Now playing: Into the Wild

Ranked for listeners who want the whole story: Into the Wild in adults, read by Philip Franklin.

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. His body – along with a camera with five rolls of film, an SOS note, and a cryptic diary written in the back pages of a recording about edible plants – was found six

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