chunk: Two years earlier, in May 1990, McCandless graduates with high honors from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Shortly afterwards, McCandless rejects his conventional life by destroying all of his credit cards and identification documents. He donates $24,000, nearly all of his savings, to Oxfam and sets out on a cross-country drive in his well-used, but reliable Datsun B210 to experience life in the wilderness. However, McCandless does not tell his parents, Walt (William Hurt) and Billie McCandless (Marcia Gay Harden), or his sister Carine (Jena Malone) what he is doing or where he is going, and refuses to keep in touch with them after his departure, causing his parents to become increasingly anxious and eventually desperate.