"Nor was McCandless endowed with a surfeit of common sense. Many who knew him have commented, unbidden, that he seemed to have great difficulty seeing the trees, as it were, for the forest. 'Alex wasn’t a total space cadet or anything,' says Westerberg; 'don’t get me wrong. But there was gaps in his thinking. I remember once I went over to the house, walked into the kitchen, and noticed a god-awful stink. I mean it smelled nasty in there. I opened the microwave, and the bottom of it was filled with rancid grease. Alex had been using it to cook chicken, and it never occurred to him that the grease had to drain somewhere. It wasn’t that he was too lazy to clean it up-Alex always kept things real neat and orderly-it was just that he hadn’t noticed the grease.' (62-63)"

• Those that personally knew McCandless knew that sometimes he had trouble seeing beyond the initial result of something and into the long term. This quote shows an example of a time when he did this at home. He also did that on his trip to Alaska except this time it had a much more permanent affect.