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Comment by kerkeslager | Hacker News Reader

One of my friends lived in Healy, Alaska, the nearest town to the bus.

He said that a lot of people came to the area trying to relive McCandless' journey. Locals called them "pukers" because they would go into the woods and within a few days of attempting to forage for food, would inevitably eat or drink something contaminated or one of the various mildly poisonous plants in the area, begin vomiting, and give up and return to town (hopefully).

I always thought of McCandless' story as a cautionary tale. I don't think it means we should compromise on our ideals, but I do think it means we need to build skills and awareness. There are causes worth dying for, but most of the time dying can and should be avoided.

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IMO (having only watched the film), preparation was meaningless because McCandless had a mentality that led him _toward_ risk -- a kind of death wish. He escalated his personal risk more and more, and eventually suffered the inevitable consequences.

But, I get the impression that in his own head, he didn't feel a choice in the matter, or rather the alternative was worse.

Therein lies the true "moral" of the film, as I personally interpreted it: McCandless was trapped in his own head, no matter how far he traveled he couldn't escape his own mentality. The tragedy is that it seems he himself realized this too late. But, who knows -- personally, I imagine him being at peace with his decision and the ultimate result.

It's been over a decade since I read the book and saw the film, so what I am about to say may be a product of my imperfect memory rather than the reality of the book and movie, but here goes anyway:

I see how you got the impression that McCandless was trapped in his own risk-addicted thinking from the movie, but I think that impression is editorializing on the part of the filmmakers.

I'm a rock climber and it's my experience that the risk taking in rock climbing isn't a death wish. On the contrary, it's a life-wish, a desire to experience life to its fullest even if that means risking your life. You will die--risking death is not a risk. The greatest risk you take is dying without achieving your deepest desires and dreams.

This is a pretty common view in the rock climbing community, and I think that Jon Krakauer, a mountaineer the author of the In To the Wild book, probably held a view of risk similar to my own, which is why the book presents a much more sympathetic view of McCandless' risk-taking.

I climb too, and I agree with your perspective.

When I read the book I felt McCandless was a romantic. Naive perhaps, and his death was unnecessary, but he lived his life on his own terms to a degree which is relatively rare today.

Same here. It was a romantic drive. Not even really for an adrenaline rush which is partly what something like base jumpers are after. And even then, only some of them could be said to have a death wish.

I think that everybody ends up "living their lives on their own terms" in one way or another. Life presents facts to you. If you wish to go on living, you adapt to them. If you choose not to go on living, that's your choice, but I think it's misleading to imply that other people aren't making their own choices -- including, most of the time, choices that bring them to stay alive.

I don't mean that as anything negative about McCandless. It's just that I think it's worth saying that other people aren't also lesser for making their own different choices. They are also doing their best with the difficult problems life throws at you, giving you lots of options and few clues.

Interesting, it sounds like I should read the book.

For what it's worth, the "death wish" thing wasn't meant to be pejorative -- maybe I should have used a different term. I like your "life-wish" phrasing better, thank you for that perspective.

The book is a short read and worth it. Follow it up with the movie if you're not familiar with a few of the places so you can get a feel for his travels.

I enjoyed both and admire his path.

Krakauer's other book on mountaineering would seem to lend credence to your view

I spent a month on an ice field and glacier in Alaska and let me tell you, that state is no joke. We nearly lost a couple of my team to a glacial runoff river that we crossed, I have a permanent scar from devil's club. Fortunately we didn't get poisoned (the onyl thing we ate that was local was some blueberries). It was really amazing being only ~50-60 miles from Anchorage in the most isolated place I'd ever been (chugach ice fields)

We did have an interesting experience- an encounter with Dick "Black Ass" Griffith (his nickname came from the frostbite that removed his back parts) who adventured all over just on the money that Alaska gives to its citizens every year.

Speaking of devil's club - what really sucks is scrambling in the brush down a hill (I did a lot of that in 15 years there), slipping, and grabbing a nice spiky devil's club as you reach out to catch yourself...

But the nature is amazing, and now that I compare it with other places, just plain good for the soul.

yes, that's exactly what happened to me- well, i didn't grab it, just brushed against it while bush-whacking. A whole section of my skin turned red, then black, then sloughed off, and I still have a big scar 20+ years later.

I worked with a guy who used to live in the area and he also had an interesting perspective. He explained that there were many people who lived in remote homes that needed to have water, fuel, etc. trucked in from town. Sometimes they would encounter one of these people half dead. They'd had to waste some of their limited resources helping them get to safety. This led to a lot of anger.

