BOOK REPORT (9/7): “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed

From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail

What would you do if, at age 26, you found yourself recently divorced from the love of your life, living with a junkie boyfriend, developing a heroin addiction, while also watching your family disintegrate following the tragic, early death of your beloved mother?

I’m not sure what I would do, but Cheryl Strayed took a hike. A long one. She over-packed a backpack and with a few bucks in her pocket, ambled up and down the 1,100-mile Pacific Coast Trail (PCT), which runs from the Mexican border to northern Oregon. Along the way she met some crazy critters (two and four-legged), saw some gorgeous scenery, and found herself.

Cheryl tells the story in her best-selling memoir, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail.” (You might have seen the movie starring Reese Witherspoon or watched Cheryl bond with her BFF, Oprah Winfrey.)

Strayed had no business taking this journey. She had never hiked up anything, except maybe her skirt for the young men who came along to ease her pain. The audaciousness of her trip is what makes the story at times amusing and, ultimately, transforming. When other more experienced hiking groups gave up that summer because of the historically tough conditions, Strayed surprised herself by pressing on. Through ice, heat, loneliness, sorrow, poverty, hunger, and fear, she kept stumbling forward, literally. By the end of her impossible three-month trek this “stray” had found something within herself that allowed her to chart a new course in life.

“Wild” was a good read for me—if challenging. I’ve always dreamed of being a hiker, so I enjoyed walking the trail vicariously in her undersized boots.

But Strayed comes at life differently than me. She’s a proud feminist who admits to having no regrets over an abortion—while also being grateful to her mother who, faced with a similar decision, chose not to abort her. She also enjoyed the life of a libertine, describing an encounter with a stranger on the trail that turned into an exciting, guilt-free, one-night stand.

I don’t want to judge. This is Cheryl’s story after all, not mine. At the very least I was glad for the chance to view life from the eyes of someone other than the privileged, 6’3” white male that I am, blessed with a healthy nuclear family. She describes moments I will never have to deal with—for example, a terrifying encounter on the trail with two hunters who may have raped her if circumstances had played out differently. And I myself grew tired, on her behalf, of people politely telling her she had no business on the trail by herself, being a woman and all. Would male hikers have been similarly admonished? Even if true, it rankles.

Having said that, I was still disappointed with where Cheryl’s journey ultimately took her. Strayed claims to have been “found” at the end of her hike. After completing her walkabout and feeling her pain release and her heart full, she looks to the sky with tears falling and cries, “Thank you, thank you, thank you….”

It’s a moving scene, but…thank you to whom? She never says. She never even attempts to say. God? The gods? Her mother? The Universe? Admirers say hers is a spiritual journey. But is it? She wanders through creation for 1,100 miles and somehow manages to miss the Creator. The religious undertones of the subtitle (“lost to found”) are misleading. Being found implies a Finder, but Cheryl gives no such report. I’m religious, so everything is spiritual to me. But hers is a secular journey that leads her to self-confidence and peace, and not much else. It’s something, yes. But there is a greater Journey we all must take. It is a journey to God—not Oregon.

I know it is unfair to expect others to be on a similar course as us. My life’s journey is not hers. And regardless of how unsatisfying her destination turned out to be (for me, at least), the trip was still worth it—if only for the author’s powerful narration and rugged honesty.

But I do wish Cheryl had pressed on a little further to the greater country that lies beyond the end of the trail.

-MRH