There are books where you have to force yourself to turn the next page and books you have to force yourself to put down because it's 4 a.m. and you have class the next day. This book, for the brief time it took me to read it, was definitely the latter.

The excerpt on the front cover reads as follows:

This caught my attention right away because Krakauer gives away the ending on the cover of the book. Most authors leave some suspense so you'll want to start reading or keep reading, but not this one. Knowing Chris's fate from the start is interesting because it means reading not to arrive at the ending, but to get inside his mind and find all the little reasons that led to it. I have read books that ate away at me for a long time afterward but never one that so completely stuck with me to this day. I usually don't read non-fiction but the fact that the events depicted in this book are true made it invariably more fascinating and hard-hitting. I reread the book last year and highlighted anything I liked or that stood out to me. When I was done, almost every page had writing on it. Krakauer's writing and the quotes from McCandless are so natural, yet they contain such a deep, philosophical undertone that it blows my mind.

I didn't know how I would feel about this book beyond my initial intrigue as I literally "judged the book by its cover." Although I like camping and hiking and things of that nature, I've never really classified myself as a truly outdoorsy type of person. Being from Texas, I think 68 degrees is basically freezing. I also have a very solid relationship with my phone, laptop, and other material things. With that said, this book made me want to shun electronics, give up my personal belongings, and go get lost in the wilderness in order to find myself. For someone so self-admittedly reliant on modern technology, this couldn't have been an easy feat to accomplish. There is a pretty even split between the readers of this story-some think McCandless was a modern-day Thoreau and hero, while others think he was just a pretentious, spoiled kid with no appreciation for what he had. You can take your side after reading but you can probably guess my stance on this. I've read this book 4 times and each time, I find something I hadn't noticed before. The story is so complex that I still am blown away each time I read it. It's hard to explain why this resonated with me so much with my own words, so I'll let the inspiring words from the book do the talking for me.

These are some of my favorite quotes by Jon Krakauer, Chris McCandless (AKA Alexander Supertramp-the new name he adopted to accompany his new life), & others mentioned in the book:

• “When Alex left for Alaska,” Franz remembers, “I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn’t believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex."

RONALD FRANZ, AN EIGHTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD (PREVIOUSLY DEVOUT CHRISTIAN) MAN

**This is the one quote from the book that I'll never forget and that hit me the hardest. The fact that Chris's death turned a devout man of 81 years into an atheist shows the sheer depth of the impact that Chris must have had on him.

• "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."

JON KRAKAUER

• "I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life."

LEO TOLSTOY, “FAMILY HAPPINESS”

PASSAGE HIGHLIGHTED IN ONE OF THE BOOKS FOUND WITH CHRIS MCCANDLESS’S REMAINS

• “To the desert go prophets and hermits; through deserts go pilgrims and exiles. Here the leaders of the great religions have sought the therapeutic and spiritual values of retreat, not to escape but to find reality.”

PAUL SHEPARD, MAN IN THE LANDSCAPE: A HISTORIC VIEW OF THE ESTHETICS OF NATURE

• "So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

CHRIS MCCANDLESS

• "You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living."

CHRIS MCCANDLESS

• "It should not be denied... that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west."

WALLACE STEGNER, THE AMERICAN WEST AS LIVING SPACE

• "I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and starsprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities. Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me? It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty....Even from your scant description, I know that I could not bear the routine and humdrum of the life that you are forced to lead. I don’t think I could ever settle down. I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax."

THE LAST LETTER EVER RECEIVED FROM EVERETT RUESS, TO HISBROTHER, WALDO, DATED NOVEMBER 11, 1934

With the amount of times I think about this book, I know that Chris's story will stay with me for the rest of my life. One of the things I added to my bucket list after reading this book was to visit Bus 142, where he lived his last days in the wilderness and eventually passed away.

Even getting to this point requires an immense amount of planning and there is a high risk associated with it. Chris wasn't stupid, he was extremely intelligent and his rather anticlimactic death was the result of a minor miscalculation, not ignorance. Had it not been for this blunder, I believe he almost definitely would've made it out alive. Although he died at the young age of 24, I think he achieved a kind of moral bliss that not many people achieve in a lifetime. Though there are different views on his story, no one can dispute his dogged opposition to conformity. Most people live their life dictated by people and doctrines they don't fully believe in and not many have the courage to go out there and change it. Chris McCandless had the courage and acted on it and for that, to me, he will always be golden.