WILD: CHERYL STRAYED

I started this book last year, got turned off by the constant bitching of the narrator early in the text, and put it aside before she started her hike, a mistake because when I picked it up again and plowed through the early parts, I really got into it.  Strayed has written a bildungsroman, a coming of age novel, of self discovery although she was in her late twenties when this piece of non fiction takes place.

Strayed begins the novel with her self destructive behavior, beginning early, when her father leaves her mother, then the arrival of a step father, and their living rough, in a shack which lacked any of the amenities.  She does, however, end up going to college, but stops short of graduating because of her mom's diagnosis of cancer and quick death, which throw her into a few years of drugs, infidelity (she married at nineteen), and despair.  She finally vows to change, divorces her husband, saves some money and decides on a whim to walk or hike the Pacific Crest Trail, starting in California, ending in the state of Washington, 1100 miles long.

Her narrating of her three months in the wild made me want to hike it as well though I would be a bit more prepared than Strayed was.  She buys her gear at REI, depends on the expertise of their sales people who, for the most part, are helpful but she does not talk to anyone or read anything by someone who has hiked the trail.  She has two guidebooks, both indispensable, which save her life. For the most part, she hikes the trail alone, by design, though she occasionally runs into other hikers which offer respite from her isolation, gives some variety to the text, but she always prefers to hike on her own.  The hardships she faces are enough to make anyone think twice before attempting this hike, yet the challenge of it, the beauty of the mountains, the valleys, the accomplishment, make the reader think about trying it.

Because she is so unprepared, she makes her journey much more difficult then it might have been. Her boots, for example, are not broken in and she discovers they are too small.  REI sends her another pair but she must hike at least 50 miles in sandals held together by duck tape.  And before starting out, she never tried her water purifier or her stove and only finds out on the trail that they don't work or she does not know how to work them.  And her backpack is humongous, by far the largest of any one's on the trail.  After meeting up with other hikers, she realizes this and throws away at least a third of what she started the trail with.  As she hikes, she puts together the various pieces of her self destructive behavior, finds peace with the death of her mother, her divorce, and by the time she hits the Bridge of the Gods, at the Columbia Gorge, ending her journe, she has discovered her core, or a new self, I am not sure which, that allows her to begin life again.  As a coda, she mentions how her life comes together, by falling in love again, having two children and a husband who supports her desire to be a writer, which allow her to write this book, some 15 years or so after her hike.  And because of it, she becomes famous.

She ends her book with two quotations which I particularly like and both suggest a new found resilience and persistence in her character:

"Every last one of us can do better than give up."

" The only way out of a hole is to climb out."

I have yet to see the film but will for sure, to see how well they adapted the book to film.  And  if I only get glimpses of the trail which she hiked, first, the Mojave Desert, then the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Mountain ranges, that will be enough for me to enjoy the film.