I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE.

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ronlamothe
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I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HERE.

Postby ronlamothe » Thu Aug 18, 2011 7:25 pm

Though I do feel a bit like Michael Corleone in Godfather III when he says, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,” I am compelled to respond to some recent posts about my documentary as it relates to the recent release of Back to the Wild. This may take a little while, and so I apologize in advance for this turning into such a long post. Those not so deeply invested in such minutiae, feel free to move on to the next post or discussion topic. Based on what I’ve read so far on this site, however, it seems to me that some of the info I have to provide, and questions I have to ask, would be of interest to a number of you who regularly visit this forum. Indeed, kudos to those of you who continue to push the envelope of the McCandless story, and who do so in such perceptive and thoughtful ways, not to mention Adam Read, who should be applauded for creating this site in the first place. Be that as it may, perhaps I should break this post up into a few separate posts—one on questions surrounding Chris’s statement “I am injured,” another on the H. alpinum toxicology tests, a third on other “inaccuracies,” and a final one on a few bits and pieces of new stuff that I’ve come across since The Call of the Wild was released and haven’t spoken much about publicly.

Okay, first and foremost, and getting to what is most currently relevant, let’s talk about my speculation that Chris may have suffered an arm or shoulder injury at some point. To begin, and to be clear, I have always firmly and adamantly maintained that Chris starved to death (see separate post and/or the tifilms.com site for our analysis of Chris’s BMI while on Stampede Trail). I brought up the subject of injury, not as the cause of his death, but as a possible contributing factor to his overall situation—an attempt to explain the curious line in his S.O.S. note stating “I AM INJURED,” and based on a peculiarity I noticed in the iconic McCandless self-portrait in front of the bus.

I found that if you look closely at a blown up and well exposed version of this image (in fact, more like the one on the home page of this site, as opposed to the 2.5 x 4-inch darkened version one finds in Back to the Wild or small muddy version one finds in most copies of Into the Wild; although perhaps due to spacing issues related to the text on that page rather than any sort of cover up or conspiracy, it is too bad, and a bit strange, that the most inspirational photo of Chris that exists is reproduced on such a small scale in Back to the Wild, whereas almost 95% of the other images in the book, by my count, are given a full half-page)…but I digress…again, if you look closely at this photo, it appears as if Chris does not have his right arm in the sleeve of his flannel shirt. Rather, it looks to be slung somehow underneath it, obscured somewhat by his left knee. As I asked myself in the film, “Had Chris injured his shoulder? And could this be the injury he writes of in the S.O.S. note that no one’s ever been able to explain?”

As I later speculated on the tifilms.com site, perhaps Chris had separated his shoulder. And by “separation” I mean the common injury that occurs at the acromioclavicular (ACM) joint, and not a “broken arm” or “dislocated” shoulder, as some have assumed—something that would have healed by itself and become useful again, as separated shoulders do naturally. As some of you may know firsthand, severity and healing times vary considerably for this kind of injury, and sometimes it is only a matter of days before basic functioning returns. And according to those I have spoken with who deal with this kind of thing on a regular basis, depending on the degree of injury, it is reasonable to think that someone might sustain such an injury and still be able to use this arm soon thereafter (athletes sometimes even play sports with separated shoulders). In any case, I postulated that such an injury would not necessarily have prevented McCandless from writing (or waving, or shaving, for that matter), but was one that was still debilitating enough to make swimming back across the Tek extremely difficult.

Everyone has different opinions on what he meant when he wrote, “I AM INJURED.” But, as for me, I always questioned the idea put forth by some that he wasn’t injured at all and that he simply made this up. This doesn’t seem like something Chris would do, for as Krakauer put it, and I agree, “telling the truth was a credo he took seriously.” And why would he even need to make this part up? Certainly the rest of the note was put in sufficiently dire terms to convince someone that he needed help. The fact that we know that H. alpinum seeds are not poisonous (see separate post) also removes the possibility that by “injured” he meant “poisoned” (which would have been an odd usage of the word for someone as intelligent as Chris, and never really made sense to me). To me, the possibility of an arm injury, as suggested by the photograph, seemed a plausible, albeit entirely speculative, explanation.

Anyway, I included it in the final sequence of my documentary for two main reasons: one, it allowed me to juxtapose my growing obsession with the details surrounding Chris’s death with what, I came around to realize, was his greater symbolic importance as “the seeker,” the idealized McCandless (which, of course, begins to slip away from me every time I enter into these debates); the second reason I put it in the film was, as I later wrote on my website, that “as speculative as it is, it was included in the documentary for the sole reason that it was noticed, that it might help explain the mystery of the S.O.S. note, and that we wanted to open it up for further investigation and debate.”

