Who Was the Family Member That Chris Got Along With
'Into the Wild' Chris McCandless' Sis Says He Was Adamant to Cut Ties with Parents
Chris McCandless' journeying was immortalized in book and movie, "Into the Wild."
— -- The sister of Chris McCandless, the hiker whose two-year odyssey across America and into the Alaskan wilderness was immortalized in the bestselling book "Into the Wild," says his trek was not just about his love of nature and his adventurous spirit, but also reflected his intent to sever ties with his parents after what she calls traumatic babyhood.
McCandless was 22 years old and newly graduated from college in May 1990 when he prepare out beyond the American West in a trip that would ultimately take him to the wilds of Alaska.
His journey was immortalized in the book, which is still on school curriculums across the country, and later turned into an laurels-winning movie. The book detailed how later graduation McCandless suddenly disappeared, not telling his family where he was going, giving his savings to a clemency, using the name "Alexander Supertramp," and so hitchhiking across deserts and the Dandy Plains, riding the track and living in a trailer park on the rugged California declension earlier finally making his way to Alaska.
Just over four months after he reached Alaska, McCandless' trunk was found by hunters in an abandoned charabanc he had establish 30 miles away from the nearest town. McCandless had died of starvation. His corpse weighed just 67 pounds.
According to his journal, for 114 days, Chris lived in what he chosen his "magic bus." By the finish, he had written that "decease looms" and he was "too weak to walk out." He wrote that he had "literally become trapped in the wild."
McCandless has been criticized for being selfish and unprepared for his trip. He was there without a map and proper survival gear, and he had gone to great lengths to brand it impossible for anyone to find him. But today, every spring, hikers from around the world withal make the ii-twenty-four hour period expedition to the double-decker, which has become a shrine to the immature man many idolize as a symbol of take a chance and a turning away from material things.
McCandless' sister, Carine McCandless, and his half-sisters, Shelly and Shawna, say there is something else that many people don't know. They are sharing what they say is a vital part of their blood brother's story, i that meliorate explains why he had gone to such not bad lengths to vanish from their view on his ballsy excursion.
"Frankly I was asked every time I met with a grouping of people... why Chris left the way he did and why he felt the need to push himself to such extremes," Carine told ABC News. "I really watered down those answers for a long time ... and I really felt and learned that I was doing a disservice to Chris and all those people 'crusade the greatest inspiration comes from truth."
In a new memoir, "The Wild Truth," Carine writes that she believes her brother'southward sudden disappearance and journeying reflected his determination to dissever himself from their parents and a traumatic babyhood that she says they both shared.
"He wanted to actually separate himself from a situation he felt was very toxic," Carine told ABC News.
The whole truth, she said, doesn't begin at the motorbus in Alaska, only rather at their babyhood abode 3,000 miles abroad in El Segundo, California.
"He was Chris. He was my protector," she said. "He was ever strong. He succeeded at everything he tried."
Carine said she has fond memories of family vacations and fourth dimension spent outdoors with her family. Her father Walt McCandless is a renowned rocket scientist who had worked for NASA, and her female parent Billie McCandless built a consulting business with him.
Merely family life for Chris was much more complicated than information technology appeared to be. When Walt McCandless moved into a home with Billie and started having children with her, he was yet married to his first wife Marcia and continuing to have children with her. In fact Walt was dividing his fourth dimension betwixt the two homes: ane with Billie, Chris, and Carine and another with Marcia and their 6 children, including Chris' older half-sisters Shelly and Shawna.
"Both women were pregnant at the same time. I think a lot of people don't realize that," Shawna McCandless said. "This was a man that was in and out of our house. He would spend iv or v days ... with us, then be gone for a while. So he'd come back."
Walt and Marcia finally divorced when Chris was 4 years old. In her new volume, Carine says Chris did not learn until he was in high schoolhouse that his father had still been married to Marcia when he was born, and that this realization upset him greatly.
Afterwards the divorce, Carine and Chris grew up knowing their one-half-siblings well, as Walt would take his children from his two marriages on vacations together and they would visit Walt and Billie'due south dwelling house, sometimes for extended periods.
Merely in her new book Carine as well writes about what she says was a darker side of this already complex family.
She says -- and her one-half-sisters Shelly and Shawna agree -- that their male parent was controlling and domineering, with a hair-trigger temper that expressed itself in angry, verbal outbursts, threats, invective, and even physical attacks on his wives Billie and Marcia.
"There was a lot of choking and shoving," said Shelly McCandless, who lived in Walt and Billie's abode with her half-siblings Chris and Carine during her senior yr of high schoolhouse.
"We would hear raised voices, and it would become louder and louder, and Chris would ordinarily come and take hold of me and go me outside of the house," Carine said. "We would hear my mom say, 'Kids, kids, Come look what your begetter is doing to me,' and then he would scream right after, 'kids, get in hither now, await what your mother is making me do.'"
"Dad would throw Mom down on the bed," Carine continued. "And he would be choking her, and she -- in between her jiff -- she would be screaming out for aid, and when he released her and walked out, she would run over to u.s.a. and put her arms around us, and she would repent to us."
Carine's half-sisters Shelly and Shawna said they too witnessed their father's volcanic temper in their home with their mother, Marcia.
ABC News obtained a copy of a restraining order Marcia obtained in 1972 against Walt -- shortly before their divorce -- in which she alleged that he had recently "struck" her in the arm and face, that he "has struck and threatened [her] on numerous occasions," and that she "feared for her safety."
In her book and in her interview with ABC News, Carine McCandless also describes an incident in which her father'southward aggression was directed at Chris, who was then in high schoolhouse.
"Dad just hauled off and punched him right on the spin, and Chris merely turned and looked to him and [had a] puff of disgust across his lips," she said. "And I saw this fear come across my begetter'due south face, and Chris just turned around and walked away."
Walt and Billie McCandless declined to speak to ABC News for this report. In a statement to ABC addressing Carine McCandless' new book, Walt and Billie McCandless said, "[This] fictionalized writing has admittedly nothing to do with our dear son, Chris, his journey or his character. ... This whole unfortunate event in Chris' life 22 years ago is about Chris and his dreams." They call her allegations "hyped up" and "spiteful."
In her book, and in a new documentary that volition air on PBS this calendar month called "Return to the Wild, The Chris McCandless Story," Carine quotes from letters that Chris wrote to her before he left, letters she had kept secret for decades.
The messages contain numerous complaints about his parents and their childhood.
In one of the letters, Chris wrote to Carine that later his college graduation, "once the fourth dimension is right, with one sharp, swift action I'm going to completely knock them [Walt and Billie] out of my life. I'thousand going to divorce them as my parents. ... I'll be through with them once and for all forever."
"I'one thousand non releasing the letters to hurt my parents," Carine McCandless told ABC News. "I'thousand releasing parts of his messages for people to become a better understanding of Chris because I think there's a lot of valuable lessons there, and I recollect it tin can assistance a lot of people."
Although Walt and Billie tried to locate Chris after he disappeared on his journey, even hiring an investigator, he made himself impossible to discover, using a different proper name, going to cracking lengths to leave no traceable tracks.
"Walt and Billie deserve sympathy for losing their son, absolutely," Carine McCandless said. "I don't blame Walt and Billie for his death, but I do hold them answerable for his disappearance ... the fact that nosotros didn't know where he was and he felt he had to be Alexander Supertramp."
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Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wild-chris-mccandless-sisters-journey-escape-traumatic-childhood/story?id=26743275
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