Carine McCandless - The Wild Truth - The secrets that drove Chris McCandless into the wild

We sat in the Sunday school classes our parents used to teach, listening to the new teacher talk about God. Then we made our way into the church, greeting Reverend Smith on the way in. After he shook our hands, he looked around expectantly for our parents. But before he was able to quiz us on where they were, the next person in line shook his hand and Chris and I rushed in to take our seats.

We felt safe standing amongst the congregation. It was familiar and right. We sang “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Rock of Ages,” the warmth of the lyrics wrapping around us as we watched our fellow acolytes light the candles on the altar. The room smelled like Pine-Sol and flowers, but mostly like the perfume of all the women who wore too much. We sat quietly and listened to Reverend Smith sermonize about the will of God and the truth and peaceful beauty realized in a life that served Him.

Reverend Smith always looked to me like he was surrounded by a holy glow. I thought a lot about his description of God and what that God had to do with me. It was always an odd concept. Was God like the reverend described? I imagined an ethereal being with a long beard, a white light, a warm presence. Or was God like the Wizard of Oz, all-powerful and good, so long as you didn’t cross him? Or was I supposed to fear God? Was he like my dad, who liked to invoke His name when he wanted me, Chris, and Mom to never question him? “I am God!” he would shout. “Nothing I say or do can be wrong!”

I looked over at Chris, who looked as serious as he always did in church. I knew that, like me, he was enchanted by the idea of a Father’s pure and unconditional love existing somewhere outside of our reality. We talked broadly about what we believed in, and sometimes spirituality hit home in a more personal way. There was the night Mom had told us that Uncle Phil had died. Uncle Phil wasn’t technically our uncle but the husband of Ewie, a woman who’d been like a grandma to us. Uncle Phil was kind and sweet, and always showed us funny magic tricks. His was my first experience with death. The night we learned about Uncle Phil, Chris saw I was sad and let me curl up with him. We lay in his bed and compared our visions of heaven and the angels, wondering what Uncle Phil might be doing up there with God and if God liked quarters being pulled out of his ears or cards that somehow appeared and disappeared. I held a pint-size bucket of green slime in my hands, and I turned the rigid container around, trying to look introspective.

“What are you doing with that?” Chris had asked.

“Uncle Phil gave this to me,” I said.

“It’s not about the things he gave us, Carine,” he said softly. “It’s about the memories. You can’t touch those with your hands. Everything you can touch with your hands is just stuff .”

Sitting on the wooden pew with Chris in church, I wondered if he was right. We accepted Communion when it was passed around, and as the dry bite of bread and the sweet grape juice touched my tongue, I thought, Well, these are also things, but they have great meaning.

After services were complete, we made our way down to the social hall. As we passed by the membership portraits lining the hallway, I saw my family as other members must have seen us in our Olan Mills special: cute and smiling kids, happy parents, the perfect Christmas-card family.

We looked, I thought, like Denise Barker’s family. Denise was my best friend and lived just down the street from us. It was during after-school playtime and sleepovers at her house that I realized what was happening at mine perhaps wasn’t that normal and probably not okay. Her house was always immaculate, like mine, but quiet. I didn’t really comprehend how boisterous my personality was until Denise’s very sweet and reserved mother had to warn me on several occasions that if I did not lower my volume, she would have no choice but to send me back home. Denise and I would retreat to her room, doing our best to refrain from giggling. She had two older brothers who played a lot of soccer, and Denise took piano lessons. They went to church every Sunday as a family and they prayed before every meal, even if it was McDonald’s Mondays. Denise’s dad was a highly educated engineer who worked in a similar field as my dad, and they crossed professional paths from time to time. I wondered what Denise’s dad thought of mine—if he assumed my dad was as stellar a husband and father as he was a scientist. Whenever I saw Mr. Barker disciplining his children, I was struck by how rational and even-tempered he was. His face changed from its amiable norm to something stern yet not threatening. He actually had a conversation with his children and listened when they replied. And they weren’t afraid to reply. It was completely foreign to me. I reeled in my gregarious behavior and spent as much time as possible at Denise’s house. I’m sure her parents didn’t have a perfect marriage. But I never heard them say a cross word to each other, nor about the other to any of their children. Most noticeable to me was the way her parents looked at each other; I realized what genuine admiration, respect, and kindness were supposed to look like. They had a perceptible pride in what they were fostering within their family and accomplishing together through their children.

Chris and I finally arrived in the social hall to the smell of Krispy Kreme donuts—my favorite part of church. Chris handed me two dimes, as my mother usually did. I plunked them into the green plastic basket and retrieved one cinnamon and one powdered from the boxes of sweet deliciousness. As I alternated a bite of one donut with a bite of the other, to achieve the perfect combination, I heard other parents asking Chris where ours were.

“Oh, we came with friends today,” he answered to one. “They’re out of town; we’re here with neighbors,” he told another. They smiled at us and said, “Well, give your parents our love.”

We put on our coats and began to make our way home.

“Do you want to cut through the woods?” Chris asked. I did. Taking the detour on the way home would keep us away a bit longer. Plus, Chris always cheered up when we were in the woods; he loved nothing more than when our family hiked in the Shenandoah, and he often provided captions to the scenery, as if he were preparing an image for National Geographic magazine. Chris loved to look at every type of plant, animal, and bug he hadn’t seen before on the trail and point out those he did recognize. He enjoyed walking along small streams, listening to the water as it traveled, and searching for eddies where we could watch the minnows scurry amongst the rocks. On one Shenandoah trip, while we were resting at a waterfall, eating our chocolate-covered granola bars and watching the water pummel the rocks below, he said, “See, Carine? That’s the purity of nature. It may be harsh in its honesty, but it never lies to you.”

Chris seemed to be most comfortable outdoors, and the farther away from the typical surroundings and pace of our everyday lives the better. While it was unusual for a solid week to pass without my parents having an argument that sent them into a negative tailspin of destruction and despair, they never got into a fight of any consequence when we were on an extended family hike or camping trip. It seemed like everything became centered and peaceful when there was no choice but to make nature the focus. Our parents’ attention went to watching for blaze marks on trees; staying on the correct trail; doling out bug spray, granola bars, sandwiches, and candy bars at proper intervals; and finding the best place to pitch the tent before nightfall. They taught us how to properly lace up our hiking boots and wear the right socks to keep our feet healthy and reliable. They showed us which leaves were safe to use as toilet paper and which would surely make us miserable downtrail. We learned how to purify water for our canteens if we hadn’t found a safe spring and to be smart about conserving what clean water we had left.