Just last weekend, I rented "Into the Wild," Sean Penn's story of Chris McCandless who didn't make it very well in the Alaskan wilderness. Then tonight on PBS, I saw "Alone in the Wilderness."
What a striking difference! McCandless had some good intentions and the same desire to live alone out there, but Proenneke was so well-prepared, industrious, and thoughtful of the animals and environment. His skill and sweet impressions of his landscape and animal neighbors were truly noble.
Meanwhile, I get the impression from Sean Penn's movie that he'd like us to think of McCandless as some kind of tragic, heroic character. I'm afraid I only pity his immaturity and felt most sorry for the beautiful moose that he poached and, lacking skills or forethought, left to rot.
Too bad McCandless didn't know of Proenneke, since they were both out there at the same time in the early 90s. McCandless could have learned a lot.
Yeah, I too have mentally compared Chris McCandless and Dick Proenneke, seeing as their stories are fairly similar, and Dick clearly a more impressive story. While Chris was an idealist, he was no where near perfect and ended up getting himself killed. Dick, on the other hand, is one of the most amazing wilderness stories Ive ever heard of. Unlike Chris, Dick lived a normal life for many years. He served in WWII, was a skill mechanic, tried his hand at cattle ranching, built up a modest nest egg, and then went to "retire" -- doing everything for himself in a remote part of Alaska for the next 30+ years. Dick was a truly a Man's Man. According to Wikipedia, he did 70 pulls up on his 70th birthday. Now, while that may sound embellished and it could well be, having read Dick's story -- it's completely possible. I mean, the man made door hinges out of wood!! And then, back to Chris, he died from starvation due to eating mostly rabbits (a well known mistake, printed in most survival guides) and yet he was in a State Park, just a few miles from a road.
It's called rabbit starvation. Rabbit meat is almost all lean, it doesn't have the nutrients your body needs. You need fat and carbs to store in your body as fat, if you only eat protein you have no ability to restore your fat which is needed to survive.
In regards to McCandless, the book, as compared to the movie provides you with a different interpretation on whether McCandless was ready and prepared to survive Alaska. The differing interpretation is based on evidence which suggests that McCandless who indeed did poison himself did so in a manner different from the movie's perspective. Basically it amounted to dumb luck and had little to do with being unprepared.
mccandless was still way out of his league out there. i read the book too. krakauer points out he didnt even need to be stranded. a simple map would have shown him there was a safe crossing of thos rapids a few miles downstream. mccandless was a tragic mix of youth, idealism, stubborness, rigidity, and hubris. it got him killed.
this guy is amazing. i saw this a couple years ago. i had a roomate who weas very self sufficient and handy, and he had me watch this. ny roomate was in awe, i was in awe. i believe he could do 70 pullups on his 70th birthday. look at his arms when he's working - he looks like popeye.
I left a comment on youtube where you can see a short version of Alone in the wilderness. In the comment I wrote Chris McCandless should have seen it. Someone replied to me saying, yes this is the proper Into the wild experience.
His impatience to get there is what killed McCandless.
I just watched the first part of Alone in the Wilderness, he had his cabin totally built and was preparing for winter when we stopped off(we'll finish it tomorrow). I happened into watching it because my younger brother is doing what Mr. Proenneke did, he's going to build a cabin in Alaska, my brother bought property near Iksgiza lake in Alaska and he has lived up in Alaska in Fairbanks for over three years now. He spent last summer(2010) on his property, and is going to spend next summer(2011) out there as well and is planning on building a cabin this summer while he's out there if all goes well.
I agree with the others who have commented about it being about McCandless's almost complete lack of planning that did him in and it's the difference between Proenneke and McCandless. I think he must have been severely mentally ill personally, that he walked out in the Alaskan bush with not even a flipping map to tell him where he was with some idealistic vision of living the wild life foraging and hunting without the faintest clue of how much work, or even what KIND of work, one has to do, both in preparation before you get out there and then when one is out there.
