Into the Wild #6

       I finished Into the Wild today! yay. woohoo! But, the story was a really sad one. I feel terrible for the McCandless family, who will never get over this loss. Today, the reading started off with Krakauer's visit to the Stampede Trail in Alaska where Chris died. He lived in Fairbanks bus 142, an old, weathered bus on the Sushana River. Krakauer took two Alaskans with him, Roman Dial and Dan Solie, as well as Andrew Liske. They tried to discover how Chris died. When they arrived, they met the 2 men who saw his dead body. They made a fool of Chris for shooting a caribou, which he recorded as a moose. Krakauer discovered that it was a moose though!! Althogh Chris wrote in his diary mainly about the food he hunted, doesn't mean he didn't appreciate nature, as some belived. I mean, he risked his life to live somewhere he loved, nature. How could he not appreicaite it? I dislike how people make fun of him without knowing enough of his life's story.
       There were some weird things put out there about McCandless: he had "short man's complex"(an insecurity), which led him to want to show the world that he could survive in the wild and that he was manly. Um, I don't think that's the case but anyway, when Krakauer visited the bus, he investigated what may have killed him. In his Alaskan plant encyclopedia, Tanaina Plantlore, potato seeds are said to be poisonous. This struck Krakauer because according to Wayne Westerberg, he may have purchased potato seeds in South Dakota, in hopes of having a small garden. A kind of wild potato, H. alpinum, grows in the bus's region. The book also says that a wild sweet pea, H. Mackenzii, could be easily mixed up(which is poisonous) with it because the only thing that distinguishes them is the structure of veins under the leaves. At first, Krakauer thought that he mixed them up, but he didn't. He sent samples of the wild potato seeds to a professor, who examined them. They didn't contain any alkaloids. He was baffled(and so was I!). He stumbled across an article about deadly fungus, which rang a bell. He realized that he didn't die from the seeds, per se; rather, he died from the R. leguminicola(fungus) that grew on them, since Chris kept them in a damp Ziplock bag. What a sad ending. This evil fungus inhibits an enzyme necessary for metabolism, so no matter how much Chris ate, he would've starved. I really liked this book but, it was very sad and unfortunate. The epilogue was pretty sad too, but his mother stayed strong during her visit to Fairbanks bus 142. Until next time!