Wild

From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed

Imagine you’re in your mid-20s. You’re standing in a sun-blasted clearing on the side of a mountain in northern California. You’re dirty. You’re exhausted. You’ve been hiking through blistering heat, over sharp rocks, through snow and dust for weeks.

You’ve been dragging yourself — both physically and emotionally — through miles of wilderness because you’ve convinced yourself it’s the only way to make sense of your very messy life. Then, just as you stop for a breath, one of your heavy leather hiking boots — your lifeline — goes tumbling over the edge of a cliff. You watch it go. Then you get so angry, you take the other one and chuck it down after the first. You’re miles from nowhere.

That’s how Wild begins — and the journey remains just as bumpy and adventurous for the rest of Cheryl Strayed’s trek along the Pacific Coast Trail.

One of the great long-distance hiking trails in the world, it runs more than 2,600 miles from Mexico to Canada, winding its way through California, Oregon, and Washington. It traverses 25 national forests, seven national parks, and some of the most rugged wilderness in the United States.

There are seemingly all of the landscapes: arid deserts, snow-capped mountains, alpine forests, meadows, and volcanic fields. It’s not an easy trail: the terrain is rough, the weather unpredictable. It takes most hikers four to six months to walk the whole thing — and fewer than half of those who start finish.

Strayed was wildly unprepared for any of that. No wilderness experience to speak of. No training. No compass skills. She overpacked her backpack so much she couldn’t stand up with it. Experts say your pack should weigh 25 to 35 pounds — she carried near her body weight, including almost 25 pounds of water alone.

And why? Why would she do that?

Because her life had fallen apart. When her mother died suddenly of cancer, Strayed unraveled. She was married but slept with anyone she could find. She experimented with heroin. She was drowning in grief and guilt, and when she hit bottom, she convinced herself that the way back was to walk. Literally. Just walk it off.

So, she walked. She walked over scorched desert. Up snowy mountain passes. Through swarms of mosquitoes and across miles of blistering heat. She lost toenails. She ran into rattlesnakes, bears, a menacing Texas longhorn bull, and — late in the trip — a llama. She met other hikers who, for the most part, were lovely, generous people. But she had one terrifying moment that felt like a sexual assault about to happen.

But the real magic in this book isn’t just in the scenery or the peril or the moments where everything feels right. It’s in the way she writes about the details of hiking alone. The failures. The fear. And her stubbornness. She unwraps her grief, but it never feels overwritten. It feels honest.

If Cheryl Strayed’s name sounds familiar, it might be because this book was everywhere when it came out in 2012. It was a #1 New York Times bestseller. Reese Witherspoon bought the movie rights before the book even hit shelves, then starred in the adaptation and earned an Oscar nomination.

This is the story of a long walk back to life — with loss, forgiveness, and the messy business of being hurt every step of the way. Wild made me want to lace up my boots and go outside. To walk it off. To let some things go. It may inspire you to do the same.

It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B.

It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with 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. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. — Cheryl Strayed

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