Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Strayed's ego manages to outsize even the magnificent Pacific Crest Trail. She's a self-absorbed asshole who manages to use her mom's death as an excuse to spread her selfishness over everyone she knows. She survives her partial hike of the PCT only due to the amazing generosity of fellow hikers who are actually competent.

Are you wondering if she's pretty? Oh my, yes! Never mind that on the back flap she looks like someone's daffy aunt. Strayed never tires of relating the unending river of compliments she receives about her beauty and sexiness. Her appearance is a constant concern, even when she's on the verge of reaching her goal.

Maybe it shouldn't bother me so much that at one point she mentions snorting tar heroin, a task that is impossible due to tar heroin's, well, tarriness. It comes up when she tells of her brief trist with the drug while shacked up with a fellow florid-tongued dipshit in Portland, Oregon – another situation from which she ends up requiring rescue, this time by her generous ex-husband. That obvious lie makes me wonder about the veracity of the rest of her tale (except her stunning beauty, of course).

She appears to think she's somehow developed spiritually or emotionally by the book's close, but it's unclear how. She seems like just as much of a thoughtless ass as she did on page one.

She writes eloquently and there must some truth throughout, for why would someone fabricate a story that makes herself look like such a dick?

While I did give this book 2 stars for hooking me right into the story, after the first third of the book, I found myself rolling my eyes at some of the overwritten, hit-you-over-the-head “profound” connections she makes to events in her past history.

The last third of the book read like she was trying to make the book longer by adding a bunch of hazy off-trail experiences to match the time it took her to hike the last leg of the trail. It felt like I was reading a reality TV show, planned out to astound you with the senselessness of a person's thoughts and actions so you could maybe feel like at least you're not THAT bad.

I had higher expectations for the book as a whole, but at least I did find out about the Pacific Crest Trail–a trail system I had no idea about.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. They say that books take you on a journey. Well, Cheryl took me on a journey - not only on the Pacific Crest Trail, but through the recent trial of losing her mother and her life that then spiraled out of control.

I appreciated the way Ms. Strayed wrote, giving enough details about the PCT to keep me interested (even looking at maps and reading more about the trail) but not going overboard with descriptions of the flora and fauna. She also did a good job of weaving the story of her mom and personal life through her walk on the trail and the people she met along the way.

**note: I read the e-book version that included Oprah Winfrey's comments throughout the book. Although I'm an Oprah fan and I enjoyed her comments, there really weren't that many and in the end, I don't really think it was worth it.

Gah really great! I love Dear Sugar, so I was excited to read something by her alter ego. I was even more excited that it was about long distance backpacking. I just love reading about stuff like that, eg [b:A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail 9791 A Walk in the Woods Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail Bill Bryson http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320519729s/9791.jpg 613469]. It always makes me want to pack up and head for the woods, even if the longest backpacking trip I've ever taken was ~30 miles and it basically killed me. ONE DAY.Anyway Cheryl Strayed aka Sugar is, duh, a fantastic writer and the backpacking trip she took after her mother died and after she got divorced is great material for her. A lot of beauty & a lot of sadness. A lot of complicated emotions perfectly captured.

I approached this book with reservations because 1) of echoes of A Million Little Pieces, 2) I've come to expect authors to be distractingly self-indulgent in this type of writing. But I was engrossed. And it left me with a strong desire to become a hiker.

I don't know how this book ended up on my Kindle for my trip to Oregon, but it did. And it was the perfect book to read on this trip.

Cheryl Strayed was a lost soul after her mother died. She couldn't finish college and she picked up men and she couldn't stick with her marriage.

Then she decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. It changed her life.

Read this book. It just might change your life.

This is one of those books that probably resonates very deeply with those who have lost someone close to them; however I‰ЫЄm lucky enough still not to have experienced a death of a parent (or even a grandparent) which made this a really sad read but less powerful I think than for those who have had that experience. However, the story about a journey that is supposed to be something, but you don't know what, to find your way to some other self you didn't think you could be, is still very powerful.

Maybe this is a minor thing, but I identify most with the painful feet experience, for a couple of reasons. First, I‰ЫЄve been wearing cleats to play ultimate frisbee for the last (cough) 12 years and they have always given me some form of trouble; it‰ЫЄs been better the last couple of years with my latest pair but in other years, my god, new blisters with every game, toenails bruised and busted and detached. So I know all about the torture that a seemingly-well-fitted pair of foot coverings can inflict under stressful conditions. Second, when I started reading this book in earnest, I had just returned from a long working weekend, which meant being on my feet all day in shoes that looked nice and were perfectly comfortable at work when I did little besides sit at my desk all day, but were killer when there was a lot of walking and standing and running and dancing to do. My feet were swollen and raw for days afterward, and even now they‰ЫЄre still achy. So the foot-torture (and that torture as a metaphor for something else) is something that I could definitely identify with.

And I also very much identify with the sense of not being able to go any further but going further anyway – pushing at my limits and seeing how far I can take things. I am not into extreme anything and I will probably never in my life go backpacking or even camping if I can help it, but I can identify with the drive to push yourself further than you think you can go, and then going further. It‰ЫЄs kind of one of those crazy things about being human or whatever.

The audiobook is fantastic.

I'm not a fan of the hand wringing, first world problems - have I got some, redemptive memoir. Stop me if you've heard this before... with the death of her mother the author divorces her husband, flirts with rampant promiscuity and a quickly developing heroin addiction. Her solution? To hike the Pacific Crest Trail from California to Washington on her own with little to no outdoor hiking experience... in an effort to find herself.

But I like her honest, unfettered voice that tells a story like a good friend over a bottle of the good stuff. She has an ability to invoke the sweeping vistas and bleak otherness of the wilderness. How awesome people can be. How they can save your life by doing something as simple as talking to you or putting you up for the night.

You know how the story ends but she makes the journey worthwhile. It's contradictory, messy and convoluted with no easy outs and only the persistent weight of an all too big backpack and the punishing crawl of simply putting one aching foot in front of the other and telling herself over and over “I am not afraid.”

Although this is a fine memoir, what made the book sing for me is that it's also an outstanding travel book about Cheryl's amazing PCT hike. Not only did I feel like I got to know Cheryl, but I was surprised that all the other people in the book came alive, too. This is a terrific book.

There was a definite lack of good PCT memoirs out there, and I'm glad Strayed came along to fill the void. This is nothing like Bryson's A Walk in the Woods (about the Appalachian Trail), although the authors share the endearing and relatable ineptitude of first time thru-hikers. Wild is much more than a big trail memoir. Strayed is trying to escape a lot in her hike - the death of her mother, divorce, and addition - and the book explores her struggle to come to terms with her former life and the day to day realities of life alone on the trail.