Many moons ago, I was taken by a film version of Into the Wild—the loose biography of Christopher McCandless and his break from society, ultimately ending him in the Alaskan wild. Watching it in my twenties, there was something that called out to me.

The wanderlust of our desire. The break from norms. The colonization of the American dream (or Canadian one).

Even though I dub myself the great indoorsman, there was something very appealing about what I was watching. Looking back, I was probably taken in more by the performance of Emile Hirsch than the actual story. As I revisit it now, reading the updated version of the original work from Jon Krakauer, I have very different thoughts.

McCandless is constantly referenced to by the people he came across as highly intelligent, which leads me to believe two things:

• there was a disconnect between what the world was and what he wanted it to be
• it came with an intellectual ego

He was a stubborn young person, disgusted with the expectations life has placed upon him, having an existential crisis. Had he lived another ten years, I am almost certain he would’ve been fine and figured it out.

What bothers me is the author’s obsession with solving the mystery of exactly what killed him. The assumption being some kind of poison from seeds, but that misses the point completely… which is a point the author keeps trying to convince the reader is not true: what really killed him was a complete lack of preparation, combined with an ego smothered with a romantic vision of the wild.

Even my complete inexperience taking to the wilderness could recognize he wasn’t properly prepared or equipped. Just the simple act of living in Canada and knowing how people pack, dress and hunt here, had me shaking my head at this foolhardy attempt. The people from Alaska who he met while hitchhiking his way there even warned him and were baffled at his refusal to accept their offer to buy him proper equipment before he head out.

This isn’t to take away from the tragic end to his life. He was a smart enough guy, but overestimated his intelligence when encountering people who had wisdom from life experience.

What I can still give McCandless credit for is his lustre for life and a dreamer’s eye for a radically romantic vision of the wild. In today’s world of pacification by digital screens, it’s something that we still need.