[MikeD]

I'm not angry...I'm laughing quite lightheartedly at you...

 

[SkaredShtles]

Still waiting...

 

[scrublover]

I f you want a success story about one man and the Alaskan Bush you need to check out this guy...

http://www.dickproenneke.com/DickProenneke.html

Been a big fan and follower of his since I was a kid....McCandless could have learned a lot from him.

Seen a few things from/about him on PBS. One smart and tough guy. My level of once in a while backpacking and snowcamping wussiness isn't fit to shine his freakin' boots.

 

[Haitiracers]

Still waiting...

Sorry, didn't see your first inquiry.

The most recent was last spring. I was supposed to meet a guy that I work with in Utah to snowboard who had reserved a condo. I had an early morning flight from Philadelphia, and his was later in the afternoon. I missed my original flight to SLC and had to go to Atlanta and have a layover. When I arrived I called him and he said that his flight was cancelled and he wouldnt be able to get out until later in the week, which he said made it not worth coming.

I arrived in SLC finally and had nowhere to go, and found out that all of my stuff never left Philadelphia because everything was so backed up there. Rather than wait to get a flight home, I bought a plane ticket to Portland, because I have never been there and really wanted to go. After all, I would much rather be stuck in Portland with nothing than Salt Lake City.

I got to Portland with about $150 left in my bank account, and nothing but the clothes on my back and my camera. I lived there for 6 days like I was homeless. Explored all day with my bus pass, then found places to sleep at night that were off the beaten track and bathed in a stream at the Hoyt Arboretum.

It was the most fun week of my life. I am not comparing this to McCandless, or any other outdoor survival story. I know its not real survival, but the lack of preparation made it a lot more fun than planned trips that I have been on. There have been others, but none as extreme as this, most just last minute trips that the preparation took about 15 minutes. I'm just saying that I find it more fun to figure it out as you go, rather than to schedule your whole life.

If that makes me stupid and pompous, then so be it.

 

[SkaredShtles]

Yeah. I can see being homeless in SLC for a week much better than going snowboarding there.

 

[MikeD]

I've done a lot of stupid things myself. I've hiked Alps wearing jeans through 5' of snow, wandered through places in the world I shouldn't have been...volunteered for hazardous tasks, etc. etc.

I just wasn't quite stupid enough to do anything like take on Alaska while deliberately ignoring the advice of experienced people and without preparing myself in any real way...meanwhile spouting invented crap about the meaning of it all as if I knew the half of what I was undertaking. There's a difference between wandering around Portland or spending a few days/hours on a mountain and attempting to live, long-term, off the land. In Alaska.

 

[SkaredShtles]

I've done a lot of stupid things myself. I've hiked Alps wearing jeans through 5' of snow, wandered through places in the world I shouldn't have been...volunteered for hazardous tasks, etc. etc.

I just wasn't quite stupid enough to do anything like take on Alaska while deliberately ignoring the advice of experienced people and without preparing myself in any real way...meanwhile spouting invented crap about the meaning of it all as if I knew the half of what I was undertaking. There's a difference between wandering around Portland or spending a few days/hours on a mountain and attempting to live, long-term, off the land.

But being unprepared makes it so much fun!

 

[MikeD]

But being unprepared makes it so much fun!

Yeah, the hunger-induced hallucinations are so much closer to a real American Indian spirit journey if you don't know what the **** you're doing...I'll take none of this modern materialist "survival" they've been foisting upon us...

 

[N8 v2.0]

McCandless.... Timothy Treadwell...

Both know-it-all hipsters who screwed with nature and got their asses handed to them.

 

[HAB]

Oh, the only annoying thing was that the entire soundtrack was done by eddie vedder, and he just bothers me.

Edited to say that the story was heavily romanticized as well but I found that part enjoyable.

I was going to say that the moment I heard that Eddie Vedder did the entire soundtrack was the moment I knew I wasn't going to see it. I'd run from the theater screaming, or rip my ears off. Or both.

 

[N8 v2.0]

Got this movie on NetFlix and watched it last nite.

I'm sure the movie was a highly romanticized version of what really happened. It was entertaining tho.

The reality of the situation is that mother nature is a bitch and your lofty ideals dont mean sh!t to her. She is unforgiving to the unprepared.

http://www.mensjournal.com/feature/M162/M162_TheCultofChrisMcCandless.html

 

[stosh]

Got this movie on NetFlix and watched it last nite.

I'm sure the movie was a highly romanticized version of what really happened. It was entertaining tho.

The reality of the situation is that mother nature is a bitch and your lofty ideals dont mean sh!t to her. She is unforgiving to the unprepared.

http://www..com/feature/M162/M162_TheCultofChrisMcCandless.html

It was a pretty good movie. I had no idea what it was about when I "borrowed" it from a friend. It makes me mad that the guy thought he could live in the wild with very little. I felt he was unprepared and because of that I wasn't really surprised at how the movie ended.

 

[N8 v2.0]

Interesting toxicology report info on the web about how the plants did not poison him...

 

[stosh]

Interesting toxicology report info on the web about how the plants did not poison him...

What does that mean exactly? I don't feel like reading the article can you summarize?

 

[N8 v2.0]

What does that mean exactly? I don't feel like reading the article can you summarize?

from the link i posted:

As Krakauer presented it, McCandless had been poisoned by a toxin that prevented his body from absorbing nutrients, leading to his starvation.

But the book was published before the seeds' testing was completed by Dr. Thomas Clausen, the chair of the chemistry and biochemistry department at UAF. "I was hoping it was true," says Clausen, in his lab on campus. "It would have made a good story. But the scientific results worked against my biases. I tore that plant apart. There were no toxins. No alkaloids. I'd eat it myself."

Of course, this flies in the face of the McCandless that the public has embraced, and Krakauer's take has survived subsequent reprintings of the book. Now a version of his theory has made its way on-screen. In Penn's telling McCandless is poisoned by mistaking wild potato for a similar plant, wild sweet pea, though according to Clausen's research that plant is equally harmless.

Lamothe's main contention is that McCandless died from anything other than starvation. "Into the Wild" suggests McCandless was poisoned by the seeds of a wild potato plant. Toxicology reports have disproved this, and Lamothe details the report by putting the man behind the forensic report onscreen.

Lamothe also does a caloric analysis of McCandless' final weeks, taken from his food log, and finds that he died around the time that his body mass index dropped below 14, which is generally thought to be the lowest sustainable number.

But perhaps the biggest scoop is Lamothe's discovery of the man who took McCandless' backpack from the bus. It has been said that McCandless gave all his money away and threw out his ID because he had a death wish. Lamothe debunks that myth by showing that his wallet had all of his identification cards as well as $300.

Another:
http://nmge.gmu.edu/textandcommunity/2006/Peter_Christian_Response.pdf

 

[Prettym1k3]

What a great movie.

I loved it.