[andyjohnson0]

I climb too, and I agree with your perspective.

When I read the book I felt McCandless was a romantic. Naive perhaps, and his death was unnecessary, but he lived his life on his own terms to a degree which is relatively rare today.

[jfengel]

I think that everybody ends up "living their lives on their own terms" in one way or another. Life presents facts to you. If you wish to go on living, you adapt to them. If you choose not to go on living, that's your choice, but I think it's misleading to imply that other people aren't making their own choices -- including, most of the time, choices that bring them to stay alive.

I don't mean that as anything negative about McCandless. It's just that I think it's worth saying that other people aren't also lesser for making their own different choices. They are also doing their best with the difficult problems life throws at you, giving you lots of options and few clues.

[discreteevent]

Same here. It was a romantic drive. Not even really for an adrenaline rush which is partly what something like base jumpers are after. And even then, only some of them could be said to have a death wish.