"Wild: from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" by Cheryl Strayed

This was a slow read for me mostly because I saw the movie and then picked up the book. Since I already knew the story I did not feel rushed to get to the end. Instead, I slowly over a period of several weeks read this book little by little. This is non-fiction. Cheryl Strayed writes about her own experience of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in the mid-nineties. The movie (starring Reese Witherspoon) is very true to the book. This story is not just about one young woman hiking the trail by herself. It is also, in her own words, the story of what brought her to the trail and of walking her way back to who she was.

Cheryl Strayed's life had fallen apart when she was a young woman attending college: her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 45 and died very quickly after that. Cheryl and her mother had been very close and the grief she felt after her passing set her on a path of self-destruction. Cheryl breaks her husband's heart by cheating on him multiple times, dangerously indulges in alcohol and drugs, drops out of school and persists in hurting herself and those close to her in an attempt to forget her own terrible pain of losing her mother.

The book is very raw and written from the heart. I could really feel Cheryl's suffering even though personally I could not relate to the choices she was making. People deal with pain differently. And her way was at all cost trying to forget. The thing I do admire about Cheryl is that at some point she decided to do this hike as a way of finally dealing with grief and resolving the issues that were making her hurt. With no prior serious hiking experience and very little resources, she puts everything she's got (financially, physically and emotionally) into getting to the trail and staying on it. Being alone in the wild and focusing on very basic needs (staying warm/cool, eating, getting enough water, etc) distracts her from wallowing in pain. She also has a lot of time to think about her past, and realizes that life is worth living; she will be okay despite hitting some rough patches. She learns to forgive herself and others and finally comes to terms with her past and begins to look forward to the future. I definitely recommend this book as well as the movie. It is not a story of what she did to hurt herself, it is the story of how she got out of it. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from the book:

"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. " p. 51

"[Books] were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear - p. 105"