Every year, scores of Into the Wild
fans tackle a dangerous river crossing to visit the last home of
Alaska’s most famous adventure casualty. Why are so many people willing
to risk injury, and even death, to pay homage to a controversial ascetic
who perished so young?
From a piece in Outside...
It was Jonathan who first suggested we do a story about the McCandless seekers. The phenomenon is well-known in Alaska—a source of enduring controversy. Every summer, newspapers in Anchorage and Fairbanks publish reports about search-and-rescue episodes on the trail, which invariably prompt online catcalls from Alaskans, who tend to dismiss McCandless as a greenhorn who had no business in the northern wilderness.
Jonathan and I put the idea on our story list, and as we traveled around the state, we read Into the Wild to each other over the clatter of Muskeg’s engine. We soon felt the story’s pull. I was 20, Jonathan was 22, and McCandless’s uninhibited adventures spoke to both of us.
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