1. actual definitions

2.  blithely = ???  “To McCandless’s inexperienced eye, there was nothing to suggest that two months hence, as the glaciers and snowfields at the Teklanika’s headwater thawed in the summer heat, its discharge would multiply nine or ten times in volume, transforming the river into a deep, violent torrent that bore no resemblance to the gentle brook he’d blithely waded across in April” (Krakauer 163).

3.  blithely (adv.)  in a carefree manner

4.  axiom = ???  “Moreover, as the ground thawed, his route turned into a gauntlet of boggy muskeg and impenetrable alder, and McCandless belatedly came to appreciate one of the fundamental (if counterintuitive) axioms of the North: winter, not summer, is the preferred season for traveling overland through the bush” (Krakauer 165).

5.  axiom (n.)  a universally accepted principle or rule

6.  ambivalent= ???  “Although McCandless was enough of a realist to know that hunting game was an unavoidable component of living off the land, he had always been ambivalent about killing animals” (Krakauer 166).

7.  ambivalent (adj.)  Uncertain  Not sure either way

8.  idyll = ???  “As McCandless gradually stopped rebuking himself for the waste of the moose, the contentment that began in mid-May resumed and seemed to continue through early July. Then, in the midst of this idyll, came the first of two pivotal setbacks” (Krakauer 168).

9.  idyll (n.)  a carefree episode or experience

10.  unequivocally = ???  “When I’d questioned Gordon Samel and Ken Thompson shortly after they’d discovered McCandless’s body, both men insisted—adamantly and unequivocally—that the big skeleton was the remains of a caribou, and they derided the greenhorn’s ignorance in mistaking the animal he killed for a moose” (Krakauer 177).

11.  unequivocally (adv.)  unmistakeably  with certainty

12.  lambasting = ???  “Among the letters lambasting McCandless, virtually all those I received mentioned his misidentification of the caribou as proof that he didn’t know the first thing about surviving in the backcountry” (Krakauer 177).

13.  lambasting (v., present participle)  reprimanding or berating harshly

14.  staid = ???  “Even staid, prissy Thoreau, who famously declared that it was enough to have ‘traveled a good deal in Concord,’ felt compelled to visit the more fearsome wilds of nineteenth-century Maine and climb Mt. Katahdin” (Krakauer 183).

15.  staid (adj.)  of quiet and steady character  settled  prim

16.  modicum = ???  “It would be easy to stereotype Christopher McCandless as another boy who felt too much, a loopy young man who read too many books and lacked even a modicum of common sense” (Krakauer 184).

17.  modicum (n.)  a tiny amount

18.  stymied = ???  “After his attempt to depart the wilderness was stymied by the Teklanika’s high flow, McCandless arrived back at the bus on July 8” (Krakauer 188).

19.  stymied (v., past tense)  obstructed  thwarted

20.  lethargy = ???  “They contain solanine, a poison that occurs in plants of the nightshade family, which causes vomiting, diarrhea, headache, and lethargy in the short term, and adversely affects heart rate and blood pressure when ingested over an extended period” (Krakauer 190).

21.  lethargy (n.)  a lack of energy  sluggishness