Moreover, I bent over backwards, both in the film and on my website, to indicate that “this piece of evidence is by no means definitive, and our attempts to reproduce this visual effect were in the end inconclusive.” As I stated plainly in the documentary: “Confidence in my thesis, however, begins to fade when I try to disprove it. Although I can more easily get an empty-sleeved shirt to look like this photo, I can also approximate the look with an arm still in the sleeve. So it might just be an illusion. In the end I'm left uncertain, and so I leave it open for debate.” I reiterated this on the tifilms.com site, adding that “this image could be simply an illusion, a trick of light and shadow and posture. It could simply be a figment of the imagination.” And depending on the day of the week, I still sometimes think that I must being seeing things in this photo, that I am as crazy as a jay bird, and foolish for allowing myself to succumb to the power of suggestion so strongly. So I will say again, as I have stated publicly in the past, that I think it is just as likely that I am wrong about the bus photo as it is that I am right. It could be nothing.

Be that as it may, as a trained historian, one of the things that I love most about our attempts to uncover the past and, to employ Ranke’s phrase, wie es eigentlich gewesen, is that it is a process without end. As new evidence comes to light, our notions of “how it actually happened” may change, and so it with the Chris McCandless story. And, again, it was with this very spirit that I hoped to “open it up for further investigation and debate,” and the same spirit by which with every new piece of evidence that emerges I am ready and willing to adapt my own beliefs and theories accordingly. And so it was with much anticipation that I received my copy of Back to the Wild a few weeks ago. I had been receiving e-mails suggesting that the book contained definitive evidence that Chris did not suffer an arm injury. Obviously, I was rather interested to see what people were talking about—on the one hand, if it were true, I was glad that I had always been as forthright as I had been about the speculative nature of my theory—and was more than prepared to immediately revise and/or recant all of my earlier statements about a potential shoulder injury (even prior to the book arriving I was making preparations to update my website to reflect these new revelations). Indeed, no one owns the facts of the Chris McCandless story—not me, not Jon Krakauer, not the Christopher Johnson McCandless Foundation. They just are. And one needs the humility to admit this. I was therefore fully ready to give in on the potential injury, and had no intention of clinging blindly to something that from the very outset had been a huge speculation. But I had to see the evidence first.

Well, as was the case for many of you, I imagine, the book arrived and I read it cover to cover the first night. Albeit my expectations were a bit disappointed, it was great to see so many new images, and be able to see much of what he chose to document along his journeys. For some mistaken reason I was under the impression that the book might serve more as a factual, primary source, one that included all of his writings and photos—for example, where are all his “journal-snapshot album” entries from the Lower 48…all of that great third person stuff from his time in Mexico and elsewhere…or Chris holding the moose head photo…or the two farewell shots? But again, I digress…back to the matter at hand.

Okay, so the heart of the issue comes down to pages 220–221. On page 220, we have the iconic Chris self-portrait, entitled “The Aesthetic Voyager.” It is listed as July 3, 1992. On the following page, we have a photo of Chris clean-shaven and holding up a razor, entitled “Getting Ready to Return,” and also listed as July 3, 1992. On the surface, this second photo seems to indicate that there is no way, if they were taken the same day and one after another, that Chris had an arm injury in the bus photo. If from the same exact day, how could he have changed shirts, shaved, and then posed for this second photo if he was still injured, right? Even if it were a relatively quick-healing shoulder separation, that wouldn’t make much sense, would it? At first glance, I must admit, this did seem to undermine what I had previously speculated as to the status of his arm in the bus photo.

The problem with this evidence, however, is that it turns out to be factually incorrect, and thus quite misleading. My suspicions first became aroused when I noticed the number of errors and assumptions found elsewhere in the book, and in particular in its final two “Treks.” Now, I understand the theory of how the authors of Back to the Wild (and Jon Krakauer in his book, for that matter) dated these pictures—assuming that Day 1 of Chris’s Stampede journal was April 28, 1992, one can date with some probability a number of these photos based on what they contain (for example, we know that the “Goose!” photo on page 208 is June 5, 1992, because on Day 39 he writes “GOOSE!” and this would correspond with that particular date).

