I agree, his lack of preparation made me think he went out with the goal of suicide, it was suspicious he was that naive. At the same time he could have been following an inner voice, which told him to self-simplify completely: but, if that's true, I don't know why he picked the Alaskan wilderness, the most brutal and radical of places to try to survive in.
It doesn't surprise me at all McCandless met such a fate, going into the woods solo and expecting to truly live off the land is a horribly unrealistic approach.
Yes, I take it both ways too: 1] McCandless was following an inner voice (insight) that living in the wilderness would be good for him; 2] while at the same time there might very well have been a suicide component; after all he gave away most of his money before heading to Alaska, so he arrived in Alaska at a clear dead end, with no training to survive there.
Ive been in alaska since may exploring the wilderness, fishing, foraging and now working a job in alaska. I put on some 200+ miles in the backcountry and can only say its every bit as brutal and potentially deadly as is often described.
Good to hear from you again, roamer, and good to know that you made it to Alaska.
Its funny i saw his bus at a small town outside denali park, its gained quite a bit of international notiarity with tourists lined up to see it. Still he would have been better mastering skills bit by bit in smaller trips and then slowly putting them together.
This is how I trained myself to learn how to survive in the wilderness hunting and foraging. At this point I see myself as too old and decrepit to survive well in the wilderness hunting and foraging, unless I am just puttering around on a boat, or vehicle fishing.
This guy is regarded as a primary teacher on the subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mors_Kochanski for northern survival. Worth noting plant foraging is last on the list of needed skills for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the danger of misidentifying poisonous plants. Also worth noting that even the best at the primitive skills never wish to do it but for more than a few prime weeks or months at a time. It takes tribes, cultures, hard initiations and prime hunting and foraging ground to make a go of that level of independence from industrialism or agrarianism.
I have not heard of
Mors Kochanski, so thanks for the link. After reading his wiki page he sounds like a typical genius, and my life history seems to be quite like his.
Most people whom I have a conversation with regarding survival skills mention [urlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Brown,_Jr.]Tom Brown, Jr[/url] of his Tracking, Nature and Wilderness Survival School and books. Most of what they tell me about him sounds like a stinking pile of nonsense, so I have never read any of his books. After all, a survival school in New Jersey? You have got to be kidding. I lived there in my teens. There has not been wilderness in New Jersey in over 200 years. He studied from a New Jersey Indian? You have got to be kidding. There has not been a New Jersey Indian in New Jersey for over 200 years. Bear spanking? How naive can people be. Try sneaking up on a bear sometime. You wont live through that experience.
I've done alot of backpacking in the lower 48 and some survival training trips, I am not incomptent, but much of the Alaskan wilderness flat out scares me. I've had numerous bear sighhtings a wolverine encounter and 3 particularly close calls flushing bear while having to push through the brush. Those were probably less dangerous than the onerous weather which has gone from 1.5 ft of snow and wet to 80 degree and swollen glacial streams in days.
I applied for many archaeology jobs through the federal government
USAjobs.gov site. one of the more interesting jobs that I applied for was doing archaeology in
Denali National Park and Preserve. I received a phone interview for the job, which meant I was on the top of the list of prospects.
The most important questions of the interviewer were, "Are you OK with carrying a rifle? Can you shoot? And, will you shoot a bear if it gets too close"?
My answer was, "I am all for preserving wildlife and the wilderness, but if it is between me and the bear, and I am armed, the bear is going lose."
That moved me up to the top of the list, but my aging being over 50 probably was the killer for the job offer.
As i see it the opportunity for a contemplative up here is to take a summer gig, live in a van (numerous free camping spots around town) , net an avergae of $100/day during the summer months, can all your berries, catch all your fish and bag a moose, and then go to the bush to live in a dry cabin the rest of the season. The winter living is brutal and dangerous, but when you lean on modern tech like insualtion, backup fuel sources, ample store bought food supplies it needn't be so bad. It just requires good engineering and forethought.
This sounds like a reasonable plan to me, but I can find plenty of wilderness in the lower 48 where I will not have to deal with extreme winter weather conditions, like Alaska has.
I am not going to go that route this year though. Its way too late to buy and build and I'm too short on money. Van living up here in the winter near the coast is possible, but not desirable. The small amount I could save on food through foraging for berries and getting a big game isn't worth it unless I also have a low cost shelter lined up. Which if it is a cabin on a plot of land it'll be a $10-20k investment and thus require a 3-5 year commitment to really even start to reap the benefits.
I am beginning to think Jhanananda has pretty much identified the best safest lowest cost route for contemplative freedom. Van/wilderness living in a warmer region of the US. I've checked a lot of options out, permaculture farms, ecovillages, cooperative housing, various sanghas, and the van life has alot going for it, especially its imminent availability. Just go buy a cube van and convert it to a camper and $5000 late you are out of the rent game.
Thanks, roamer. I agree. However, living in the wilderness for an extended period of time may require stealth camping.
I have been flying under the radar here for as long as I have been living here. Last night 6 heavily loaded ATVs drove past my campsite, which was the last legal campsite on the remote road. Twenty minutes later the protection ranger followed them up the road. Twenty minutes later I saw the 6 heavily loaded ATVs drive back down the road past my campsite. The ranger came after them, and stopped at my campsite, but he did not bother me. I figure he documented my presence, so I will have to either camp in town, or move to another ranger district.
The protection ranger stopped at every other occupied campsite and put his light on the campers, and sounded his siren to get there attention. When I drove out this morning at 4:20AM there were no other campers occupying campsites.
One of the things I do to make camping a positive experience for myself, is I cleanup all of the campsites as I pass them on my way to the rear most campsite. This, I am sure is noted by the rangers, which might partially explain why the protection ranger did not bother me last night.
I am also confident that he had not seen my van yet this year, but he has surely seen my van in the past. I just make sure that I am not seen more than once a month, and my campsites are always clean when I leave.
