Into the wild book chapters Patch#

ItвЂ™s been a few days since i finished it, but my mind keeps drifting off to that haunting last chapter when christopher mccandless starved to death in a rusty, abandoned bus deep in the wilds of alaska. The only navigational aid in his possession was a tattered state road map he'd scrounged at a gas station.Pin by SЖЎn TГ№ng on Kamen rider Kamen rider, Rider, Power She claims, вЂњis that even though the pictures were taken ten years apart, his expression is identicalвЂќ. He had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, no compass. 22 caliber, a bore too small to rely on if he expected to kill large animals like moose and caribou, which he would have to eat if he hoped to remain very long in the country. Alex's cheap leather hiking boots were neither waterproof nor well insulated.

His gear seemed exceedingly minimal for the harsh conditions of the interior, which in April still lay buried under the winter snowpack. Alex admitted that the only food in his pack was a ten-pound bag of rice. He peppered Gallien with thoughtful questions about the kind of small game that live in the country, the kinds of berries he could eat-'that kind of thing.'

He was congenial and seemed well educated. The more they talked, the less Alex struck Gallien as a nutcase. It was a two-hour drive from Fairbanks to the edge of Denali Park. Most places, there aren't a lot of animals to hunt. 'People from Outside,' reports Gallien in a slow, sonorous drawl, 'they'll pick up a copy of Alaska magazine, thumb through it, get to thinkin' 'Hey, I'm goin' to get on up there, live off the land, go claim me a piece of the good life.' But when they get here and actually head out into the bush-well, it isn't like the magazines make it out to be. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that cares nothing for hope or longing.

Into the wild book chapters Patch#

Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives. Gallien wondered whether he'd picked up one of those crackpots from the lower forty-eight who come north to live out ill-considered Jack London fantasies.

As they rolled down from the forested ridges above the Tanana River, Alex gazed across the expanse of windswept muskeg stretching to the south. 'He wasn't carrying anywhere near as much food and gear as you'd expect a guy to be carrying for that kind of trip,' Gallien recalls. Alex's backpack looked as though it weighed only twenty-five or thirty pounds, which struck Gallien-an accomplished hunter and woodsman-as an improbably light load for a stay of several months in the backcountry, especially so early in the spring. Gallien, a union electrician, was on his way to Anchorage, 240 miles beyond Denali on the George Parks Highway he told Alex he'd drop him off wherever he wanted. He explained that he wanted a ride as far as the edge of Denali National Park, where he intended to walk deep into the bush and 'live off the land for a few months.' Five feet seven or eight with a wiry build, he claimed to be twenty-four years old and said he was from South Dakota. 'Just Alex,' the young man replied, pointedly rejecting the bait. 'Alex?' Gallien responded, fishing for a last name. The hitchhiker swung his pack into the bed of the Ford and introduced himself as Alex. Gallien steered his truck onto the shoulder and told the kid to climb in. A rifle protruded from the young man's backpack, but he looked friendly enough a hitchhiker with a Remington semiautomatic isn't the sort of thing that gives motorists pause in the forty-ninth state.

He didn't appear to be very old: eighteen, maybe nineteen at most. Jim Gallien had driven four miles out of Fairbanks when he spotted the hitchhiker standing in the snow beside the road, thumb raised high, shivering in the gray Alaska dawn. (Postcard received by Wayne Westerberg in Carthage, South Dakota.) If this adventure proves fatal and you don't ever hear from me again I want you to know you're a great man. It might be a very long time before I return South. Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory. Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me, Wayne.