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A twenty year old who followed in Chris's footsteps, and eventually disappeared without a trace in Utah.
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"Arranged to be flown into the wilderness for five months, where he planned to mostly shoot pictures of wildlife. He forgot, however, to arrange to be picked up, and so ended up killing himself as he slowly and painfully starved and froze to death."
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This is a the point where Chris truly breaks away from society and their expectations.
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This is Chris testing his ability to survive in the wild.
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Without a second thought Chris packs his belongings and leaves his car when it's damaged. This shows his true ability to pick up and carry on when things don't go his way, and his no attachments attitude.
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The ticket is sent home to his parents and they visit his apartment. They find it vacant and all the letters they wrote to him over the summer.
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Due to the heavy rainfall Chris stays with Wayne for three days in his trailer. Chris becomes very trusting of Wayne and takes up his work offer a couple weeks later. It seems Chris connects more easily with strangers than with people within his family.
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Chris finds no work at the grain elevator and leaves to resume his life on the move. Westerburg finds out that Chris has changed his name and shunned his family. He was rejecting their materialistic values.
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Chris then walks twelve miles in the desert until he reaches Topock, Arizona. There he purchases an aluminum canoe which proves handy in the proceeding chapters.
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Even though he's paddling through Yuma he still stops to send Wayne a postcard. Where as he hasn't spoken to his parents in months, he would pause to update his passing by friends on his journey. Chris cherishes small relationshipsthat that don't require a lot of baggage due to his dad's double marriage. ". . . extremely uncomfortable in society now and must return to road immediately."
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"McCandless proves himself remarkably capable, canoeing through hundreds of miles of hostile landscape and even crossing an international border undetected.)"
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To escape the winds Chris stays in this cave for ten days.
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Chris abandons the canoe and decides to head North. This is another example of Chris's ability to let go of things with ease.
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He is caught by immigrants with no ID and spends the night in jail.
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He attempts to get an ID and a job but writes, ". . . extremely uncomfortable in society now and must return to road immediately." As Chris progresses through his adventure you see his social skills decline and long to be alone increase.
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Chris loses over twenty five pounds and camps with a young german couple
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He digs up his belongings he buried when he abondoned his Datsun. Though he does not have attachments to things, he finds comfort in his own things and pride that he placed them there.
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He sends a postcard to Jan Burres complaining of the weather conditions. Although he proves tough and untouchable, it seems little things still irritate him. Here we see him again contacting a passing by friend, but still not his family.
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He catches a ride to California and then back into the desert.
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He works at McDonalds for two months and lives in an empty trailer. He purposely avoids making relationships with his coworkers and was noticably socially awkward. Chris was not able to socialize with his own age group.
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Chris shows up unnanounced at the Burre's The Slab campsite in Niland. He seems as though he descreetly seeks company. You see him sending postcards and visiting the people he meets on the way, but never his family. He seeks the acceptance and love you'd recieve from a family in these people.
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Chris meets Ronald Franz hitch hiking near Salton Sea. Franz outlines the lovable side of Chris and even urges Chris to let him adopt him. The reluctance of Chris to accept shows his underlying hurt and distrust from his dad's mistakes.
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Franz insists Chris stay with him for a night and buys him a steak dinner, and truly falls in love with the kid everyone describes as irristable not to love.
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"DAY 100! I MADE IT! IN WEAKEST CONDITION OF MY LIFE. DEATH LOOMS AS SERIOUS THREAT." Chris knew his death was near, but he was satisfied with the life he had lived in the past three years.
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Alaska Highway
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Survived without any tools but those he could make himself for over a decade, until he killed himself
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"He was a very talented young climber with a troubled relationship with his father, a tragic personal life, and a very eccentric personality. He became more and more unhinged, and eventually embarked on a borderline suicidal climb of Denali, during which he disappeared, and is presumed dead."
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The bus in all the pictures is found and Chris camps here.
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"HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED" - July 8th
"I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL."
Did Chris change his mind on his beliefs of happiness? A possible reason of the first entry is Chris regretting not contacting his family when he had the chance. However, he doesn't make any effort to say goodbye to them in his notes. Another possibility is Chris acknowledging that he truly enjoyed all his passing by friend's company, a simple thought of missing them.