"Wild," by Cheryl Strayed is, in my opinion, a complete misnomer.
Perhaps I'm wrong. The word wild can mean a lot of things, or at least take on a lot of different flavors. But when a book bears this title with a worn pair of hiking boots on the cover and claims to be about a woman solo hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), I'm going to assume that this kind of wild implies wanderlust, exploration, utter freedom. It conjures up images of some granola someone scrambling up majestic mountains, dancing as if no one were watching, running, laughing, jumping into water holes from 30-foot cliffs, and perhaps spontaneously weeping in a field of wildflowers.
This book was none of those things. The flavor of wild that it portrayed (although I still doubt wild is an appropriate term) is the type of wild that makes someone commit adultery with strangers, go on heroin binges, walk 1,100 miles with no preparation and no skills or knowledge, get an abortion, chuck a boot over a ledge never to be retrieved again, and hitchhike off the trail every couple weeks with a condom in tow to meet new people and get wasted for a "break from the trail."
So now you know why I think "Wild" is a misnomer.
Despite what I may have led you to believe at this point, I loved it.
Cheryl Strayed was not wild, in my opinion, and she wasn't particularly "a remarkable woman" as the back cover claimed, but she was extremely relatable, and to some degree admirable despite her many blunders on the PCT.
Perhaps I should pause at this point for a brief summary. Cheryl Strayed's mother died at a fairly young age and it was understandably traumatizing to Cheryl, who was in her early 20s at the time. She went through a period of self-destruction and semi-insanity which led to her divorce with a wonderful man. She somehow (it was never clear quite how), she decided to "find herself" or whatever on the PCT. So that's what she did. She hiked up and down these crazy mountains and had six toenails fall off. She met a fair amount of delightful and kind individuals on her trek and a handful of total creeps (enough so that I decidedly would never go on such a hike by myself). She might have almost died a couple times. She finally finished and her life was basically and apparently fixed after that.
I feel like I'm still not doing a good job selling this book. Let me try again to convince you.
Like I said, Cheryl was incredibly relatable. I was really able to get into her shoes (or boots, as it were). When her mom died, my mom died. When she was shooting up, I was feeling the strong but shallow pleasure. When she washed her sore feet in a creek, I felt the cold water rushing over them. When she met someone noteworthy, I felt in their presence the fear, or relaxation, or desire to flirt. When she left her condom behind during the one night she had the opportunity to use it, I felt the disappointment. When she shivered in her sleeping bag when it was rainy with temperatures in the 20s, I buried myself deeper in my blanket. When she despaired that she didn't have enough money or was otherwise unprepared for what she was doing, I vividly felt all the times I have made similar mistakes. When she saw the Bridge of the Gods at the end of her trek, I felt the magnitude of the trail behind me and the proverbial trail ahead.
Also, this book fanned the flame of my desire to go backpacking more often. So that was wonderful.
That's about all I have to say. Probably you should read as long as you're not super prone to just label someone as an idiot and brush them off.
P.S. The movie was good too but it was a little too graphic and the language a little too colorful for my tastes so I probably wouldn't see it again.
God bless.
No comments:
Post a Comment