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The Beatification of Chris Mccandless: from Thieving Poacher Into Saint

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The Beatification of Chris Mccandless: from Thieving Poacher Into Saint Opinions The beatification of Chris McCandless: From thieving poacher into saint Author: Craig Medred Updated: September 27, 2016 Published September 20, 2013 Thanks to the magic of words -- and words can indeed be magic -- the poacher Chris McCandless was transformed in his afterlife into some sort of poor, admirable romantic soul lost in the wilds of Alaska, and now appears on the verge of becoming some sort of beloved vampire. Given the way things are going, the dead McCandless is sure to live on longer than the live McCandless, who starved to death in Interior Alaska because he wasn't quite successful enough as a poacher. Alaska moose hunters in August 1992 found the remains of his 67-pound body in a sleeping bag in a deserted bus not far off the George Parks Highway west of Healy. Author Jon Krakauer later immortalized McCandless in the 1996 book "Into the Wild," conspired with director Sean Penn to bring him back to life again in the 2007 movie of the same name, and is now playing the media to resurrect McCandless once more with a new theory as to how the 24-year-old died. Since Krakauer, the maker of the literary magic and a man who seems interested in nothing in life so much as book sales, wants to revisit his defining character, isn't it about time for a painful and objective public consideration of the real McCandless, given that he has now been dead long enough that no one really needs to play nice about his behaviors preceding his death. Enough with Krakauer and his mysterious poisons, isn't it about time to wash off the makeup Krakauer put on the corpse of the offspring of a very comfortable American upbringing and take a serious look at the boy-man beneath? What you find there is not very pretty. It could leave many more than a little troubled that some schools in America actually encourage students to read Krakauer's eulogy to the bum, poacher and thief Chris McCandless as if his behaviors had redeeming value. McCandless did commit one commendable act in his life: Just before he turned his back on family and old friends, he gave the $24,292 left in his college education fund to Oxfam, a hunger relief organization. Whether this was an act of benevolence or a challenge to his well-to-do family -- at which he was angry for reasons that have never been explained -- no one will ever know. But it was commendable. Afterward, McCandless's behavior went pretty steadily downhill. He drove from his Virginia home into a future as a scofflaw. He abandoned his car, according to Krakauer, in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area because he couldn't get it started after a flood and figured that if he asked for help authorities might ask him to explain why the registration was expired, and why he carried no insurance. Not to mention the questions that might arise as to why he was driving in an area closed to motor vehicles. McCandless hitchhiked northwest into the Sierra Nevada Mountains where he burglarized a cabin, or as The New Yorker writer Chip Brown put it in so-much-politer terms back in the 1990s, when reporters were glossing over McCandless's warts, he "came upon a cabin stocked with emergency food. He broke in and loaded up his pack." Brown was one of the first to start backtracking McCandless after moose hunters in August 1992 found the man's emaciated body in the bus where he'd taken up residence as a squatter. It is interesting to go back now and reread Brown's story. Brown, too, soft-pedaled McCandless's backstory. Don't forget the Golden Rule of the Society of Polite Journalists: Never speak unkindly of the dead. But despite this impediment, Brown didn't romanticize McCandless the way "Into the Wild" later would. World-class freeloader After the burglary in the Sierras, Brown wrote, McCandless "fell in with an itinerant society, a life of temporary camps and plans that never reached more than a week or two into the future." The phrase "itinerant society" refers to folks commonly called "bums" or "street people." They survive on handouts of the governmental or panhandling sort, and often a little thievery. Eventually, McCandless left them to wander northwest then back to the east where he took an actual job in South Dakota. It didn't last long. McCandless was soon off again, but this time sent a postcard to the man who'd paid him to do odd jobs. "Tramping is too Easy with all this money," he wrote. "My days were more exciting when I was penniless and had to Forage Around for my next meal ... I've decided that I'm going to live this Life for some time to come." "This life" to which he refers is panhandling, stealing and freeloading. If "Into the Wild" makes nothing else clear, it documents that McCandless was a first-class freeloader. From South Dakota, McCandless headed southwest and illegally slipped into Mexico packing a handgun. He then equally illegally re-entered the U.S., still packing heat, only to be caught and jailed. He was let go after his gun was taken away. Most of this behavior can in many ways be excused by McCandless's youth. A lot of young men are rebellious thrill-seekers prone to bad behavior. I'd have to plead guilty to some of this myself. Just to stay alive, I did a little poaching when I first arrived in Alaska in 1973, though I never wasted anything in my life. And I confess to having abandoned a Volkswagen van along the Alaska Highway in Canada when I was near McCandless's age, and to having taken advantage of more than a few friends, and to getting into a couple Fairbanks bar fights, and to engaging in some bad behaviors involving controlled substances. Alaska doesn't always attract the best young men, though some of them do grow up to become responsible citizens. And some don't. That a young man like McCandless should pack up and start hitchhiking north to The Last Frontier is an all-too-familiar story. American frontiers have always had a history of attracting adventurers, oddballs, ne'er-do-wells and misfits, and Alaska is the final extension of the frontier. That is why, for better or worse, it still attracts those that folks here have come to call the "end of the roaders." McCandless was a classic end-of-the-roader. An Alaska Native man who is pretty sure he gave McCandless a ride north on the Alaska Highway in 1992 remembers him this way: My aunt and I picked him up hitchhiking when we were coming back from Dot Lake to Fairbanks. He was somewhere near Delta. When I asked him his name he gave us some weird name, was generally strange and did not want to chitchat at all. He was too weird, and after about a half hour on the road with this strange dude we stopped by a general store. He brought his big backpack in with him, and we ditched him. I never made the connection until I saw a picture of him. He was so bizarre (my aunt) could barely tolerate him in the car. He was smelly too, and gave no information about himself and distrusted us. It was weird. He was weird ... he had some weird energy. This description is not exactly out of line with Krakauer's fluffier reference to the quirky McCandless, who worked for a very short time at a McDonald's in Arizona. That was the McCandless who, Krakauer concedes, hated wearing socks, worked too slow and did not shower enough, if at all. Krakauer painted this as somehow endearing. So, too, McCandless' clear adoption of the "it's-all-about-me" philosophy after that donation to Oxfam. What was actually going on in McCandless' head at that time no one really knows. "Chris told me he thought he was going to be alone in his life," friend Don Springer told Brown. "He had been drinking a bit, and he got very emotional. It wasn't a cry for help. I think he just wanted to tell somebody." Or maybe it was a cry for help. Springer was one of the many high-school and college friends with whom McCandless cut off contact after he hit the road. Personally, I think the evidence is there to draw a reasonable conclusion McCandless was suffering from a mental illness: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, take your pick. That would help explain both his disinterest in socially redeeming behaviors and his comfort with the "itinerant society," as Brown described the people now sometimes referred to simply as "homeless." A fair number of them suffer from mental illness. 'Stupid rules' Whatever the case, it is clear McCandless's later, major -- and only -- contribution to the society and economy of Alaska was the Fairbanks purchase of a Remington .22-caliber rifle and 400 rounds of ammunition, though no hunting or fishing license. Granted, those are costly for non-residents, but at the very least he could have illegally claimed residency and obtained the $5 license available to the poor. But he really didn't seem to care about hunting or fishing laws. As he reportedly told the last man to see him alive, "How I feed myself is none of the government's business. Fuck their stupid rules." And fuck their stupid rules is what he proceeded to do.
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