| A woman attempting to visit the abandoned bus made famous by the best-selling book and film Into The Wild has been killed. The newlywed woman, one of many tourists who attempt to visit the “Magic Bus” where Chris McCandless died in 1992, drowned attempting to cross a river to get to the vehicle. McCandless’s trip into the Alaskan wilderness was made famous in Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book, later made into a movie in 2007. Sean Penn wrote the screenplay and directed, and Emile Hirsch played McCandless. The McCandless story tells how, after graduating from college, top student and athlete McCandless abandons his possessions, gives away his $24,000 in savings to charity, and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. He later starved to death in the bus. The abandoned bus has since become a macabre memorial, with hikers attempting to retrace the adventurer’s footsteps. Veramika Maikamava and her husband, Piotr Markielau, both 24, were among those hikers. They were attempting to cross the Teklanika River along the Stampede Trail shortly before midnight, according to Alaska State Troopers. That’s when Maikamava was swept under the water and drowned. The river was said to be running high from recent rainfall. |
Poster Comment:
For those who don't recall, McCandless was an itinerant treehugger who got "trapped" by high river levels in the wilderness, unable to return, and starved to death in an abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness, leaving behind some really pathetic diaries of his death. Then they made a really stupid movie about it. What many people didn't learn about it was that he only had to hike a few miles to find a very nice bridge that crossed that river. Instead, without maps or knowledge, he just sat in the bus and starved to death.
And now this woman has joined him in his stupid death. And the world is now a smarter place.
Darwin really deserves an industry award for this woman's death, a masterpiece of unintentional irony. At least she found what she was looking for: the pointless death of an ignorant wannabe. Just like her hero. So it is a happy ending of sorts.
