Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Ratings339
Average rating3.9
I've read reviews by those who thought that Cheryl Strayed was just a silly young woman who decided to hike the PCT with no experience and received special treatment on the trail because she was a young woman, hiking alone.
To all of those people, I have to respectfully disagree. If that's what you think about this book, I think maybe you haven't been through something as profoundly life-changing as suddenly losing someone in your life who's extremely important to your own identity.
I identified with Cheryl so completely - it felt like she was saying exactly what I feel. I lost my mom suddenly and unexpectedly in 2014, when I was 27 years old and she was only 54. Then, in January of this year, I lost my unborn son, Jonah, to a heart condition. He was stillborn.
Finding yourself and re-learning who you are after something so life-altering is a huge, difficult experience. You know you've changed...you're hardened by life's hardships. You know this, but you don't know HOW you've changed. It's like going through adolescence all over again, awkwardly figuring out who you are, what you want from life, what's important to you, and what you believe.
Wild is an amazing and truthful account of struggling with that finding of yourself, and of going on a journey to do so. My heart, broken and changed by my losses, felt a kinship with Cheryl as she navigated the trail, her thoughts, and her (new) life.
I recommend this book for anyone who's experienced a momentous change in your life - one that makes you feel like you're no longer you. I don't often give books 5 stars, but this one, I had to. I'm in love with Cheryl Strayed, now, and I can't wait to read more of her books.
Must admit that even though it was so far from anything I would ever do, it was much more interesting than I'd ever expected.
I really regret that I listened to the nay-sayers and put this book off for SO long. Ridiculous. A few of them really turned out to be shamers, which is awful and sad. I really wish I could find the review I read that said Wild (Strayed, 2012) was a drug and sex filled orgy. The hell?!? Yes, both are mentioned and are, at some point, part of the author's life. She is brutally honest and upfront about her struggles and how she deals with them. She doesn't recommend trying heroin. She definitely feels guilt about cheating on her husband. Did I agree with all the conclusions she seems to draw? No. But I still felt it was a good book worth reading.
As a hiker myself, I can say Cheryl starts off as what is possibly the worst prepared thru-hiker in history. I cringed as I read the descriptions of her gigantic pack (aptly named Monster), the way she buys guidebooks but doesn't read them, and instead of preparing in the last week of her trip, spends it hooking up with a guy that she already knows is very, very bad for her. I wanted to shake her, and I suspect I share that feeling with most of her friends and remaining family at the time. After her mother's illness and death, Cheryl makes a string of bad choices involving cheating on her husband – a man she continuously claims to love and probably the best relationship to ever come into her life, at least the way it is portrayed – and using heroin. As she approaches rock bottom, she knows she needs to make changes but seems to lack the willpower to do anything at all. She changes her name, and not just back to her maiden name, but a new name she picks almost straight out of a dictionary because it is the only thing that “feels” right. She goes with her brother to put her mother's dying horse out of it's misery (thank you, Cheryl Strayed, for making me ugly-cry). Her divorce is finalized – but her relationship with Paul is far from finished. THAT, is probably the part of her story I am least understanding and sympathetic to. She cheats on this man that she admits is lovely to her, who will TAKE HER BACK after her multiple affairs, and yet, she still can't let him go. Darling, you can't have your cake and eat it too. I'm assuming she's figured that out in the 20 odd years that have passed since this part of the story. I hope so. Her description of the notarizing of their divorce decree was a bit unsettling. But, each person's story is different. Who am I to judge?
Afterwards, we leaned against the cold bricks of a building and kissed, crying and murmuring regrets, our tears mixing together on our faces...snowflakes were melting onto his hair and I wanted to reach up and touch them, but I didn't.
I realized I was having a kind of strange, abstract, retrospective fun. I noticed the beauty that surrounded me, the wonder of things both small and large.
It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for 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.
Wild by Cheryl Strayed is an honest, raw, memoir of one woman's journey across the grueling Pacific Crest Trail. I must confess; I picked this up thinking it would be another Eat, Pray, Love and was surprised to discover it was definitely not that. Yes, it's a woman undergoing a somewhat extreme journey far from home after some serious emotional upheaval. Yes, she learns some profound things about life, herself, and the world along the way. But Cheryl Strayed somehow manages to keep all this aspiration firmly grounded in the West Coast earth.
Though it's not the greatest book I've read this year, it's still a thoroughly enjoyable read where I often felt like I was hiking right along with Cheryl.
Why is it that a book about how hard it is to backpack, about the misery and the pain and the fear, makes me so desperately want to do it? Maybe because there are parts like this:
“Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very height of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off.” (p. 267)
In other words, she tells me my own life.
