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Translation of article “McCandless by McCandless” in the Sunday magazine “Domingo,” in the newspaper El Mercurio, Santiago, Chile, September 18, 2011

Almost twenty years after his death and after the phenomenon of Into the Wild – which began with the best seller by Jon Krakauer and continued with the movie directed by Sean Penn – a new book reveals previously unknown aspects of the identity and of the fatal journey that converted the young Christopher McCandless into a worldwide legend. With transcripts from his trip diary and two hundred photographs taken by Christopher himself during his journey, Back to the Wild is a remarkable history of Christopher McCandless recounted by Christopher McCandless. Here, in an exclusive report, his father Walt speaks. By Rodrigo Cea

When a hunter found his remains in the northeastern part of Denali National Park, Christopher McCandless was just one more of the young men – without preparation or sufficient outdoor experience -- who had paid with their deaths their daring to penetrate alone the cold and solitary landscapes of Alaska.

Today, almost two decades later, McCandless is a worldwide icon of adventuring.

After his death – which it is believed happened in mid-August of ’92, when he was 24 years old – McCandless gradually ceased being an anonymous personage. The news was first published by local newspapers and radio stations, and then began to interest national newspapers and magazines, such as Newsweek and The New Yorker. The beginning of his national fame, and his fame beyond the United States, came from the hand of the writer and mountaineer Jon Krakauer, who – after publishing an article in the magazine Outside – convinced the family to help him write a book about Christopher.

“For a couple of years, many people tried to do so, but we put up a wall and didn’t listen to anyone,” says Walt McCandless, Christopher’s father, by telephone from his home in Virginia Beach, on the East Coast of the United States. “The only one who got through the wall was Jon (Krakauer). He sent us his book Eiger Dreams: Ventures Among Men and Mountains, with a note in which he asked us to get to know his work. My wife Billie and I read it and after a while we called him. After conversing by phone, the next day Jon traveled from Seattle to our home on the East Coast. That’s how it all began.”

A former NASA engineer, at 75 years of age, Walt McCandless says that Into the Wild – a book that was on the best-seller list of The New York Times for two years and that has been translated into 28 languages – is an extremely precise narrative. “It is a very-very precise book. Jon promised us that he was going to identify and get to know all of the places and persons that Chris had gotten to know on his trip and that is exactly what he did,” says Walt, who -- “unfortunately,” he emphasized – cannot say the same for the movie directed by Sean Penn.

“The film is also very precise in many aspects. They went to each site that Chris visited. In all, there were 33 places filmed, from Baja California to Alaska. Nevertheless, some of the things seen in the movie did not happen. For example, Chris kayaking in the rapids of the Grand Canyon. To a certain degree, the movie is sensationalist,” says Walt.

Premiering in 2007, the film brought, in addition to massive worldwide fame, some negative aspects, Walt says. To begin with, the plundering of the emblematic bus Fairfanks 142 (the “Magic Bus,” in the words of Chris McCandless himself) from which among other objects they robbed even the speedometer and later auctioned it on the online auction site eBay.

“I don’t know why that happened, I have no explanation,” says Walt McCandless, “but that’s what happened. That’s all I can tell you. Between 1992 and 2006, before the movie, people would go to the bus, take photos, but no one took anything, not even Chris’s journal or his boots, for example. I remember that when Sean Penn went to the bus, he called us to tell us that he thought everything should be guarded. We told him that it wouldn’t be necessary, because people were being respectful. Oh, well; sadly, time has proved him right. He knew the impact of Hollywood and that things were going to change with the showing of the movie.’

Since that time, the appetite for his story has been insatiable and the bus – which remains in its same place, but today is only the shell – has become a cult destination for hundreds of pilgrims every year, enchanted with the story of Chris, a twenty-year-old who turned his back on his placid life in a suburb outside of Washington, D.C., who wandered during two years through the American West, burned all the money he had in his billfold and changed his name to “Alexander Supertramp.”

Each year, recounts Walt McCandless, hundreds of persons contact him and his wife Billie to tell them how Chris’s story has inspired them and has even caused them to change the direction of their lives.

“Those people can be divided into two large groups,” says Walt. “On the one hand are the young people who are now the age Chris was when he disappeared, a little more than twenty years of age, who for the most part want to emulate his journey and convert their lives into a great adventure in the out-of-doors. The second group is composed of people who are the age Chris would be now, that is, a little over 40, for whom urban life has become monotonous due to their jobs. In both cases, we are dealing with people who are trying to change their lives.”