However, not only are a number of these dates quite speculative (pages 204–207, 232–235, for example, as well as the three photos leading up to the iconic bus photo…how do we know that “Roots for Dinner” was taken on the very first day that he started eating them, or that the images shown on pages 218–219 are from his last meal of moose meat?), but a few of them are downright wrong (Day 100 on page 233 is listed incorrectly as August 1st and not August 5th; “Beautiful Blueberries” on page 235 is said to be on August 8th, which is wrong—it was August 12th; and it is written on page 240 that his “last journal entry is made on the 13th of August,” whereas it was actually August 18th). And speaking of that “Farewell” photo, again it is really too bad that they did not include both takes of this image. As you may remember from the documentary, and contrary to what is stated in the prefatory note of authenticity claiming that McCandless “photographed a particular subject/landscape only once,” photographic evidence shows that Chris actually shot two photos of himself holding his goodbye message (I actually prefer the other one over the version reproduced in Back to the Wild…it seemed, to me, to suggest a greater range of emotions, and perhaps ambivalence on his part, his face, as I stated in the documentary, “less exultant than at peace,” and revealing “a certain sadness at leaving, his thoughts perhaps of those left behind”).

Anyway, all of these errors, oversights, and omissions got me wondering about how carefully (or not) this book was put together, and more specifically, exactly how the book’s “Team Members” dated the photos in Treks 11 and 12. More than anything, I wondered how they dated the iconic Chris bus shot and the clean-shaven photo, and how they put them both as having been taken on Day 67 (July 3, 1992). Were they working off the actual negatives, and these exposures were back-to-back, or a few shots apart? Or were they working off randomly assembled piles of photographs? And even if they knew the order for certain, how could they know that both of these photos were actually shot on July 3rd?

I, myself, for years had tried to pin down the exact date of the Chris bus photo (and the clean-shaven photo, for that matter), and had never come across any solid evidence. Jon Krakauer, for one, had access to all of these photos (and used dates whenever possible), and yet he never dated either of these images in Into the Wild (he includes the bus photo, but never mentions when it was taken, even in a general way); and as for the Chris clean-shaven picture, he writes merely that “writing on a piece of birch bark, he made a list of things to do before he departed: ‘Patch Jeans, Shave! Organize pack....’ Shortly thereafter he propped his Minolta camera on an empty oil drum and took a snapshot of himself brandishing a yellow disposable razor.” The Penn film includes the Chris bus image at the very end of the movie, and states, confusing matters even further, that this photo was on the roll of film still in the camera when Chris’s body was discovered. Wouldn’t this mean that there was only one roll of film shot between July 3rd and the third week of August? That doesn't seem right…that is, unless the photo was taken later than the new book now indicates. Anyway, I could never quite date the Chris bus shot, but thought perhaps it was taken sometime after the moose debacle but before he tried to walk out.

What I decided to do is seek more information. Although a few red flags had been raised, I was still ready to be convinced that these dates were accurate. Fortunately, I happened to know the very individual who might be the best person to ask about how they dated these two images—Heather Horton, the Canadian artist who played a critical role in the selection of photographs for Back to the Wild, and who also “undertook the first writing of the final chapters.” Heather first contacted me back in 2008. She had seen my documentary and wanted to trek out to the bus, so we corresponded back and forth a few times via e-mail that spring and summer before and after her Alaska trip. Because I knew her, had helped her out, and still had her contact information, I figured she would be the perfect person to ask. As well, assuming there was nothing to hide and that these dates were based on some factual evidence I was unaware of, I expected that Heather—kind-hearted and of kindred spirit—would be more than willing to share with me how she and the rest of the team came up with them. So I e-mailed her directly, asking for any information she might be willing and able to provide. Well, this was almost a month ago now, followed up by another attempt two weeks later. Curiously enough, and not like her at all, I still have yet to receive any response whatsoever.

Well, a few days later I figured out perhaps why no one is talking—the dates are bogus. Okay, perhaps that is too strong. What I can say with certainty is that it is not within the realm of earthly possibilities that those two photos were both taken on July 3rd, as stated so definitively in the new book. Moreover, I can say with equal certainty that these two photos were not even taken on the same day, regardless of the actual date. They may have been taken within days of each other (or perhaps not, I now wonder), but even this now raises further questions about the book, and for me at least—and until someone comes out and provides definitive evidence otherwise—keeps open the possibility that Chris’s S.O.S. stating “I AM INJURED” may be referring to a lingering shoulder injury suggested in the first photo. Indeed, if these two photos did not take place on the same day, one has to allow for the possibility that, were there an injury, some initial healing may have taken place between them, providing the requisite time for Chris to have felt good enough to do things like shave and at least attempt to hike out (and perhaps, again a speculation, the injury may have been the very reason he decided to leave…it’s as likely as a Tolstoy story). In addition, or alternatively, these dubious dates also suggest that there is the possibility that the potential injury (and self-portrait) occurred well before July 3rd.

