Into the willd by Jon Krakauer summary of chapter 2 and 3

Outside Fairbanks, Alaska, an electrician named Jim Gallien picks up a teenage hitchhiker who introduces himself as Alex. Gallien is concerned that Alex, who claims to be 24, is underprepared for the several months’ stay he plans in Alaska’s Denali National Park. Gallien asks Alex questions about his hunting license, since the young man is carrying a rifle, but Alex says that he doesn’t care about the government’s rules and insists that he’ll be fine. The narrator, who we know to be the author Jon Krakauer, points out that this is typical of Alex. Gallien also notices that Alex’s gun isn’t necessarily powerful enough to kill large animals. In exchange for the ride, Alex gives Gallien his few spare possessions, including less than a dollar in change and a plastic comb. Gallien insists that Alex take a pair of his work boots and some extra food his wife has packed for his lunch. He drops Alex off at the edge of the park, on the Stampede Trail. He is convinced Alex will leave the park and come back to civilization as soon as he faces real hardship.

Summary: Chapter 2

he narrator relates the history of an abandoned school bus located on a remote section of the Stampede Trail in Denali National Park. Once in service in Fairbanks, the bus was bought and converted to workers’ housing, then left behind as shelter for hunters and campers after the construction project was abandoned due to lack of funds. Such is its condition when three different groups of hunters and hikers visit it in 1992. Three moose hunters cross the difficult Teklanika River in their trucks in September of that year and encounter two other people who have already discovered the bus. The other two have decided not to go inside it because a frighteningly bad smell is emanating from it. There is an S.O.S. note tied to the bus’s antenna that declares that its occupant, Christopher J. McCandless, is sick and needs help. The note also says that he has gone out to forage for berries and will return.