Dear Outside Magazine,

Upon reading the story of Chris McCandless it is almost impossible not to admire the way McCandless took hold of his life and chased after his dreams. Hearing about his life has caused me to wonder if I would ever have the courage to do the same—to change my life as drastically as he, for one aspiration. I understand a person’s need to follow the lifestyle that he or she truly desires, but there has to be some type of boundaries that you must follow. I appreciate McCandless’s love for nature, and his want to live off of the land, and become a “hunter and gatherer,” but a line has to be drawn somewhere between reality and an unrealistic daydream. Many young adults in their twenties go through the same phase that he did, and have a need to find out ‘who they are,’ and what their lives are ‘meant for.’ McCandless just took this self-actualization to an extreme. Your article says that growing up, he was a successful athlete, student, and came from an upper-middle class family. Maybe, because life up to that point had fallen so easily into his lap, he thought that his trip to Alaska would follow the same pattern. McCandless thought of himself as invincible and didn’t listen to experts that tried to give him advice. For example, Jim Gallien offered to buy McCandless more supplies after seeing that he, “had no ax, no bug dope, no snowshoes, no compass, no navigational aid…only a .22 caliber rifle,” and cheap leather hiking boots. McCandless refused, set on the idea that he would be able to rely on himself. He also forgot to consider that the tundra he entered on was frozen when he began in April, but would soon melt in the summer months and turn into raging rivers, blocking his exit.

I don’t think the trip that McCandless took was a bad idea, or that his transcendentalist views on life are wrong, but instead I am frustrated with some of the decisions he made. Why didn’t he bring a decent map with him? Several times in the article Krakauer points out times when McCandless could have saved himself if he had brought along a map of the area he was in. Also, the fact that he cut himself off so abruptly from his family, even with what he found out about his father, bothers me. It is noble of someone to follow their dreams, and live the lifestyle that they choose, but you need to understand when you have to be realistic. If McCandless had brought along extra food, a map, had told people where he was going, or even gone with Gallien to get more supplies, he still would have been able to live out his fantasy, but maybe still be alive to talk about it.