The first scene of the film shows Chris having arrived to Alaska and settling himself in the wild, here he finds a left bus and starts living here, calling the bus “A Magic Bus”. Within the entire film scenes of the present are mixed up with those of the past, which in their turn show why a young man has left the world of people and made his home in the wild.
Two years before Chris graduated from Emory University with excellent marks, which enabled him to try enter Harvard University. But Chris does not even try; he gives all his money to Oxfam and starts leading life of a tramp. He calls himself Alex (Alexander) Supertramp. Neither his parents nor his sister Carine knows where he goes, since he does not keep in touch with them.
Alex (Chris) starts tramping by his car, but when he loses it to a flash flood he goes hitchhiking. Alex burns all his money and goes on penniless.
During two years of tramping he works at some temporary jobs and earns some money for his big trip to Alaska. He also changes place after place, he arrives even to Mexico by Colorado River. When hitchhiking Alex has been beaten by police at the railroad, he gave up hitchhiking and travelled by foot. He meets some people during his trips, who have a certain influence on him, but his desire to get away from the world of people, world of duties and commitments only becomes stronger. All his attempts are directed on getting to Alaska.
During the whole film Carine, Chris’s sister, continues telling the audience of their life before Chris has left. Their parents did not love each other, but always pretended happy in public, while at home constant quarrels and even physical abuses never stopped. Chris and Carine had grown up in such an atmosphere. Carine was not so hurt by all this as Chris was. He took very deeply all the cruelty of the parents. When he found out that their parents were not married for real, his mother was just his father’s lover since he had a legal wife and a brother a little older than he, Chris’s world was fully crushed. But neither he nor Carine told the parents that they knew the truth.
So after two years of constant tramping Alex finally gets to Alaska where he lives in an abandoned bus. Month after month with only nature as a friend Alex realizes that nature is not so friendly as he thought. His supplies are about to run out, and it becomes more difficult to hunt. Once he manages to kill a moose, but later he regretted much of this deed. Though Alex sees that nature is harsh and cruel as well, he does not even thinking of returning to people. Once he confused some berries, which turned out to be poisonous. He finds in the book that he had eaten poisonous berries, and that medical assistance is required, but he did not even try to get to people, and he dies in the bus.
