. He was a pretty shitty person all around.

I love Krakauer's style of writing and have read all of his books. His writing style reminds a lot of Stephen Ambrose.

If you like Into The Wild, you might also like One Man's Wilderness about Richard Proenneke: http://www.amazon.com/One-Mans-Wilderness-Alaskan-Odyssey-eb...

Outside has been popular for decades. They published the articles that led to Krakauer's books Into Thin Air and Into the Wild.

I highly recommend reading Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild if this story interests you - it's the story of McCandless in all its gory detail.

Yeah the headline caught me but the article disappointed. I don't think there is any honor in being homeless and stealing from others. Had he been self-sufficient that would have been interesting to me; however if you've read Into the Wild you know how that ends.

I actually read Into the Wild when I was younger and that was the quote I was channeling. That quote has resonated with me ever since and reshaped the way I think about relationships and what it means to be happy.

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

If you found 'Into The Wild' interesting, make sure to checkout 'Into Thin Air' from the same author. It's about a summit attempt of Everest that went awry and is awesome.

Edit: come to think of it, I've read pretty much everything that Jon Krakauer has written. The guy's grocery lists are probably well thought out and have a compelling narrative.

If you're going to Healy, AK, chances are you're not just doing it for the gram.

I remember reading Into The Wild in my twenties and feeling a strong connection to Alex. Even if going to the bus wasn't a wise decision, I feel it's only human to want to cultivate those types of connections. I never went to the bus, but I was definitely curious what Alex was experiencing in the final days of his life.

I agree with GP that it's a cautionary tale, but it's more than that. It's caused thousands of people to think more about the way they live their lives. Seems a bit more substantive than simply trying to get a selfie, don't you think?

I'm an avid explorer, regularly setting off to do things that are not entirely "safe". (though nothing on this scale).

The story of Chris McCandless[1] (Into The Wild) spoke to me so strongly, I made the trek[2] into the wilderness where he passed away, an old bus on the side of a trail in Alaska.

Chris' is a very controversial story, with many people believing he was an idiot for wandering in there "unprepared" and many thinking he is inspirational. I wound up spending 4 years living in the North, exploring the far corners of Yukon and Alaska.

I feel strongly there are some personality types that just need to get "off the map" and I love the part of Jon Krakauer's book Into The Wild where he suggests having a piece of wilderness on the earth that literally has no map. People can choose to go in there to explore. They'll (likely) find mountains, rivers, lakes, caves, etc. but nothing will be mapped, everything is to be discovered. When they return, they can't talk specifics, or show photos.

Some of us want to go places that have been unexplored, and we accept that risk.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McCandless

[2] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus

I like reading about RV-living and micro-apartments in a similar way as I liked reading Into the Wild. There's lots to like, but I'd never actually do it. I just don't think I could get comfortable with the sacrifice of comfort and safety (even if it is only a perceived reduction in comfort and safety). And plus my wife would divorce me.

Polemic, passionate in a one-note way, pleading, to an extent that sacrifices the narrative. Two great examples from Krakauer: _Under The Banner Of Heaven_, which veers into a straight-up litigation against the Mormon faith†, and _Where Men Win Glory_, whose latter third is practically tear-stained.

Note: I'm not saying either of those books are bad; I liked them. I loved _Into The Wild_.

† I'm not one.

Pretty much. I actually found "Into the Wild" to be among his least interesting--probably because I couldn't really identify with McCandless."Into Thin Air" is the book that put him on the mainstream map and it's awesome. "Under the Banner of Heaven" is particularly noteworthy as well--although I found the historical parts the more interesting. (The modern story was mostly just depressing.)

Maybe not one, but 3 books:

Into the Wild (book and movie): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7ArZ7VD-QQ
When I was in high school I was considering the same path as Christopher took, but then I heard about him and I learned from his story. "Happiness only real when shared"

Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6289283-born-to-run
This is how I got really hooked up to triathlon and ultramarathons. Great book, I lent it to many people and changed some of their lives too.

Learning PHP and MySQL: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40544.Learning_PHP_and_M...
The book is ok, not great, but it changed my life. This is how I learned to program.

But I would say that other media also had an impact. Like poems:

"If—" by Rudyard Kipling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qH5txHlSOUI

Then there are some short videos:
The Race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM5A1K6TxxM
Godspeed: https://youtu.be/pNSWTwB-_bk
"The Hubble Ultra Deep Field" by Deep Astronomy: https://youtu.be/oAVjF_7ensg

I'm part of the "Chris McCandless was an idiot" crowd, but I guess he was intentionally not optimizing for survival. Into the Wild is still a very engaging book, but it frustrates me so much that people idolize a guy who made bad decision after bad decision.

The thing that pissed me off the most was when he burned his money instead of donating it to charity.

> And because many people—both admirers of McCandless and his detractors—regard “Into the Wild” as a cautionary tale, it’s important to know as much as possible about how McCandless actually may have died."

Cautionary tales are just that, tales. It's entertainment pure and simple.

Cautionary tales have never taught, if anything they do the opposite and create wrong thought patterns.

We don't need to know to not go off to live in the crazy wilderness unprepared. Eat less cheese burgers is a boring story(Morgan Spurlock aside) but a better lesson.

The fact people seem to have the need to self justify that they are entertained about stories of someone else's downfall is an interesting condition.

Are you sure growkits are illegal? Truffles?

