Tragedy And Triumph Chris Mccandless Fulfilled His Quest For Adventure And Introspection; And In The Process, He Lost His Life

“Into the Wild” Jon Krakauer (Villard, $22)

Who hasn’t thought of chucking it all, escaping from one’s humdrum life and the usual demands, setting out for somewhere else where things will be better, or at least different. Most of us never get beyond entertaining such thoughts as tantalizing daydreams, although some people actually do, to our utter fascination.

They are seekers, sojourners, visionaries, extremists, people who dance to their own particular music, people like Chris McCandless. A son of the suburbs. A college graduate. A 24-year-old devotee of Tolstoy and Jack London who gave his entire $24,000 bank account to charity and then hit the road across America.

McCandless eventually headed north to Alaska where he walked alone into the wilderness, with a 10-pound bag of rice and a .22-caliber rifle and little else, and lived by his wits for 112 days before making two crucial mistakes and finally starving to death. One of his last acts would be posing for his own camera, holding up a small sign that said: “I HAVE HAD A HAPPY LIFE AND THANK THE LORD. GOODBYE AND MAY GOD BLESS ALL!”

With these compelling elements, it should not be surprising that a profile of McCandless, written by Seattle writer Jon Krakauer, prompted the largest outpouring of reader mail in the history of Outside magazine. Nor should it be surprising that Krakauer’s new book, following an additional year of research on the trail of “the enigma of Chris McCandless,” is an utterly enthralling read. Krakauer’s “Into the Wild” has the pace of a thriller, but the soul of a poem, becoming a haunting meditation on the nature of belief and the allure of the wilderness.

Krakauer himself has no hesitancy in describing his young subject’s story as a “tragedy.” As Krakauer, 41, said recently, “It is a tragedy, in the classic sense. Here is a young man who goes into the wild, full of hubris, seeking to do battle with the gods or nature, then suffers bad luck. And what makes it classic is that he knows he is going to die and he faces death bravely, without blaming anyone. He accepts his fate. McCandless’ story has all this mythic resonance, of Huck Finn lighting out into the territory, the American romanticism about the frontier, and Oedipal stuff, too.”

It is also a story that Krakauer seems born to write. The Corvallis, Ore., native felt some of the same urges as McCandless did, at about the same age. An absolutely chilling chapter of “Into the Wild” chronicles Krakauer’s own youthful quest in Alaska, in which he - “a self-possessed young man inebriated with the unfolding drama of his own life” - trekked into the wilderness to complete a solo ice climb of Devils Thumb peak in the dead of winter. Krakauer barely survived.

“Chris and I are different in profound ways, but one part of us is similar,” Krakauer said. “Most people cannot understand why he would leave his map behind when he went into the wilderness, but I do understand the need to really push it, to contrive your own adventure. I’m a climber and climbers do that all the time, leave rope behind, go after a bigger mountain, limit your tools. Climbers understand that. They understand that the farther out on a limb you crawl, the better it feels when you crawl back.”

Understanding some of McCandless’ urges did not, however, blind Krakauer to his flaws. One of the great strengths of “Into the Wild” is Krakauer’s evenhandedness and humanity.

McCandless is an easy target to write off as a “kook” or a “wacko,” as many readers of Outside did. And Krakauer is certainly unsparing in his criticism of McCandless’ stubbornness, his foolhardiness, his overconfidence, his cruelty to his own family, which produces this heartbreaking scene - his mother doubling back on the highway whenever she sees a male hitchhiker, in hopes that it might be her wayward son.

But Krakauer’s devotion yields a much fuller portrait of McCandless - as a gentle soul with a capacity to endure great hardships in the service of his beliefs, as a charismatic person who left indelible marks on a succession of strangers, many from the most humble of backgrounds and circumstances.

“There was something fascinating about him,” one relates. “(He) struck me as much older than 24. Everything I said, he’d demand to know more about what I meant, about why I thought this way or that. He was hungry to learn about things. Unlike most of us, he was the sort of person who insisted on living out his beliefs. … I can’t get him out of my mind. I keep picturing his face. … Considering that I only spent a few hours in (his) company, it amazes me how much I’m bothered by his death.”

Part of what makes McCandless’ death so affecting for so many people is that he was on the verge of returning to civilization. He had tested himself and found himself equal to the task. He had experienced what he notes in his journal as “the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God it’s great to be alive!”

McCandless’ trek back was halted by a river swollen by snow melt, something he had not anticipated. And he makes a second crucial mistake when he starts eating the seeds of a wild potato plant whose roots had been providing sustenance for him during his stay. The seeds were not known to be poisonous - until chemical tests paid for by Krakauer show they prevent the body from absorbing nutrients.

Krakauer places McCandless’ “strange spiritual quest” squarely in the Western tradition. The writer includes telling quotes and fascinating parallels from the lives of other Western seekers and adventurers, some well-known (John Muir), some more obscure (Everett Ruess).