Full detachment from the external world. Nirvana is the term that is typically used to describe this phenomenon. Christopher McCandless, a young graduate of Emory University, was willing to fully devote his life in the pursuit of limitless Nirvana.
Naming himself Alexander Supertramp, McCandless left behind his white privilege, unsatisfactory life, dysfunctional family dynamics, and modern society as a whole, to immerse himself fully into the natural beauty of the American West. After graduating in 1990 with a double-majored BA degree in History and Anthropology from Emory University, located in Atlanta, Georgia, McCandless began his now iconic exodus westward.
Born in El Segundo, California on February 12, 1968, McCandless ultimately spent his developmental years in Annandale, Virginia. His father worked as an antenna specialist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Despite the well-respected and positive public image of his father, behind closed doors a very different reality haunted Chris’ childhood & adolescence. Walt McCandless was physically and psychologically abusive, notably facilitated by his alcoholism. The domestic abuse that Chris experienced during his developmental years alienated him from his parents and pushed him closer to his sister Carine.
McCandless’ life was heavily influenced by Jack London’s The Call of The Wild. The novel speaks to the concept of “nature vs. nuture” and Charles Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, in that it emphasizes the desire to walk away from the societal norms of the “civilized man”, synonymous with a veneer of civilization that is thin and fragile and London is keen to highlight the fact that humans will revert back to a state of primitivism under unideal or harsh environmental conditions.
Upon graduating from W.T. Woodson High School, located in Fairfax, Virginia, in 1986 McCandless discovered that his father Wilt had a separate relationship outside of his marriage with his mother Wilhelmina Marie that resulted in the birth of a child years following the birth of both Chris and his sister Carine by his first wife, a relationship that predated Will’s marriage to Wilhelmina. As described in Jon Krakauer’s biography on McCandless’ life, and featured consistently throughout Sean Penn’s 2007 film about the life of McCandless titled Into The Wild, this discovery by Chris flipped his whole entire understanding of his own identity, and reality itself, backwards on its head. As if his whole entire life was a giant gaslight. Chris’ epiphany honestly reflects a phenomenon that many people of African descent experience across the globe in that, as a direct result of the dark legacy of the “White Man’s Burden”, many have no understanding of their true identity because of the way in which colonization raped and effectively obliterated the identity of the indigenous individual. Therefore, a parallel can be made between McCandless’ discovery of his predicament as a bastard child and an indigenous individual’s realization that they have been born into an apartheid-based colonized society which is fundamentally designed to ensure the psychological demoralization of the individual through a cruel theft of identity and the permanent disconnection to any significant link to their true ancestral origins.
McCandless graduated from Emory University in May of 1990 with a double majored Bachelor of Arts degree in History and Sociology. As mentioned in the Sean Penn film Into The Wild, McCandless wrote a college essay about the then highly publicized South African apartheid. His concern with respect to this still incredibly significant human crisis of racial hatred and exclusion suggests not only an awareness of white privilege, but also his genuine disgust for his own privilege as a young white man.
Upon graduating from Emory University in 1990, McCandless donated over $50,000 of his college savings to a poverty-based organization. He left Virginia in the summer of 1990 with no car insurance, no registration, expired license plates, and an expired driver’s license. McCandless unexpectedly ran into a flash flood, which disabled his car. Fearful of getting pulled over by local police and getting fined or arrested, McCandless removed his license plates and continued on foot. He adopted a life of homeless vagrancy as he wandered further westward. McCandless disowned his own name. Adopting the name “Alexander Supertramp”, Christopher McCandless traveled throughout the Western United States, notably hitchhiking through the Sierra Nevada Region, occasionally working for restaurants and on farms in order to generate monetary income.
In 1991, McCandless made his way into Colorado. After purchasing a kayak and its accompanying equipment, he navigated the Colorado River without a permit or valid boating license. Pursued by authorities, McCandless was never successfully located after he had been reported on by other river travelers. He eventually followed the Colorado River into Mexico. Not fond of the environment, and out of money and supplies, McCandless made his way back up to the border. When he attempted to reenter the United States, he was arrested at a border checkpoint for carrying a firearm. He was soon released, and made his way back up north into North Dakota.
McCandless reached Alaska in April of 1992, ill-equipped for challenges and obstacles that would prove to be not only far more difficult than any that he had previously experienced, but they would also end up proving to be too difficult to overcome. McCandless was discovered by hunters on September 6, 1992 inside of Bus 142, an abandoned bus iconically named “The Magic Bus”. It is still widely debated as to the causes and circumstances around his death. It has been widely believed that the inclusion of Hedysarum alpinum seeds into his diet killed him. Others believe that “rabbit starvation” or protein poisoning killed McCandless by him over relying on lean meat for his nutrition. However, McCandless’ death will forever remain a mystery.
Nevertheless, “Alexander Supertramp” found nature to be a worthy refuge away from the trauma and negativity associated with his family dynamics. The timeless beauty of biology and nature was reflected in a most honest and authentic way within his inner spirit. His inner spirit longed for Nirvana. For an escape from the constant gaslighting, insecurities, excess materialism, shallowness, and dysfunction that not only defined the McCandless household, but also American society as a whole during the “Greed is Good” and Reaganomic era of the 1980s and early 1990s. For Alexander Supertramp the hitchhiking across the American West, with all of its mountains, rivers, and forest, brought him great joy and peace. There was God in that. And although he died at the youthful age of 24, it is safe to say that Supertramp was not afraid to be judged. Most importantly, he was not afraid to live when most humans will never display that degree of courage and passion at any point of their lives. Like the late, great civil rights activist the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. once said, it is not about how long you live but it is about how you live. It is undeniable that McCandless demonstrated a fearless desire to live on his own terms. There most certainly is endless Nirvana in that, walking away with genuine inner peace at heart.