On this latter point (and I apologize, I’ll get to my evidence in a minute), there is that stretch of time from Day 51 to Day 57 that I’ve always wondered about—a full week in Chris’s journal from June 17th through the 23rd where, uncharacteristically, there are no food entries at all, only lines. And this was following soon after the moose debacle, and the entry on Day 49 when he writes, “HENCE FORTH WILL Learn to Accept My Errors, HOWEVER GreAT THEY BE” (a mysterious part of the entry that looks to me like he added later on considering the way it wraps under Day 82, and the fact that it is the only entry of the entire journal where he uses lower case rather than all CAPS). Anyway, I’ve always wondered what Chris was doing during this time period right after the moose: First of all, what exactly does he mean on June 16th when he writes “RETURN TO BEARY FIELDS”? Was he still living at the bus when he was doing this, and in the days following? If not, where was he? And what was he doing? And what was he eating besides bear berries? Was he hunting, and able to use his rifle? He wasn’t writing anything, but did he take any pictures? What did they show? If there are no pictures, why aren’t there any? And why the lines and no entries?

Strangely, both Into the Wild and Back to the Wild provide not a single clue on this mysterious lost week in June. Krakauer, who is so thorough and detailed in most instances, writes merely one sentence: “As McCandless gradually stopped rebuking himself for the waste of the moose, the contentment that began in mid-May resumed and seemed to continue through early July.” Weird. Likewise, this is exactly where the editors of the new book have a very noticeable ten-day gap in Trek 11. There is the “Camp Life” photo they date June 14th, where Chris regrets having shot the moose, and then the next page of the book skips ahead to June 24th and the dubiously dated “Roots for Dinner,” followed by another jump, this time a whole week, to the 1st of July and the supposed “End Moose” photo. Again, what was happening during this lost week? And in the week that followed?

If Back to the Wild were unabridged, perhaps we could eliminate the possibility that it was during this time period when Chris was injured—either in some repetitive use injury following almost a week straight of “butchering” the moose, labor-intensive harvesting that he described as “extremely difficult,” or from a more traumatic shoulder injury suffered elsewhere, perhaps at one of the nearby cabins (the roof of the Park Service cabin showed signs of being hacked through with a pickaxe, discovered some six weeks later by wildlife biologist Paul Atkinson, who dated the vandalism to “many weeks earlier” based on the late-July fireweed growing up through the mattresses, and thus fitting this timeline). Unfortunately, for those who want to dismiss the idea of injury outright, unless there is evidence removing these dates (roughly the three-week period between June 14th and July 3rd) and scenarios as possibilities, one has to keep them in play as potential, albeit entirely speculative, injury causes and timelines. And while we are on the subject of things unreleased that would help clarify our understanding of Chris’s time on Stampede, why not release an image of (or provide more info about) the Alaska road map that Chris had with him out at the bus (and that was released to the family with his other possessions, a fact that goes unmentioned in Into the Wild)? According to the Chip Brown story (an often overlooked and important source), the map had “the broken line of trail leading west into the country north of Denali—the Stampede Trail,” and thus likely also had the Denali park service road—a means by which he could have walked out without re-crossing the Tek. It would be nice to know for certain, however.

Okay, at long last, now to the most important part of this ridonculously long post—the proof that these dates are bogus and that the two pictures on pages 220 and 221 were not taken on the same day. As with the iconic bus photo, it turns out it was right in front of us all along, for anyone to see. I will try to make this as clear and simple as possible: The picture of Chris “Getting Ready to Return” following his fresh shave was taken sometime in the morning, and the iconic Chris bus picture of “The Aesthetic Voyager” in full beard was taken at sunset. Now, unless Chris was able to grow a full beard in a day, this makes it impossible that both were taken on July 3, 1992, or the same day for that matter. Not only does this raise questions as to the dating system employed by the editors of this book, but it means that these two photos had to be taken at least a day apart, and perhaps even several days apart, and thus enough time for Chris to no longer need a sling.

