In the stories of inexperience we Alaskans tell, dumb luck often saves us from near-disaster. Yet, when tragedy strikes, we all too often cast a cautionary tale about some “poor dumbass,” a cheechako who obviously had no business in the Alaskan bush.
Take Chris McCandless, the young man from suburban Virginia found dead outside Denali National Park and the subject of Into the Wild. Most Alaskans revile him, even if—like McCandless himself—those same “Alaskans” arrived from the Lower 48 with little planning beyond a romantic vision of adventure.
The problem comes when adventure’s promise of personal growth bumps hard against the unpredictable.
Over a decade before moose hunters found McCandless’s emaciated corpse on the Stampede Trail, a different kid from the suburbs sought solitude in the Alaskan bush. Equipped with a rifle, an edible plant book, and a romantic vision to winter-over while “living off the land,” a teenager with fewer bullets than Chris found himself hungry and hypothermic in a little-visited
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