“Some people just want to walk to the abyss and stare down into it, it doesn’t mean they want to fall in”(Carine Mccandless, Return to the Wild). In 1992, Christopher Mccandless, a nineteen year-old Emory University graduate, abandoned his possessions, gave his entire savings account to charity, and hitchhiked to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Throughout his travels, he seeks and ultimately finds pleasure and joy, along with truth and purpose he has been searching for his entire life. While on his journey, Chris encounters a series of characters who shape his life. Some believe that Mccandless was arrogant in going into the Alaskan wilderness only to die in an abandoned bus. Chris set out into the wild in order to pursue a life of adventure, get away from his money-driven, materialistic parents, and to get away from the practice of hypocrisy. …show more content…
The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun”(Christopher Mccandless). Christopher Mccandless was a very adventurous person and he loved to take risks. According to his sister, Carine, if it wasn’t challenging, it wasn’t a challenge and if he knew the outcome, it wasn’t an adventure. Changing his name to Alexander Supertramp, he shouldered his backpack, filled with little more than books, rice, and his .22 caliber rifle and walked into the forest, to live off the land or die trying. He walked until he came upon a rusted Fairbanks city bus that had been used as a crude shelter. He survived for 114 days, before dying of starvation, living in what he referred to as his “magic bus.” Christopher didn’t go to the wilderness to die, he went to experience an adventure unlike any he has ever had