This is such an arrogant and narrow minded attitude that's strangely popular. Just because they happen to encounter more people in trouble than most of us, doesn't mean those people don't deserve help.

Imagine seeing a homeless person begging in the street and getting angry because he wants your help when he should have just not made all those "stupid" "unprepared" decisions that led to it. Or imagine someone having a heart attack and getting angry because they should have had a better diet and exercise throughout their life - it's their own stupid fault that they're dying and why should I bother helping them. Or a suicidal person - just get a therapist or stop thinking those stupid thoughts that make your problem worse. Almost all causes of death are preventable or at least delay-able. Most of us will die earlier than we could have because of our own unnecessary pleasure-seeking actions.

> Imagine seeing a homeless person begging in the street and getting angry because he wants your help when he should have just not made all those "stupid" "unprepared" decisions that led to it.

I don't know that people get dumped into the Alaskan wilderness for being unable to pay medical bills.

> Or imagine someone having a heart attack and getting angry because they should have had a better diet and exercise throughout their life - it's their own stupid fault that they're dying and why should I bother helping them.

Never hang around ER nurses.

> Or a suicidal person - just get a therapist or stop thinking those stupid thoughts that make your problem worse.

Really never hang around ER nurses.

People are usually pretty willing to help when they are in a secure position. But when you start assuming a lot of risk to help someone, outright foolishness is harder to stomach.

You might say when offering help saddles you with risk, it accelerates compassion fatigue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion_fatigue)

> Just because they happen to encounter more people in trouble than most of us, doesn't mean those people don't deserve help.

It sounds like the locals provide help. That they're angry about it doesn't mean they think somebody doesn't deserve help.

As a South African growing up in a rural area, I always saw Into the Wild as an example of how Alaskans—or other people who don't die in the woods—with common sense are thrown under the bus in favour of general Americans with more gripping stories that unfortunately revolves around a couple of stupid decisions.

It's a great story to make a movie about, but isn't the daily life of an Alaskan a great story too? It appears that it isn't seen as a cautionary tale at all, but an instruction on how to "go back to nature".

Most Alaskans live in towns with lives similar to that of other Americans. They go to work, buy groceries, do laundry, watch TV. Not a "great" story except in the sense of celebrating the ordinary.

I guess, but as a kid, I practically lived in the thick woods around our house.

As a boy, it was awesome to live in a place where carrying a khukuri (or small sword) wasn't so out of the ordinary, and I have fond memories of bushwhacking trails, coming home smelling of earth and picking the inevitable spiders out of my clothes.

> I guess, but as a kid, I practically lived in the thick woods around our house.

You were just enjoying nature and going back to the safety of civilization at night. McCandless was trying to break his dependence on civilization entirely. There's nothing wrong with what you were doing, I do it myself. But it's not the same thing.

I lived like that growing up in Virginia. Mid-Atlantic has many areas like this. Minus the Nepali souvenirs though.

And I had the same experience growing up in rural southeastern Ohio. Bushwhacking, spending a lot of time in and near rivers and streams, walking the fields, hunting small game. The specific place where I grew up has largely lost most of this, minus the water. I wonder if other places have lost pieces of it, too.

For someone like me who has rarely seen snow in my 45 years on this planet, getting a glimpse of an ordinary life in extraordinary climate is quite interesting.

Nothing wrong with doing laundry with a better view than 90% of the rest of humanity. I was a really studious kid and only later came to appreciate the area where I am from.

What McCandless attempted (and failed at) was entirely different from what most Alaskans are doing. He was trying to detach himself from dependence on the rest of civilization.

I've spent a lot of time in harsh wilderness. I've climbed Andes peaks, camped in deserts in the southwestern US, slept in tents in the Appalachian mountains in February in sub-zero temperatures. At no point was I ever not dependent on civilization. I always wore manufactured protective gear, slept in manufactured shelters, ate the products of agriculture, drank water I had hauled in from the modern water treatment. I know a lot of the local edible plants, but even when I've made a salad of garlic mustard and morels, it has always been an option to go to the store if I was still hungry afterward, or go to the doctor if I got sick from what I had eaten.

I've never thought of him as a failure at all. He did something significant for himself and left a legacy.

I've always thought of Dick Proenneke[1] as what McCandless could have/should have been. Despite attempting a similar thing (go detach from civilization as much as possible, though Proenneke didn't take it to the same extreme), Proenneke was actually prepared and talented in the kinds of crafts necessary to have a good life in the wilderness - guy was a crazy-good outdoorsman in general, on top of great carpentry/woodworking[2]/general jury-rigging.

