In chapter four of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, the author is able to trace the early adventures of Chris McCandless from the time he leaves Atlanta until he "entered Las Vegas with no money and no ID." Much of McCandless's travels at this time were recorded by Chris in a "journal-snapshot album" which he eventually left with Wayne Westerberg. Chris first travels into the Lake Mead area of Nevada before "tramping" through much of California, Arizona and even into the northern canals of Mexico which he paddles through in an aluminum canoe. Along the way he meets people such as "Crazy Ernie" and Jan Burres, who he would stay in touch with for two years. At the end of the chapter, he is back in Nevada.
The main purpose of the chapter is to chronicle Chris's symbolic abandoning of the trappings of civilization and his attempt to seek out a "life...shaped by circumstance." During this period, he sheds most of his important material possessions, including his beloved Datsun when it becomes inoperable after a flash flood near Lake Mead, many of his clothes, a guitar, and several incidentals. Krakauer writes that Chris "saw the flash flood as an opportunity to shed unnecessary baggage." Not content with abandoning material objects, Chris also burns all of his money "in a gesture that would have done both Thoreau and Tolstoy proud." Chris apparently relished this carefree life even if for most of the time he was hungry and alone. This content with such a life would later lead Chris to journey into the Alaska wilderness with little more than the shirt on his back. Krakauer uses a quote by James Joyce, describing Stephen Dedalus (from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), to sum up what Chris was like:
"He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wild hearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish water and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight."
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