Jon Krakauer · 1996 · survival

Jon Krakauer's 1996 account of Chris McCandless, who walked away from family and money to live by his own lights. After graduating he gave away his savings, abandoned his car and tramped the American West for two years as Alexander Supertramp, kayaking the Colorado to the Gulf of California and working the South Dakota harvest. In April 1992 he hitchhiked to Alaska and hiked into the wilderness north of Denali, where he lived in an abandoned bus and, four months later, died. A meditation on idealism, solitude and the pull of the wild.

1. 1
   Atlanta

   Newly graduated from Emory, Chris McCandless gives away his savings, renames himself Alexander Supertramp, and drives west.

2. 2
   Lake Mead

   A flash flood strands his car near Lake Mead; he abandons it, burns his cash, and takes to the road with almost nothing.

3. 3
   Gulf of California

   He paddles a secondhand canoe down the Colorado, across the Mexican border, all the way to the Sea of Cortez.

4. 4
   Carthage

   Drifting north, he works the grain harvest for Wayne Westerberg in tiny Carthage, South Dakota.

5. 5
   Fairbanks

   In April 1992 he reaches Fairbanks, Alaska, and sets out up the snowbound Stampede Trail into the bush.

6. 6
   Stampede Trail

   He makes a home of an abandoned bus deep in the taiga; unable to recross the swollen river, he starves there that August, aged twenty-four.