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Two years he walks the earth. No phone, no pool, no pets, no cigarettes. Ultimate freedom. An extremist. An aesthetic voyager whose home is the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return, 'cause "the West is the best." And now after two rambling years comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual pilgrimage. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking bring him to the Great White North. No longer to be poisoned by civilization he flees, and walks alone upon the land to become lost in the wild.
Alexander Supertramp
May 1992"
The above were the lines written by Christopher McCandless, a lonely wanderer living off the land in the wilderness of Alasaka. He was an intelligent student coming from a relatively well off background but he grew disgruntled with our modern lifestyles and in a yogic kind of way left it all. Gave up his savings of 20,000 dollars to Oxfam charity and roamed the cities and the wilderness like a tramp. Frst he had a car and then when it broke down,he dumped it and symbolically burned his last 120 $ to live in penury. In his final Odyssey he wanted to live for some months in Alaskan jungles.
He succeeded but then when he tried to rejoin civilization he found his way blocked by a river swollen because of rains. So he went back and some days later ended up mistakenly consuming the pods of wild pea which are poisonous and was unable to hunt or forage for food. Already weakened , he started literally starving to death.
Starvation is not a pleasant way to die. In advanced stages, as the body begins to consume itself, the victim suffers muscle pain, heart disturbances, loss of hair, shortness of breath. Convulsions and hallucinations are not uncommon. Some who have been brought back from the far edge of starvation, though, report that near the end their suffering was replaced by a sublime euphoria, a sense of calm accompanied by transcendent mental clarity. Perhaps, it would be nice to think, McCandless enjoyed a similar rapture.
His body was found inside the abandoned bus where he had set up base camp by hunters some 7 days after his death. And a book named "Into the Wild" and a soon to be made movie ensures that his story has become a legend.
To the enigma that was Christopher McCandless.