My brother has worked, like Mr. Proenneke, long and hard for many years to have that kind of adventure without taking an undue risk with their lives. My brother made three or four trips out to that area before he even saw his property. First finding the trail out there and then finding his actual property, not easy tasks in the wilderness! He left barrels of clothes, food, tools and many other supplies. My brother doesn't fly so he's been getting back and forth from Fairbanks and his property by a combination of truck, boat and 3 wheeler in the summer and truck and snow machine in the winter.
The amount of food McCandless took out was completely insufficient. My brother took (IIRC) a couple of hundred pounds of rice, along with a good amount of dried beans and canned vegetables and fruit, nuts and dried fruit, basic baking supplies(flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, sugar and spices)and other food out to see him through one summer. He counted on his diet being *supplemented* by fish he caught and wild berries, which it was, but he knew he needed to take out as much food as he would need to survive out with him. From the look of Mr. Proenneke he had the same approach as my brother, he looked to have a good supply of food, and arrangement for more food to be flown in periodically, in place so he was supplementing his diet with his vegetables he grew and fish caught and berries found but was prepared to survive without that if needed.
Christopher McCandless had TEN POUNDS of rice with him! TEN POUNDS!!! And a shotgun with 400 rounds, a book of plant identification and scribbled instructions on how to preserve meat. He was counting on completely untested skills (preserving (poached) game and foraging food)to provide his basic need for food. His death was, in my view, basically suicide by idealistic stupidity.
There are some things in life that you can take large shortcuts here in there and you will probably be okay in the end most of the time. But going out to live in the bush in Alaska is not one of those things. It's one of those things that you do it right or you will be taking a big chance you will not survive to tell the tale of your own foolishness.
Greensmokingfrog is totally right. Chris McCandless died from under prepardness while Proenneke was in most respects overprepared. It was in his nature. Now to Bmac. McCandless died from rabbit starvation augmented by dehydration secondary to GI upset by some poison berries. Rabbit starvation doesn't mean that you die from eating an overabundance of rabbits. It means that the energy expenditure for acquiring food is greater than the energy gained from food. It is common for people living in the wild to lose a great amount of weight due to having to catch/harvest and process your food while not getting a whole lot of nutritional value in the form of carbs. If you ever went hunting for small game you would know what I'm talking about.
Proenneke got regularly resupplied by plane! If Proenneke's enormous skill, knowledge, preparation, and capacity for work is not enough to survive alone you can't say McCandless was lazy or soft, just that he wasn't informed that the adventure he imagined was simply impossible.
There were some indications that Chris McCandless "exhibited signs of paranoia, leading some to speculate that he was suffering from schizophrenia." If true it could explain his actions. A popular athlete in high school and somewhat an idealist he was at the age where schizophrenia starts showing up. Quite likely if he didn't die in Alaska he would have been on massive medication and/or in an asylum in his later years. Maybe he even realized it and that was one of his main reasons for taking off "Into the Wild." He was an intelligent guy and must have known he couldn't survive long in the wild without proper supplies and a way to call out "uncle" if things didn't go well.
I knew a feller who was an MP on the gate at the Berlin Wall for almost 3 years before he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and he also lived out his life in an isolated rural area about 5 miles from me. As long as he took his medication he existed peaceably with nearby neighbors although many thought of him as very weird. I gave him rides to town occasionally when I saw him hitchhiking, had a few beers with him and once you got to know him he was a pleasant guy but obviously in a (legal) drugged state.
One day he just wandered off into the woods and was never found and that's been 20 years ago. Some think he hitchhiked out of the area and without his drugs may have got into trouble with the wrong crowd as he would get violent after a few days without his meds according to his family. He also loved motorcycles and might have drifted into one of their "camps" and caused trouble. He allegedly tried to stab his father in the heart with a fork that didn't penetrate far enough to do much damage and no charges were filed. The family situation was poor both literally and figuratively and it seemed like they were always arguing about something. The VA and his personal representative (a lawyer) financed searches into the woods a number of times but never found any clues into his whereabouts. To this day he is still considered as "missing".
********************************************* My favorite: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb