Big news from Carine McCandless and the folks at Friends of Bus 142:
University of Alaska Museum of the North has received a $500,000 grant to complete the conservation work needed to prepare “Into the Wild” Bus 142 for permanent public exhibit in Fairbanks. The funds were awarded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services as part of the “Save America’s Treasures” grant program. The bus was flown out of the wilderness by the Alaska Air National Guard on June 18, 2020.
Click this link to learn more: https://www.friendsofbus142.com/.../university-of-alaska.../
Into the Wild (1996), which was an expansion of a 1993 article Krakauer wrote for Outside, titled “Death of an Innocent, was Krakauer’s first mainstream success, remaining on The New York Times Bestseller List for more than two years, though its popularity has ballooned further in subsequent years.
The book covers the itinerant life of adventurer Chris McCandless and his eventual death in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness. Today, it is a regular component of high school and college reading curriculums. Into the Wild was adapted into an eponymous Hollywood film, directed by Sean Penn and starring Emile Hirsch, in 2007, which was critically acclaimed, receiving two Golden Globes and two Academy Award nominations.
"Terrifying... Eloquent... A heart-rending drama of human yearning." —New York Times
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. How Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.
Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.
Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless.
When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.