The forensic process

Recently published in the United States, Back to the Wild is a new version of the adventures of Christopher McCandless, this time told in first person; more than 200 photographs – taken by Chris himself with his Kodak 35-millimeter camera – and unedited quotes from his letters and journal arranged chronologically, that offer a new perspective on his two years of roving.

The idea of the new book, says Walt, was born when Jon Krakauer called them to ask them about the copyright on the photographs that various publications had begun to use without any kind of permission, especially after Sean Penn’s movie had become fashionable. With the advice of a lawyer, the family began to collect and arrange each one of the images, and it was then that a spark was lit. “This is the real story of Chris, the story that has not yet been told,” thought Walt.

“We had more than 600 photos and with a small group of friends, people that my wife and I know very well, we threw ourselves into the task of identifying each one of them. We wanted to know where each image had been taken, locate it geographically, determine all the methods of transportation used by Chris, the people he had encountered.”

In order to rewrite the story, in addition to the photos they used his detailed trip notebook (in which Chris summarized his travel ethics), letters and postcards that Chris sent to the friends he made during his journey. That was all there was, for during the last two years of his life he cut off in a radical way all contact with his family.

The last time Walt was with Chris was – exactly as shown in the Sean Penn movie – the day of his college graduation in 1990. “A very sad day,” Walt says now, who recognizes that, in spite of his decision to break off contact, he never harbored resentment toward his son. Even less so now that, with this new book, he has understood much better the meaning of his journey.

“He never really planned anything,” Walt says. “He never knew where he was going to be the next day. Doing the book, in the end, was about a kind of forensic cataloguing process, that helped me get to know and understand my son better, 19 years after his death.”


The return to the bus

Last March, Walt McCandless, his wife and a dozen friends of the family returned to the dilapidated Fairbanks 142 on the plains of Denali National Park. The encounter, Walt relates, reunited the majority of the 18 people involved in the production of Back to the Wild.

Drinking hot chocolate, the family members shared memories of Chris McCandless’s childhood, and guests like Wayne Westerberg and Jan Burres – a farmer and a vagabond, respectively – recounted the details of their own encounters with Chris during the trip that converted him into a legend. Wayne Westerberg, the farmer, reviewed the days in which he gave him a job on his farm in South Dakota. Jan Burres, the vagabond, said that he would never forget the maxim that the young man had taught him: “You must forget about money; when you spend the least amount possible you enjoy life more.”

These days, in addition to promoting the book, Walt McCandless dedicates himself to directing the charitable foundation they created in memory of their son that gives a considerable amount of money each year to young mothers and their small children.

“When Chris died,” Walt says, “a lot of money came to us for the use of his name and photographs. We put all of that money in the bank and then we decided to give it all away. Later, in time, we decided to create The Christopher Johnson McCandless Memorial Foundation (www.chrisspurpose.org), in order to make our donations more orderly and transparent. Now, for example, the earnings from the book will go directly to charity, which surely is what Chris would have wanted.”

“Besides the foundation, what legacy do you believe Chris and his travels have left?”

“Many people who have gotten to know his story have redirected what they want to do with their lives, taking measures in a similar direction. Fortunately, not many people are capable of being as radical as Chris and taking so many risks. In the end, I believe his story has helped change many lives, making many people happier. I am sure that is Chris’s greatest legacy.”

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Photo captions:

1. With Mount Denali in the background, this self-photo on April 30, 1992 shows Chris exulting in the midst of nature. In those days, he wrote in his diary: “I am reborn. This is my dawn. Real life has just begun.”

2. During the second week of August, Chris left this message asking for help inside the bus. On it one reads: “I need your help. I am injured, near death and very weak. I am completely alone. This is not a joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by. I shall return this evening.”

3. From April 28, the photo shows Christopher with a rifle in a wild area of Alaska, inhabited by brown bears.

Last photo, on second page:

At the beginning of July, the table inside of bus 142 is ready for his last meal that included moose meat. After that, Chris would eat birds and mushrooms.

Box, on second page:

TO KNOW MORE
Published by Twin Star Press, Back to the Wild is available on the website backtothewildbook.org and on amazon.com. Stated value 25 dollars.

On the cover of the Sunday magazine “Domingo” (“Sunday”), September 1, 2011:

RETURN OF A WILD ONE

In an exclusive, Walt McCandless speaks about the new book about his son Christopher, whose story originated the book and the movie Into the Wild. Also, unpublished photos of the tragic journey that ended in Alaska.

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