And she talks about backpacking, which seems to be extreme hiking and camping, which I actually love to do.
It was very pleasantly different than I expected. Her tone wasn't naval gazing or overly impressed with her self discoveries. The story was very much in the moment even when jumping to a flashback. I really enjoyed it and the raw experience of hiking solo to put pieces of her life into place.
I seriously enjoyed this book...
It was true and honest and heartbreaking and difficult and everything real life is...
Life isn't a fairy tale and Cheryl never tried to make it one, but she made living in her own nightmare possible...
Thank you for the inspiration, the motivation and the determination you have given me, I can't say I will ever hike that far (or anywhere) but at least now, I am willing to try...
Thank you Cheryl.
One of the best books I've read in a long while. Beautifully and evocatively written, I yearned to have the stamina, bravery and guts to do what she did.
My partner hiked a portion of the PCT similar in length to what Strayed tackled, and I've heard lots of stories about his experience, so reading this had an oddly familiar feel to it. I'm honestly not sure what else to say about it, which is perhaps why I'm stuck at three stars and not four. I'm glad she had the experience, glad she wrote about it, and actually also glad that the movie about it was made (more movies with female protagonists, Hollywood - MORE!!), but the most moving things I think Cheryl Strayed has written include stuff like this: http://therumpus.net/2011/04/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-71-the-ghost-ship-that-didnt-carry-us/
While decent, it never really changed. It felt like I was reading the same thirty or so pages over and over again for the whole book. I finished it so I could know the ending.
Initially, I thought this book was amazing, but by the end I was pretty over it.
It's hard to say much bad about a book that got me to cry within the first chapter. I liked this book a lot.
We are in the mountains and the mountains are in us. -John MuirTell me, what it is you plan to doWith your one wild and precious life. -Mary Oliver
This book is phenomenal.. I mean freaking AMAZING. Everyone should read it. Even if you aren't super outdoorsy and could never see yourself backpacking across 3 states, it still has a great message.
As for me, I've always loved to explore the outdoors. I've actually never gone full on backpacking though. This book really made me long to get away from life and just be in nature for at least a week - or at least go camping in some cold weather... although, that's not so easy in Hawaii.
The story starts off with the explanation of Cheryl Strayed's whole downward spiral after her mother died and how it led her to the Pacific Crest Trail. I'm not going to lie, the first chapter is extremely depressing, especially for anyone close to their mom. It honestly did not give me high hopes for the rest of the book. But the story picks up in the next chapter once she is on the PCT, and the adventure begins.
There are stories of all the awesome people she meets and all the miles she walked alone. There are stories of kindness from strangers. There are stories of beautiful nature experienced in the most serene places. Can you imagine walking thousands of miles by yourself, not knowing what you will run into? Talk about flying by the seat of your pants. Sounds like the ultimate adventure to me. Cheryl Strayed really made me feel like I could if I wanted to.
Mostly, this book is a discovery of self. The author believed that she would leave her life and just be alone in the woods for 3 months to contemplate her life, cry, and get over it. She actually was only able to think about her aching feet and body at first, then was just quiet with nature. What she found instead was the strength within herself that she didn't know she had - to remember her hard times and still be able to live.
This is a strength that we all have if we only know how to find it. This was truly an inspiring and entertaining story that I could definitely go read again right now.
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I wish I'd abandoned this one. Honestly, I just don't get what all the hype is about with Cheryl Strayed. Maybe I disliked this because I read Torch first - and I wish I'd abandoned that one as well (I only finished it to see if Bruce would follow through).
Positive point: it's very admirable that she writes so truthfully and seemingly without regrets. I can see this as a reason for people to like her writing so much.
The reasons I didn't like this book: reading some sections felt like I was re-reading Torch, only it was worse since Torch is supposed to be a novel and this was a memoir. And I couldn't believe she actually survived the trail, given her naive and lackadaisical attitude towards a long-haul hike and all the accompanying danger of doing it on your own. As a hiker and a once wilderness ranger, some of her descriptions made me cringe. Overall, it was like watching a train wreck and being surprised that there were hardly any casualties . Granted, some of her attitude changed over the course of the hike, but I came away from the book feeling like she missed her own point of hiking the PCT.
And finally, I do wonder if I ran into her out there - I was working as a wilderness ranger then and the PCT was part of my patrol...at least I didn't have to go out looking for her!
I wavered between extreme annoyance with Cheryl and compassion for her. I expected something more from this book, like some kind of epiphany about my own life, but if anything, it did inspire me to be more adventurous. And now I really want to go on a long hike soon.
Starts stupid. I ended up liking it a lot, but the first few chapters read very self-involved, and are sorta weirdly less well written. But stick with it!