Wild is a true story of one woman’s three month solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), a 2 foot wide, 2,663 mile long path, which runs from the Mexican boarder in California to just beyond the Canadian border to the north.
The author, Cheryl Strayed, was in her twenties when she began this grueling journey through the wilderness and through her life. Her mother had died at the age of 45 just four years before, and Cheryl struggled to come to grips with her life as it unraveled. She was estranged from her step-father and physically apart from her brother and sister. After multiple affairs, she divorced her loving husband, Paul, and had sunk into heroin up until just days before she began her trek.
The reader doesn’t get through even the first paragraph in the prologue when Cheryl, high atop the Sierra’s in Northern California, loses irretrievably one of the hiking boots she has just removed from her aching feet. That gives you a sense of how shocking this journey and the story around it will be.
The story of what led to her making this three month trek is a novel in itself. And, while the prologue portends a scary tale of heights and depths and aloneness, it’s the solitude and confusion of trying to heal from life itself that is a major portion of this narrative.
The year is 1995, well before the abundance of online information and communications technology that would have eased the vast majority of her difficult trip. One glaring exception to this is when Cheryl finally gives up on her hiking boots because their improper fitting is causing her toenails to turn black and fall out. At one of the rest stops she calls REI and they agree to send her a new pair of the boots in a larger size, overnight and at no cost to her.
I found myself looking back numerous times at her picture on the book’s jacket. I was incredulous that this young, pretty and conservative looking woman could be the hippie who set out on such a massive project without the necessary training and preparation.
The struggles encountered along the trail enable Cheryl to sort out the struggles she is trying to deal with in life. For instance, she goes from being a self-imposed objectified woman in her life back home to a comfortable and together single woman, at one point, hiking PCT with six men. It takes the vastness of the adventure to realize the vastness of her life and how it extends beyond her mother’s death or the disappointment of her divorce.
When she comes to the end of the trek at the Bridge of the Gods at the Columbia River in Washington, she holds her emotions in check, not crying. But I cried, feeling the weight of her journey within a journey, the emotional and the physical.
Wild is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it. Now I’m off to get The Dream of a Common Language by Adrienne Rich. This was the only book Cheryl carried the entire 1,100 miles, cherishing it so much she didn’t lighten her load by burning the pages as she went.
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| Five out of possible five bookmarks |
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