The Wild Truth: The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild. Carine McCandless
shirts. My trip down memory lane of the 1985–86 school year was interrupted as the most recent cause of dispute surfaced once again: Chris’s summer plans. Chris was eager to hit the road with the Datsun immediately after graduation, and Dad was incensed that he didn’t see the logic in having a predetermined travel plan to submit for our parents’ approval.
“Why can’t you just understand that not having a plan is my plan?” Chris implored. “I don’t know exactly where I’ll be. That’s the whole point, the freedom of it. I’ve been so structured with school and sports and work—everything has been scheduled and laid out for me. I just want to get out of that mundane existence and purely enjoy life for a while. I’ll decide on the fly where I want to go next.”
“You will not leave this house without giving us an itinerary for where you’ll be, week by week!” Dad demanded. “You’re being completely irresponsible! How do we even know you’ll return for college?”
“What? How can you call me irresponsible?” Chris challenged. “Was it irresponsible of me to study hard and get good grades? Was I being irresponsible to work two jobs to make money for college and save up for this trip? How about how hard I trained for these last cross-country meets? And of course I’m going to Emory. Why would I go through all of that if I had no intention of going? What I have no intention of doing is laying out my entire summer on paper, making everything predictable and destroying my chance for adventure.” He continued, “If I’d made you a list, it would’ve been a fake one just to appease you, and you wouldn’t have known any better. I’d simply throw it out the minute I walked out the door.”
It was hard to deny Chris’s logic. He waited patiently for a response. Dad stood there staring at him, at a loss for words, his eyes and nostrils flared. The red on his face spread until even his bald spot was completely flushed. Knowing he had won the debate, Chris turned his back to Dad and began to walk away. Dad’s reaction to the defeat was so swift that I couldn’t even bark out a warning as I saw him wind up his right arm like a baseball pitcher preparing to unleash the final strike of a perfect game. He lurched forward and slammed his fist into the center of Chris’s spine, as if he were expecting to level Chris to the ground immediately.
Chris, not at all diminished, simply stopped moving away. Though shorter and slimmer, he was in impressive shape. His superior strength was more than physical. He saw the panic in Dad’s expression as he slowly turned to face him. But Chris just looked at him with little emotion. A single puff of disgust passed over his lips and then he turned again and slowly walked upstairs. I understood. To Chris, Dad and Mom weren’t worth the effort of rebellion anymore. Rather than feed the beast of turmoil, Chris just separated himself from it.
I sat to the side, wide-eyed as he walked off. I had to tell myself to start breathing again. His reaction—or lack thereof—to Dad’s behavior was a victory for both of us that day. Dad looked over at me and then narrowed his eyes, a silent warning that I’d best not ever repeat my brother’s mistake of being bold. I rolled my eyes back at him and returned my attention to the pages of the yearbook. I don’t know why I didn’t jump up to defend Chris. I guess I didn’t feel that he needed my help, even though I often needed his. If it had been me in the argument, he would never have allowed it to escalate.
CHRIS’S PRESENCE IN MY LIFE felt enormous. I was surrounded by the powerful perfect pitch of his singing voice as he belted out lyrics and played the piano, by him debating politics eloquently with his friends, and by him fighting battles for the both of us when it came to my parents. I knew he wanted to protect me while also giving me enough space to learn to do that for myself. But he was a constant that I couldn’t imagine life at home without. Chris was not only my buffer and my co-conspirator. He was my best friend.
My parents never seemed to read Chris accurately, the way others could. It was clear to all who knew my big brother that there was nothing typical about him. His intensity was legendary. Of the handful of Chris’s closest friends, perhaps no one besides Andy understood the delicate balance between Chris’s serious side and his sense of humor well enough to feel comfortable testing the boundary. Once when he was driving Andy and a bunch of others back from cross-country practice, Andy teased him about how as soon as Chris left for Emory, he was going to pursue me. At first Chris simply smiled and tried to shrug off the ribbing. Whenever Andy was at our house, he was quick to chat me up just to get a rise out of Chris, but now Andy persisted with a few renditions of how the chase would unfold. This time, even to Andy’s surprise, he pushed a little too far. Chris slammed on the brakes and kicked him out of the truck. “Don’t talk about my sister like that!” were his parting words. It took several minutes for the others in the car to convince Chris that it was all in good fun and to return to pick up Andy as he strolled down the street, his smirk now well under control.
People would tell me “Your brother is intense,” but they would never say anything like “He’s weird.” They knew that just as he was protective of me, I was protective of him. But the plain truth was that he didn’t react softly to things. Whenever we went bowling, he’d get so pissed off if he rolled a gutter ball, he’d stomp his way back from the lane, then throw himself down on the plastic booth so hard I expected to hear it crack beneath his slim build. I would laugh at him and say, “Geez, bro. It’s just a game! Don’t punish the booth!” He used to say, “I don’t take my frustrations out on people, so I get angry at things instead.” He was harder on himself than anyone else. He intensified the air around him, and people picked up on that, even if they didn’t understand it.
He was the same way in his romantic life. He didn’t discuss these things openly with anyone but Julie, but his feelings for her grew to be years ahead of most of his friends’ feelings for their girlfriends. His emotions were years ahead of where they should have been, probably.
Julie Carnes was a year younger than Chris, petite, and remarkably pretty. Her identical twin sister, Carrie, had dated my boyfriend Jimmy before me, and they had all remained good friends. Still the immature freshman, I sometimes failed to contain my jealousy about Carrie, and Julie was polite but firm whenever she needed to remind me not to engage in juvenile chitchat. I liked her a lot. She was very smart, had beautiful blue eyes and an amazing figure—everything a girl wanted to emulate.
Chris was shy and reluctant to ask Julie out, but she could tell he liked her. Julie was attracted to Chris’s intellect and the depth she saw behind his eyes. She told a mutual friend that she thought he was cute, knowing he would be informed shortly thereafter. But their palpable crush just lingered until he finally made his move. Saying nothing at all, he simply took her hand into his one day as their group of friends sat talking on the bleachers. And they were officially an item.
On their first date, they skipped over the typical movie-and-mini-golf ritual, and instead Chris took her on a long bike ride through the state park trails and into downtown D.C., where he led her to the grassy carpet of the Mall. Overlooking the Washington Monument and surrounded by fragrant cherry blossom trees in full bloom, he removed from his backpack a full-on picnic. They dined on cheeses, fruit, and sandwiches. He brought her a cookie for dessert. He didn’t try to kiss her that day, but later she told me she could tell he wanted to. They talked—about transcendentalism, existentialism, the concept of nonlinear time, which he discussed incessantly. They didn’t talk about movies or sports or who was dating whom at school.
They also didn’t talk about our parents, nor would they. Chris never talked to Julie about our family life, and he never invited her over for dinner. The only time she met our parents was when my mom insisted on taking pictures of the two of them before prom. If Julie pressed him at all about our parents, he became aloof and sullen. So, she stopped asking about them.
With Julie, Chris let in our parents’ influence only once. On prom night, he picked her up in our father’s “fancy boat” Cadillac, labeled as such because Chris hated it. He also bought her a much-too-expensive, gorgeous orchid corsage and almost broke the petals off as he fumbled to put it on her arm. He took her to The Black Orchid, one of the area’s nicest restaurants, gently held her hand throughout the night, and ordered veal for them both. He had worked hard to earn money to cover the dinner and flowers. But it was the first time he, wearing an expensive suit and arriving in the Cadillac,