How do I know this, you ask? It’s all in the geography of the bus, and the shadows in the pictures. As anyone who’s ever been to the bus knows (or anyone who has seen my documentary knows…and if not, check out the picture “Sunset at the Magic Bus” on page 189 of Back to the Wild), the sun sets in the direction of the rear end of the bus, toward the hills to the west. As well, anyone who has ever been to the bus knows (or can see from some of the pictures) that there is a door toward the rear of the bus that is just to the right of where Chris is sitting in the iconic bus photo. It is obvious from this photo that the rear door was left open and that the setting sun is casting a sharp-edged, angled shadow from the door right across the side of the bus, with the shadow’s top cutting right through the top of Chris’s head (has nothing to do with the paint—look at other shots of the same section of the bus, such as the cover of The Call of the Wild DVD). This picture was thus clearly taken late in the day, toward sunset. The “Getting Ready to Return” photo on the following page, on the other hand, with Chris clean-shaven and holding the razor, was clearly taken sometime in the morning, or toward midday, as evidenced by the shadows on his face, as well as the one of his body cast behind him and to his right on the ground, the western horizon in the distance. Again, if the clean-shaven McCandless photo was taken at some point during the day of July 3rd, as his shadow indicates, it is not humanly possible that the bearded McCandless bus photo was taken at sunset the same day, as indicated by the shadows cast both on his face and the bus by the setting sun to his left. Additional evidence that there is time separating these photos is that at some point between them Chris has sewn brown patches into the knees of his jeans (the same jeans with patches that were amazingly still there when I visited the bus back in 2006).

Unless someone can come forward and somehow explain the unexplainable, what becomes clear from a closer analysis of these two images is that the editors of Back to the Wild were merely guessing as to the dates of these two photos, and that the given date of July 3, 1992, for these two images was neither accurate nor based in factual evidence. Be that as it may, I remain, as I have from the beginning, unsure of what I see in that iconic image, and my injury speculations, again, are only speculations. As I’ve said before, it could just be an illusion, and perhaps those who think the S.O.S. letter was some sort of semaphore of injury are correct. And as such, I thus also remain prepared, in the face of further evidence and clarification, to give ground if not recant entirely, on my theories about a separated shoulder, and change the content of my website accordingly. And so, in conclusion, and in the spirit of truth and the pursuit of wie es eigentlich gewesen, I invite those who possess contrary or more thorough and detailed evidence to correct me where I’m wrong, or explain how such a significant mistake made it into print.

Sincerely and respectfully,

Ron Lamothe

SteveSalmon
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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby SteveSalmon » Sat Aug 20, 2011 3:45 am

~SS
Last edited by SteveSalmon on Thu May 03, 2012 6:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby erikhalfacre » Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:17 pm

On the issue of the accuracy of the dates in the book, pardon me for not having my copy handy to check (I mailed it back to AK with some other belongings) but didn't they specifically say something about that matter in the book.

If I'm remembering correctly, there is a place where they mention the fact that once Chris switched cameras and they lost the date codes on the photographs that the nature of dating the images became much more speculative. Like I say, I cannot quote the book because I don't have my copy with me right now (and won't till November) but if someone who does have the book feels like posting the exact phrasing that would be nice.
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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby ellisd » Sun Aug 21, 2011 1:23 pm

erikhalfacre wrote:
If I'm remembering correctly, there is a place where they mention the fact that once Chris switched cameras and they lost the date codes on the photographs that the nature of dating the images became much more speculative.

Page 93, Trek 5 summary:
"Trek 5 marks a photographic blackout period between February and December 1991.

Little is known about this period of time. Alex makes a habit of burying his money and other essentials before he enters a new city, thus protecting his valuables. Probably a protective measure learned through experience, this technique unfortunately results in the premature death of his Minolta camera, the lamp of his photographic journal." that was half the page, if you guys want/need the other half up let me know.