The best part is that he took an 8mm camera and filmed a lot of his work, including building his cabin from almost entirely indigenous materials. Those films ended up as the (PBS-involved?) documentary Alone in the Wilderness[3].

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

[2] https://www.nps.gov/lacl/learn/historyculture/proennekes-cab...

[3] https://youtu.be/iYJKd0rkKss (partial)

Totally agreed. Alone in the Wilderness is such an inspiration to me.

This. Every time McCandless comes up - and bless him for his youthful misadventure - I think of the documentary Alone in the Wilderness.

It's one of my favorite films of all time, and have watched it numerous times. He had the right training and planning, knowledge, skills, equipment and support (a friend visisted regularly with supplies) to achieve it successfully.

I love that the film footage was recorded by himself, some of it is just gorgeous scenery. He demonstrates the hard work necessary to build everything for survival.

> "pukers"

That's really funny.

On the one hand, I feel a satisfying connectedness when I visit a real-life place mentioned in a book: I traveled the Spanish countryside after reading "The Sun Also Rises", and got lost in the countryside and drank red wine on the hills. I also visited the killing fields in Cambodia after reading "The Killing Fields" and "Swimming to Cambodia". It was fucking terrifying that this happened in my lifetime.

On the other hand, I can see how stressful this is for locals, like both in Alaska and Spain who aren't asking for the influx. But at least in Cambodia, it is an important historical legacy and it brings revenue.

I've come to the conclusion for myself that I don't want to bother the locals just for my own satisfaction unless the target destination has been built with concern and sensitivity, and not for exploitation. Even the latter case is still subjective: are the streets of Paris' tourist-traps exploitative and annoying? What about the shops around Giza's pyramids? Both locations seemed to be unhappy about the tourism. I spoke with a shop owner in Panama and he said the locals love/hate tourists: the dollars are important, but the psychological impact of having their homes be fishbowls is not insignificant.

I read The Killing Fields. It makes me really appreciate my little bubble of safety in the world. It was totally surreal.

I grew up in an area where tourism was the only industry. I think you under-estimate how many people in those places have drank the cool-aid and think they are sharing something special with the world. Everyone else gets out or gets addicted to something. That said, this was a first world country where people could mostly get out if they didn't like it.

That said, it's a terrible industry and is only marginally more ethical than cutting down mountains and polluting rivers for coal in my opinion.

this is the slow version of idiots falling into the grand canyon trying to get a great selfie.

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?

To me, a celebrity bus is not more substantive than the Grand Canyon. This would include Furthur if it still existed. YMMV.

I don't think the person you are responding to was saying that a celebrity bus is more substantive than the Grand Canyon.

I think they were saying that going to a place because it has meaning for an ideal of breaking dependence on society is more substantive than going to a place so you can take a picture to get attention on the internet. It's not about the place, it's about your reasons for going there.

The Grand Canyon is a place with incredible splendor, and I am sure there are people who go there for substantive reasons too.

The bus is famous for a best selling book and a Hollywood movie. It's what Eco might call "hyperreal." It signifies breaking dependence on society not a breaking of dependence. The Grand Canyon doesn't require knowing the story. It forces acceptance that one does not and cannot know the story.

Admittedly, that doesn't make for a good movie.

I'd like to respond to what you're saying, but I don't understand it. Would you mind clarifying?

Are you familiar with Eco’s work?

I've read only Foucalt's Pendulum.

There's a significant trade in people who go to the top of Everest "for the gram." I think you're underestimating the willful foolishness of people. The Last Week Tonight episode on Everest is useful viewing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bchx0mS7XOY

Everest is even worse than "doing it for the gram". It's not just that they're doing it for attention that's disgusting. It's that they're literally trying use wealth to buy achievement without doing the actual work of achievement.

It used to be that Everest was a crowning achievement in a mountaineer's career. To top out, you would have to climb many, many other mountains in preparation, building skills, physique, and relationships with other mountaineers.

But now people regularly reach the top of Everest as their first (and often last) summit. If you have never reached the top of a major mountain before, you're a beginner mountaineer. And if Everest is summitted by dozens of beginner mountaineers every year, it's a beginner mountain. The primary barrier to Everest now is amassing ~$40k in expendable income to pay sherpas to drag you to the summit.

It's worth noting that what the sherpas do is still extraordinary.

Or Rattlesnake Ledge in Washington.

Yeah, that's a crazy dangerous place that is often very overcrowded on a weekend near Seattle.

It is definitely often crowded, but what about it is "crazy dangerous?"

Because it is exposed, you could easily fall and die and a few people do die every year or so. Here's one from 2018 https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/teenager-dies-afte...

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