Several months earlier, McCandless had walked into the wilderness for a final great adventure after wandering the United States having given away all of his possessions.

That summer, in Alaska, McCandless camped in the shell of an old bus and subsisted on animals he hunted and plants he foraged. For several months, he thrived. But then something went wrong. In mid-September, McCandless's body and diaries were found by hunters. The assumption was that he had starved to death.

Jon Krakauer wrote a story about McCandless for Outside Magazine, and then a famous book called "Into The Wild," which was later made into a movie.