Chapter 16, The Alaska Interior Summary and Analysis

"Wilderness appealed to those bored or disgusted with man and his works. It not only offered escape from society but also was an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he frequently made of his own soul." These words, from Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind, precede Chapter 16.

Chris McCandless leaves Carthage on April 15, 1992 for his long dreamed of trip to Alaska. He takes photos of himself at mile markers along the way while hitchhiking to Fairbanks. A truck driver named Gaylord Stuckey takes Alex a thousand miles from Liard, Alaska to Fairbanks. Unaccustomed to picking up hitchhikers, Stuckey likes Alex's clean-shaven, shorthaired look and soon learns Alex is intelligent, as well. Alex speaks frequently of his sister. Of his parents he says little. He describes his father as a...