Twho Was the Family Member That Chris Got Along With
'Into the Wild' Chris McCandless' Sister Says He Was Determined to Cut Ties with Parents
Chris McCandless' journey 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 expedition was not just about his dearest of nature and his adventurous spirit, merely as well reflected his intent to sever ties with his parents afterwards what she calls traumatic childhood.
McCandless was 22 years old and newly graduated from college in May 1990 when he set out across the American West in a trip that would ultimately take him to the wilds of Alaska.
His journey was immortalized in the volume, which is still on schoolhouse curriculums beyond the country, and later turned into an award-winning motion picture. The book detailed how later graduation McCandless suddenly disappeared, not telling his family where he was going, giving his savings to a charity, using the proper noun "Alexander Supertramp," and and so hitchhiking across deserts and the Peachy Plains, riding the rails and living in a trailer park on the rugged California coast before finally making his way to Alaska.
Just over four months afterward he reached Alaska, McCandless' body was plant past hunters in an abandoned bus he had found thirty miles abroad 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 called his "magic passenger vehicle." By the end, he had written that "death looms" and he was "besides weak to walk out." He wrote that he had "literally get trapped in the wild."
McCandless has been criticized for beingness selfish and unprepared for his trip. He was at that place without a map and proper survival gear, and he had gone to great lengths to make it impossible for anyone to find him. Simply today, every spring, hikers from effectually the world even so make the 2-solar day trek to the bus, which has become a shrine to the beau many idolize as a symbol of hazard and a turning abroad from fabric 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 office of their brother's story, 1 that amend explains why he had gone to such nifty lengths to vanish from their view on his epic circuit.
"Frankly I was asked every time I met with a group of people... why Chris left the mode he did and why he felt the need to push himself to such extremes," Carine told ABC News. "I actually 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's sudden disappearance and journeying reflected his determination to separate himself from their parents and a traumatic childhood that she says they both shared.
"He wanted to really separate himself from a situation he felt was very toxic," Carine told ABC News.
The whole truth, she said, doesn't begin at the jitney in Alaska, but rather at their babyhood home three,000 miles abroad in El Segundo, California.
"He was Chris. He was my protector," she said. "He was always 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 mother Billie McCandless built a consulting business with him.
But family life for Chris was much more than complicated than it appeared to be. When Walt McCandless moved into a home with Billie and started having children with her, he was yet married to his outset wife Marcia and continuing to have children with her. In fact Walt was dividing his time betwixt the 2 homes: one with Billie, Chris, and Carine and another with Marcia and their half-dozen children, including Chris' older half-sisters Shelly and Shawna.
"Both women were pregnant at the same time. I call back 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 four or v days ... with us, and so be gone for a while. And then he'd come up back."
Walt and Marcia finally divorced when Chris was 4 years one-time. In her new book, Carine says Chris did not larn until he was in high school that his father had even so been married to Marcia when he was born, and that this realization upset him greatly.
Later on the divorce, Carine and Chris grew up knowing their half-siblings well, as Walt would take his children from his 2 marriages on vacations together and they would visit Walt and Billie's abode, sometimes for extended periods.
But in her new book Carine also writes about what she says was a darker side of this already complex family.
She says -- and her half-sisters Shelly and Shawna concord -- that their father was controlling and domineering, with a hair-trigger temper that expressed itself in angry, verbal outbursts, threats, invective, and even concrete attacks on his wives Billie and Marcia.
"At that place was a lot of choking and shoving," said Shelly McCandless, who lived in Walt and Billie's home with her half-siblings Chris and Carine during her senior year of high school.
"We would hear raised voices, and it would get louder and louder, and Chris would normally come up and grab me and get me outside of the house," Carine said. "Nosotros would hear my mom say, 'Kids, kids, Come await what your father is doing to me,' and then he would scream right after, 'kids, go in here now, look what your mother is making me do.'"
"Dad would throw Mom downwardly on the bed," Carine continued. "And he would exist choking her, and she -- in between her breath -- she would be screaming out for help, and when he released her and walked out, she would run over to u.s.a. and put her arms around the states, and she would apologize to us."
Carine's half-sisters Shelly and Shawna said they also witnessed their father's volcanic temper in their home with their female parent, 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 begetter'southward assailment was directed at Chris, who was and so in high schoolhouse.
"Dad just hauled off and punched him right on the spin, and Chris simply turned and looked to him and [had a] puff of disgust across his lips," she said. "And I saw this fear come across my male parent's face, and Chris just turned effectually and walked away."
Walt and Billie McCandless declined to speak to ABC News for this study. In a statement to ABC addressing Carine McCandless' new book, Walt and Billie McCandless said, "[This] fictionalized writing has absolutely nil to do with our honey son, Chris, his journeying or his grapheme. ... 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 volume, and in a new documentary that will air on PBS this 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 undercover for decades.
The letters comprise numerous complaints about his parents and their childhood.
In one of the letters, Chris wrote to Carine that after his higher graduation, "once the fourth dimension is right, with one abrupt, swift action I'm going to completely knock them [Walt and Billie] out of my life. I'm going to divorce them as my parents. ... I'll exist through with them one time and for all forever."
"I'm not releasing the messages to hurt my parents," Carine McCandless told ABC News. "I'thousand releasing parts of his letters for people to get a better agreement of Chris considering I think at that place's a lot of valuable lessons there, and I think it tin help 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 detect, using a dissimilar proper noun, going to great lengths to exit 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, merely I practise hold them accountable for his disappearance ... the fact that nosotros didn't know where he was and he felt he had to exist Alexander Supertramp."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wild-chris-mccandless-sisters-journey-escape-traumatic-childhood/story?id=26743275
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