Into the Wild Chapter 16 Summary

Here's chapter 16!! The rest of the script is in the comments.
Chapter 16
On April 15, 1992, McCandless started his journey to Alaska from Carthage. He was able to hitchhike to Laird River Hotsprings, but at that point it was hard to get a ride. He met a man named Gaylord Stuckey. Stuckey was delivering an RV to Fairbanks, exactly where McCandless was going. Stuckey however, wasn’t allowed to give hitchhikers a ride. After talking to McCandless, he decided to take him halfway, then wound up taking him all the way to Fairbanks. It was a three day drive.
They wound up talking a lot. Stuckey found out that McCandless had issues with his family, that his dad was a bigot, and that McCandless was planning on staying out in the wild for the summer. They got to Fairbanks on April 25. Stuckey bought McCandless a bag of rice. McCandless wanted to get books on the local plants, but Stuckey told him he’s still too early, the snow was still a foot or two on the ground. Stuckey dropped McCandless off at the university at 5:30 PM. When he left, Stuckey told him, “Alex, I’ve driven you a thousand miles. I’ve fed you and I’ve fed for three straight days. The least you can do is write me a letter when you get back from Alaska.” McCandless promised he would.
Stuckey also told McCandless to call his parents, and even offered his credit card number so McCandless could call. McCandless just responded with “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.” Stuckey wishes he got his parents’ number and called them himself. Stuckey wound up waiting in Fairbanks for the weekend. In this time he drove around the university to see McCandless again, but he wasn’t there.
McCandless wound up getting a book on edible plants in Alaska at the university library. He also got two postcards and sent them to Wayne Westerberg and Jan Burres. He then looked up a classified and bout a .22 Remington for about 125 dollars. After that he camped on the edge of the George Parks Highway, and on the morning of April 28, he started walking to the Stampede Trail. The first truck to drive by picked him up, it was Jim Gallien.
Three hours later, he was dropped off at the trail head. His trip in the Gulf of California living off of rice and fish convinced him that he could live with little food. The heaviest thing in his backpack was his 9 books. On the second day, he made the Teklanika River. Because it was still so cold in April, the water level was low because most of the ice hadn’t melted. On April 29, he fell through some ice, but nothing that hurt him. On the 30th, he was able to see Denali. On the 1st of May, about 20 miles down the trail, he found bus number 142. In his journal, he called it “Magic Bus Day” and he decided to camp there for awhile. He writes a passage on a piece of wood in the bus saying things like: “home is the road” and that this trip will “…victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution.”
Over his first week he had a lot of trouble hunting, only managing to catch a goose, and then a small squirrel 4 days later. As May continued, the snow began to melt and by mid May he was able to find plenty of plants and berries to eat. He also started to become much better at hunting. He tried making it to the Bering Sea; but after going west for 15 miles through mud and taking so much time to hunt, he returned to the bus to make his base camp there.
The area he was in was not so far away from civilization as McCandless thought. 30 miles East is the George Parks Highway. 16 miles south there a road that goes into Denali Park that hundreds of people take every day. Also, within 6 miles of the bus, there are 4 cabins, which were all unoccupied at the time. However, where he was, he spent 4 months without meeting anyone else; the site was just out of the way enough to cost him his life.
He made a list for himself, short term and long term. Short term items were to clean the stove and collect ice for refrigeration. Long term goals were about burning trails and collecting skins. Throughout June he ate really well a variety of animals and even on June 9th he managed to kill what he thought was a moose. There’s even a photo of it in his self portraits. Over the next couple of days, he worked hard trying to slaughter the animal before the meat rotted. He tried to smoke the meat, what he was told to do by hunters in South Dakota. However, because of the north, it’s better to dry the meat out first. By June 14, the carcass was infected with maggots and he had to leave most of it for the wolves.

[@brandonecks9068]

He wrote that the moose was the greatest tragedy of his life, because he had killed it and didn’t get much out of it. He marked a passage in Walden about the morality of eating meat, and wrote “moose” next to it. His luck, however, continued to July. In early July, he decided to head to civilization. He took a photo of him preparing to head back and shaving. Though smiling, he looks skinny. On July 2nd, he finished reading Tolstoy’s Family Happiness. He marked a passage that ends “And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?” On July 3, he started heading back.
He reached the Teklanika River on July 5 and what was a knee deep creek in winter was now a full blown river. It was almost 100 feet across, and water way to deep and freezing just to walk across. In addition, McCandless wasn’t a good swimmer; he would have been drowned easily.
He wrote in his diary “Disaster. Rained in. River look [sic] impossible. Lonely scared.”
He could have tried the channels just a mile to the north, but because at the bus food was plentiful throughout summer, he decided to head back and wait until the waters dropped again.

[@gabrielgomez2087]

Thanks for this buddy 😁

[@kepler180]

thanks dude

[@bogawuga4267]

what's the music at the begging of theses videos, it sound soo good!