Although nowadays I am rather conservative regarding recreative use of entheogenics Azarius ships their growkits seemingly to entire Europe [1]. Anecdata: it is fairly easy to grow champignons and psilos. The kits I used were complete with straightforward guides.

I wrote "psilos" because there is also A. Muscaria, though it has less severe effects care must be taken when plucking food in the wild (and I am unsure if they'd be an option for your specific use case). There are some great guides out there allowing you to distinct species but as Sean Penn's Into The Wild [2] shows one mistake can be fatal. There's a Dutch community on FB about plucking mushrooms in the wild, but its focusing on its culinary usage. As I said, there's also some guides (in the form of books) available.

BTW, do you know if and why psilocybin works (better) than LSD for your use case?

[1] https://azarius.net/smartshop/magic-mushrooms/grow-kits/ (Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated, used to be a customer back in the '00s)

[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758758/

This is quite poignant. It reminds me of my own time in middle school, which also happened during the recession of the early 90s, when the endless optimism and expansionism of the 80s, with the Berlin Wall coming down and boundless real estate gains and an expanding economy, finally came to an end. There was the oil price shock, the fall of the Soviet Union, and of course my most notable memory of being briefly trapped in a house while helping my dad on a contract job doing a second floor addition by the expanding wave of the LA Riots. 63 people killed and the National Guard marching through Los Angeles.

And I didn't know it until I read Into the Wild a few years later when I went to college, but 1992 was the same year Chris McCandless died, with great debates in all outdoor communities on whether he was an idiot or a hero. He stayed for a while in Slab City out in the Imperial Valley, with many residents living permanently in RVs. That place is amazingly still there, maybe an even better expression of whatever is left of the myth of the American frontier, public land owned by the State of California, donated by the Marine Corps, with people allowed to just live there as long as they want, with no real addresses or government-provided services and sometimes not even real legal identities.

It certainly is a very dividing topic. I estimate that the comments on my personal trip to the bus [1] are split 50/50 between people that admire Chris' story, and people that think he was a dumbass.

I think the argument boils whether Chris was unprepared (mentally and equipment-wise) to go into the Alaskan wilderness. If you read "Into the Wild", and the newer "Back to the Wild" book which has entries from his diary and photos from his cameras, I think it's clear Chris was very prepared mentally - he knew exactly what he was trying to do, and he knew exactly how dangerous it was. He spent months working out, climbing mountains with his heavy pack, and researching wild edible berries and game in preparation for what he wanted to do. This shows he had a clear mind going in.

So essentially, he was trying to do something dangerous, with the minimum amount of gear possible.

This is no different from the countless people that attempt to climb Everest or K2 without oxygen and perish in the attempt. Those people are not considered dumb asses. Neither are the countless thousands and thousands that perish getting out there and pushing themselves as best as they can.

A person's level of preparedness for any life adventure is clearly their own choosing. Who are we to say that someone was foolish for attempting to push the boundaries of what they thought they were capable of?

Even worse, if someone were to be the first to summit some mountain or other without oxygen, they would be hailed a hero. If they died, they'd be a dumb ass. The outcome should not have any baring on if they were "prepared enough" or not - only they can make that choice for themselves.

--

As a side note, have you even spent any time in Alaska or with Alaskans? I live up here. If you were to go more than 10 yards from a highway and didn't have a quad, rifle, chainsaw, axe, saw, three pairs of boots, sixteen gloves, spare everything, spare gasoline, 300lb wall tent & stove, sat phone and a spot satellite messenger and you so much as broke a fingernail, Alaskans would very quickly point out you're a complete dumb-ass for being so horribly unprepared. Even worse, you go by yourself.

[1] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-magic-bus

> Fiction: “The Lord of the Rings” (J.R.R. Tolkien); “Game of Thrones” (George R.R. Martin); “Slaughterhouse Five” (Kurt Vonnegut); “Blood Meridian” (Cormac McCarthy); “The Stand” (Stephen King).

> Nonfiction: “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (Tom Wolfe); “Halsey’s Typhoon” (Tom Clavin); “Band of Brothers” (Stephen Ambrose); “Into the Wild” (Jon Krakauer); “Guns of August” (Barbara Tuchman).

about 300 titles (not sure what the proportion of navy specific material, public domain and commercially licensed title are).

Note the high price -- $3k/unit. That is typical in that domain. It is funny because a lot of things they assert to have is actually lack of features -- lack of wifi, lack of cameras. And probably most important -- presumably made in US. In that market there are really ridiculous markups. You just have to know someone who knows someone to get the contract. It (this market) is also mostly immune to being exported overseas -- just due to basic security and trade regulations.

Informally one can say, "a new mac is cheaper than that!". And yeah it is. But this is a mac built to spec, all made in Ohio probably. Interesting what macs would cost in that case if there built to order in smaller batches and made in Ohio, all having strange requirements like FIPS-140-2 compliant crypto libraries enabled and other random red tape restrictions slapped on them....

Krakauer's books "Eiger Dreams" and "Into The Wild" (the latter also a good movie) are worth a read as well. And I've listened several times to his audiobook versions of all three.

More than anyone else I've read, he captures the compulsion and the self-doubt of people compelled to pursue such ventures. My highest "climb" is Mt. Shasta, which is nothing in comparison to anything he's done. But I so understand that urge to go and get into the wilderness. It's a compulsion for some, and he documents it, and the vulnerabilities it implies, so very well.