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The determining factor on whether or not you will survive the wilderness is how vast your knowledge of the land is. After his fatal venture McCandless was compared to British naval officer, Sir John Franklin, who attempted to live without using the land. Krakauer defends McCandless for being different from Franklin in the respect that he attempted to “live entirely off the country-and he tried to do it without bothering to master beforehand the full repertoire of crucial skills” (361). McCandless went into the wild lacking the necessary knowledge required to survive. He attempted to live “entirely” off the land while remaining separate from it. The “full repertoire of crucial skills” which Krakauer refers to is not to be taken half-heartedly. McCandless did not allow himself to become a part of the area in which he stayed and for that reason was bested by the very area itself. Abram explains to us how the shamans become one with the land which they inhabit. He proclaims,

It is not by sending his awareness out beyond the natural world that the shaman makes contact with the purveyors of life and health, nor by journeying into his personal psyche; rather, it is by propelling his awarenes laterally, outward into the depths of a landscape at once both sensuous and psychological, the living dream that we share with the soaring hawk, the spider, and the stone silently sprouting lichens on its coarse surface. (8)

In order to survive in the wild, you must become one with the wild. Abram refers to the hawk, spider, and stone to drive home the point that you cannot select one aspect of the land to learn from, but must accept and acknowledge every pebble and creature you come across and try to understand their greater value to place in which they rest.