Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

When Cheryl Strayed's mother died from cancer in the early nineties, Cheryl was left bereft and grieving, in a self-destructive life where it seemed like everything was falling apart. After her divorce and four years after her mom passed away, she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail solo and join a friend in Portland. Ridiculously underprepared, Cheryl nevertheless perseveres, maturing and learning about herself along the way.

This book was a best seller when in came out in 2012 and I'd decided not to read it, so it was one of those that I approached with trepidation when it made this year's book discussion list. And sure enough, young Cheryl annoyed me. She was impulsive and reckless and self-destructive and I would have disliked show more her so much if we were in our twenties at the same time. Even so, her story of the hike and how she grew past that era of her life intrigued me. She gives you a very honest portrayal of her faults and, as good memoirs do, a window into her life at that time. I'm glad I read it. show less

In early 1996, Cheryl Strayed was adrift. She was twenty-six, and still reeling from the sudden death of her mother, a few years earlier. She was in a shaky marriage, experimenting with hard drugs and sleeping around. Something needed to give.
Enter the PCT: The Pacific Crest Trail. Spotting this in a travel guide, while living in Minnesota, Cheryl decides this is her crossroads, her sea change moment and armed with “Monster” her hellishly large backpack, sets out on an eleven-hundred mile hike, from the Mojave desert to Washington State. She was a complete novice and had only done the occasional day hike.
This is simply a wonderful memoir, full of adventure and self-enlightenment. She is one scrappy young lady and I found myself show more slack-jawed at her toughness and tenacity. This is the perfect female companion to [A Walk in the Woods], although this has the grittier edge.
She tells this story in a strong vivid voice and I felt like I was walking alongside her, from the comfort of my favorite chair. Highly recommended. show less

"Nothing did. Nothing would. Nothing could ever bring my mother back or make it okay that she was gone. Nothing would put me beside her the moment she died. It broke me up. It cut me off. It tumbled me end over end.
It took me years to take my place among the ten thousand things again. To be the woman my mother raised. To remember how she said honey and picture her particular gaze. I would suffer. I would suffer. I would want things to be different than they were. The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods. It took me four years, seven months, and three days to do it. I didn’t know where I was going until I got there.
It was a place called the Bridge of the Gods."

I loved this book. Not because it was an show more uber-inspirational, amazing story - if it had been like that, I would not have much time on this book at all. What I loved about the story was that it was honest in its bluntness and that it did not glorify grief. Reading, Cheryl's story was very easy to relate to even though I did not walk the PCT. But then, every one deals with stuff differently.

So, apart from the description of how Cheryl found a way to deal with the events in her life that overwhelmed her, the book was a funny, smart, down-to-earth reminder of the huge effect that very small things that can have - the pleasure of tasting a favourite soft drink, the warmth of a shower, the feel of tiny frogs jumping on you, the liberation that is gained from not having to wear shoes that are too small.

On that note, as I am writing this review, I have my foot elevated in a position where my heel does not touch anything. I have a (massive) blister from going hiking this past weekend and Cheryl's struggle with her boots is all too real to me. So, whilst I am grateful that Wild - despite the publisher's best marketing efforts - was not the over-dramatised, over-sentimentalised account of a Cheryl's journey, I particularly loved that the book managed to reflect on both grief and practical issues of hiking with a sense of humor and humility. I also now want to visit some of the parts of the PCT, but not before my feet are healed from my recent excursion and not definitely not before I manage to read a map. Map reading skills in particular would have been useful last weekend and would have saved me and my friend from an additional 4 miles of detour. Luckily, neither of us was prone to panicking over the fact that we had - temporarily - gotten lost. Learning not to panic is probably one of the the first things to learn about going hiking.

"It was a deal I’d made with myself months before and the only thing that allowed me to hike alone. I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid." show less

This book thrilled me, broke my heart, terrified me, and left me wanting to start it all over again right away. Only this time, I would read it.

