Book Of The Month: Wild
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Wild is the aptly-named true story of a young woman who solo traverses the famous Pacific Crest Trail, carrying the burden of an absurdly heavy backpack and an equally heavy psychological strain. Coming off the heels of a heartbreaking divorce, her beloved mother’s death, drug abuse, and the breaking apart of her family ties, Cheryl seeks out the Pacific Crest Trail as a monumental trial against her pain.
There is no doubt in her mind that she has lost sight of her life path, so seeking clarity, closure, and self-understanding, she takes on this new path by foot with dogged determination.
““I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free.””
Wild
Originally Published: 2012
Pages: 315
Available on: Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover, Audiobook
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Over the course of three months and more than a thousand miles on the backbone of several mountain ranges, Cheryl grapples against internal and external obstacles, challenges both seen and unseen, troubles both encountered and carried. The physical barriers she faces include bears, snakes, ill-intended strangers, thirst, losing the trail, intense natural elements, limited finances, going barefoot…the list goes on. Expect the unexpected is the PCT’s mantra.
At 26-years-old, Cheryl sets out alone and hikes the trail living off of pocket change, with little prior hiking and outdoors experience, without a companion, and without a true initial understanding of what she was walking into (literally). What she does have—and what prepares her for this challenge—is her undeniable gumption, resourcefulness, determination, and fortitude.
““I was a terrible believer in things, but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn’t know where to put my faith, or if there was such a place, or even what the word faith meant, in all of it’s complexity. Everything seemed to be possibly potent and possibly fake.” ”
Cheryl chooses this massive undertaking, because she believes the magnitude of her pain, mistakes, and failures necessitates an equally enormous remedy to rediscover the purpose and meaning behind her sorrows and suffering. Over three months, Cheryl discovers the mental respite and challenge that she had been seeking—at times, reveling in her freedom and strength, despairing, bored to tears, screaming into oblivion, getting to know fellow PCT-trekkers, dying for a refreshing cold Snapple, pondering over the purpose behind her pain, doubled-over with sorrow for her deceased mother, and quiet and pensive. There are harsh moments and there are beautiful ones, presenting her hike in a very realistic light.
She names her 70-pound backpack “Monster,” hating and loving it simultaneously. She treks about 10-20 miles by foot, day in and day out, thinking, singing, bored, terrified, lulled into security, despairing, wildly empowered. Truly, it is a rollercoaster experience whose true reality she could not have anticipated.
At the end of every day, she wearily throws together her little tent, prepares some quick beans and dried foods, and reads a few pages of a book. The morning after, she redresses in the same sweat-stiff garments, burns last night’s read pages for fuel as she heats up breakfast, and heads out for more of the same, mundane, and difficult miles and the dead-certain possibility that she has no idea what could actually happen that day.
““The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.” ”
This inspiring memoir is kept honest, relatable, humble, and intimate by Strayed’s truthful details, insights, and observations into both the nitty-gritty struggles of life as a backpacker and the physiological and physical struggles she rallies against and nearly succumbs to. It is no easy adventure or feat, and the way she is able to admit and relay failures and shortcomings is honest and inspiring.
She portrays herself as a very average individual taking on a very non-average feat. The deep well of strength Cheryl draws upon over this adventure is one of the most remarkable aspects of this memoir.
““It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.” ”
The Pacific Crest Trail stretches an awe-striking length of 2,650 miles from the border of Mexico to the Canadian border. It is a monumental trail that takes hikers through some of the most beautiful natural scenery and terrain within the United States, moving over the Sierra Nevadas and the Cascade Mountains, through the states of California, Washington, and Oregon.
(Read this fascinating article on the PCT to get an even more in-depth understanding of the truly massive effort necessary to take this journey on.)
For example, you can at times walk 25 to 30 miles in between water sources, and while one day you are hiking in 110 degree heat, the next you may be in frost-biting sub-20 degree cold. Hikers camp every night, carry their food and bedding on their backs, bond with fellow hikers, and dream of home-cooked hot meals after their nonstop dehydrated, trail-friendly fuels.
The Pacific Crest Trail is more popularly known and traveled in recent years, but at the time of Cheryl’s journey, the ridge was not widely publicized. Her book (and the ensuing film adaption) shed a spotlight on it. Because of her popular novel, the trail experienced a 300% increase in traffic. Thank you, pop culture.
It was so popularized, in fact, that the National Park System had to mandate new restrictions to limit the traffic flow, because that great of an increase can result in overuse repercussions.
Published in 2012, Wild became a #1 New York Times Bestseller. Cheryl Strayed currently lives in Portland, Oregon—her landing point at the end of her thousand-mile journey. She is a contemporary writer who is still producing new material, and if, after reading Strayed’s claim-to-fame novel, you would like more of her writing, you can try Tiny Beautiful Things, Torch, or catch up on her current column, Dear Sugar.
There is also a film adaptation of Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon, which received good reviews and is well worth the watch. Acclaimed British writer, Nick Hornby, wrote the screenplay, motivated by Strayed’s memoir.
Here is one of Strayed’s final quotes on the finality of her great, life-changing journey:
““It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn’t have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I’d done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn’t need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.” ”
