Final Assement Creative Activity

Although Chris McCandless often found beauty in every place he traveled, the reality is that the landscape he traversed was harsh and unforgiving – he truly walked “into the wild.”  As such, I have chosen to depict Chris’s journey down the Colorado River in the harsh loneliness of black and white.  In October of 1990 Chris decided on a whim after seeing a used canoe for sale to travel down the river to the Gulf of California and try to reach the sea.  It was a lonely trip of many months, but Chris would not want it any other way.  Indeed, “McCandless was stirred by the austerity of this landscape, by its saline beauty.” (pg. 32)  It was both a challenge of his will to succeed and his stubbornness to do things alone and without proper preparation.  At one point he had gone over thirty-six days without talking to another person.  “For that entire period he subsisted on nothing but five pounds of rice and what marine life he could pull from the sea.” (pg. 36)  This scene of Chris traveling down the Colorado River is indicative of his ability to survive long periods without human interaction and on little food.  His experience traveling to the Gulf of California, according to Krakauer, convinced Chris of his doomed ability to survive on his own in the Alaskan wilderness.

Brynly

Honors English, 9