jakesnake66 wrote:Chris may as well have died scaling a mountain without climbing shoes, freezing to death without a coat, driving 150 on a curvy road, getting smashed by an 18-wheeler crossing the highway without looking, falling out of a boat without a life vest, or getting fatally bitten while casually handling rattlesnakes. If Chris had died in any of those other ways would people be lauding his "courage" or condemning his foolishness?
The thing is that the way he actually died and how he was found seemed unusual enough to arouse the attention of the media, which eventually led to the book etc. A more ordinary kind of death would probably not have led to a book and a movie. So only few people would have known Chris's story.
Now what seems to inspire most of us is not necessarily the way he died and the numerous mistakes he made when walking "into the wild", but rather the rest of his story, his philosophy in life, his attitude and, yes, his courage to follow his own path - a path that started right after his college graduation and thus much earlier than his fatal walk into the Alaskan bush.
I agree with you that there is no justification I could think of for how he left Carine behind, and I agree that the way he prepared (or not prepared) for his journey in the Alaskan "wilderness" was careless and thus foolish, but that's only part of the story.