I listened to it on CD, which is a good test of how absorbing a book is, because I'm very distractible. I only lost the thread a couple times.

Strayed is so frank and honest, and her prose is so accessible that I felt like I was on the trail with her. I practically had to check my toenails to see if any were falling off due to ill-fitting hiking boots. The interweaving of backstory on how she came to undertake this adventure and her experiences on the trail was wonderful.

Will get my hands on a hard copy and revisit favorite parts.

I am into hiking and picked this up in a charity shop because I was collecting books about walking with a vague idea about writing something on that theme. I expected something light and fluffy, a chicklit poor-little-rich-girl- goes-hiking-to-find-herself. What I got was a genuinely sublime reading experience, from the rigorous self-destructiveness of the time after her mother's death, though deep insights into the process of accompanying someone through dying, to the sheer exhiliration of total exhaustion at the limits of the body where fear, gulit, need and anxiety slide off like the skin peeling from her hips and feet.
There is a compelling structure to the book (I was kept going until near the end by the need to find out what show more happens after the opening paragraph, which looks forward to a point way ahead in the narrative) and every time I opened it there was a gift waiting there in this woman's telling of her experience. Don't expect a book that tells a straightforward story; it tell how grief suddenly pull us back, triggered by unexpected and even surreal stimuli. And the hike is of course a metaphor, but though there is a happy ending, redemption isn't as simple as in the movies (or the movie of this book). Altogther, a brilliant read that can teach you a lot. show less

"Wild" has received excellent reviews from a wide range of sources, yet I opened the first page with some trepidation. Memoirs are generally not my favorite genre and I am rather skeptical when praise is so lavishly given. But my love of hiking prompted me to read Cheryl Strayed's book.

Buffeted by family, marriage, and drug problems, Strayed decides to challenge herself by hiking part of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone, without the type of preparations such a long hike requires. Her descriptions of the scenery, her ordeals, her life, and the individuals she meets along the way are told in an absolutely riveting manner.

The book I was reluctant to read, became the book I devoured over the course of one day.

An excellent read!

I'm giving this four stars because it (and some of the other reviews) provoked some interesting thoughts. The writing is ok, not great, and the story is interesting, but not epic. I've read a lot of hiking memoirs recently (mostly the AT) and this is one of the best. A few things occurred to me as I read it:

1. Stupid or ill-considered adventures often produce good stories. Never backpacked before? Why not hike the PCT? This is as true in my own life as it is in literature. My best stories are mostly about things that I would not have done if I had thought about them more beforehand. PSA - stupid and ill-considered adventures also frequently end in tragedy and the stories may only be good after the wounds have healed and the lawsuits show more settled.

2. The PCT is way harder than the Appalachian Trail! I read this because I am researching for a future AT hike. AT hikers can enjoy pizza and beer with some frequency and have lots of shelter options. PCT hikers have it rough. I would not make the PCT my first through hike and give Cheryl Strayed major props for toughness and tenacity.

3. Sex. It happens. I think about it every day. I am always a bit suspicious of a memoire or a novel that ignores it entirely. Happily, this didn't and it made the author much more human and relatable.

4. People are what make stories and hiking interesting. I like a solitary walk, but wouldn't want to be alone in the mountains for months. It is the other hikers and the camaraderie of the trail that make hiking memoirs worth reading.

5. The author thru-hikes the PCT and only documents one instance of real creepiness. I am glad she made it through, but it made me think about assault and inappropriate behavior. Are we too afraid of strangers and not worrying enough about people we know? If I listed the worst things that have ever been done to me, I would be able to name everyone involved (or would have been able to at the time if I go back to my childhood). Why are people more willing to do awful things to those they know than to those they don't? Is it because strangers would report the bad acts while the social relationships to people we know might prevent reporting? Also, what is the incidence of crimes against long distance hikers? I would expect it to be generally low with a few horrific outliers. show less