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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby marcym » Tue Mar 20, 2012 11:32 am

Hi there,
Ron, I have watched your documentary some years ago, I think that is interesting to have more information about Chris's story, yet during the reconstruction of it is possible that the dates are not exact, and maybe for that or maybe for other we don't know the reality and we can only to suppose...
I think that Chris has been really injured, more than one times, and I think that with high probability the mystery's solution is inside of it. I think that Chris hurt himself during the trying to get out of the "wild", before and after it, I mean a long time into one place so dangerous, without the necessary equipment, is not too strange to hurt himself. We know that he have been forced to come back to the bus...and maybe injured again? is not to strange to suppose it. Then, he probably had problem for to use the gun and for the hunt. We know that he has suffered for the moose's waste, anyway wasn't a stupid and absolutely he knew that only with berries was impossible survive...and he wanted to live don't die!!! I'm pretty sure about that, he loved so much the life and he has always told, written...if somebody wants kill himself don't take a lot of pictures and always smiling, you know?
I can only to suppose, from my personal opinion, only this...and I hope that my words aren’t offensive for someone, but for me, what I say has a sense, again, FOR ME.
I mean: He was injured, without the possibility to use his arm for to hunt, without forces and only eating berries, and some seeds… is not to strange if in the end he died for starved, you know?
Maybe his bones weren't been broken but maybe he had strong muscle pains; I know very well what does mean...sometimes is impossible to move a single finger...and without some medicine is hard to go ahead...I can't imagine him completely alone, scared, tired, suffering...I think that in the end he was so debilitated to don't go to look for berries and other stuff in the bush...because he had no forces, his request for help is previous his died, maybe some days or more than ones, I think that he died during his sleep.
This is what I think has happened, for me he died after "18th Aug"...for me on "18th" was the day when he hasn't more came out of the bus and maybe after one of two days of coma he died.
Anyway I want know the realty too, but a lot of time has gone since has happened, and after so long time is difficult to know exactly…

If really, so many things aren't true, who has worked for the new and old book, has to work again, PLEASE, is important to know the truth, not because we are insane and curious, but for Chris's memory before than all, I'd like to know the truth about it, especially because he did what he did during his research of truth...so has no sense to invent false things about him...Wrong dates or wrong facts...for what? Come on… I don’t know if is possible to do more than this, but if it is...is necessary to do.
Please.
This is my thought.

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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby Tom Hron » Mon Dec 03, 2012 4:08 am

I’ve spent a lifetime flying and selling bush planes and helicopters in Alaska and Canada’s High Arctic, so I know who can live there, and, of course, who can’t. And though I’m older now, I spent last summer all alone on a raw gold claim not far from where Chris McCandless died. In addition, I’ve written a best-selling bear book, Fighting for your Life: Man-eater Bears, which has a lot to say about wilderness survival. Sadly, he was just another pathetic loser with mental health issues who nonetheless thought he knew what he was doing. Same old deal—book smart but just couldn’t cut it when it came right down to it.

I finished Jon Krakauer’s “creative-nonfiction” book last night and it left me disturbed. I don’t even rate McCandless with Timothy Treadwell of Grizzly Man fame, another loonytoon who made every mistake known to God. He at least survived 14 summers before getting himself killed. Chris couldn’t even make one, so it upsets me mightily when I see so many people glorifying him. His story is nothing more than one about betrayal, deceit, lies, and stupidity.

Yes, he died of starvation, but what surprises me is that no one seems to understand why. It’s called "rabbit starvation." You can eat all the birds, rabbits, and squirrels you want, but it won’t do you any good. You must eat fat to survive, and lots of it. There were good reasons why ancient Native Alaskans harvested every bear, beaver, salmon, seal, and walrus they could, because their fatty meat is what kept them alive. They knew it doesn’t take long for lean meat to kill you.

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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby marcym » Sat Dec 22, 2012 3:14 pm

Hey Tom...bla bla bla Tom, okay maybe you are the best in the world, like it's clear you think about yourself, but for me Chris is so much better than you and honestly I think is "indelicate" that you feel the need to write something so rude against him.
Chris has inspired part of my life, that one dedicated to the pursuit of happiness and today, after followed his teachings I consider myself a better person and much more happy. Again, he is so much better than you...have a nice day, Tom the perfect man...

Chris, you are in my heart.

M.

Tom Hron
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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby Tom Hron » Wed Jan 02, 2013 4:22 am

Wow, someone else with mental health issues, and one who's clearly never been to Alaska, let alone do anything with his life. Please don't come north, since we don't need any more losers like McCandless, and certainly one who hasn't even the courage to use his own name. What's it like living like a sissy?

marcym
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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby marcym » Fri Jan 04, 2013 3:37 pm

:D

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Re: I AM INJURED, NEAR DEATH, AND TOO WEAK TO HIKE OUT OF HE

Postby ppathways » Sat Feb 23, 2013 3:14 am

Tom, You are insensitive. A young man died.


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