Christopher McCandless Book - Back To The Wild Volunteers

The team is composed of “Into the Wild” acolytes (Aaron Dunlap and Heather Horton) that have been to the bus the hard way and then they reached out to find Billie and Walt; Virginia Beach Community Chapel friends of Billie and Walt (Gloria and Jim Davis, and Mary Gram) that were moved by the book and wanted to become involved when Walt described his idea to them; and special talents that had also been moved by the book and film (professional photographer Joseph Moss and his business partner and wife Kimberly.) Augmenting this core team were Wayne Westerberg and Jon Krakauer who were always available to answer questions about the time, place and content of a particular photograph.

This team has been working together now for two years to select the best photographs, identify the place and time of their creation, provide a caption and brief description of the visceral content of each photograph, and weave them together to form a moving diary of Chris’ Journey.

At every juncture in this developing process it seems that we magically find our way. When we needed a new talent it would somehow appear. When a particular photograph seemed hard to identify with place and time, Jon Krakauer or Wayne Westerberg would find backup information that would make it clear. As we approached publication time the right path to take seemed to open up and new people that we would need began to appear at just the right time. Chris’ Purpose, which is our colloquial name for the project, forged ahead.

Billie and Walt McCandless - Chris' parents