Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed (2012)

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THE A5 BOOK REVIEW

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is the inspirational story of Cheryl Strayed, a 26 year old devastated by the death of her mother and the end of her marriage who decided to hike the 1,100 Pacific Crest Trail as a journey of self-discovery. She had very little previous experience outdoors, she didn't put a lot of time into preparation, and so it was a challenging endeavor. Strayed battled hunger, thirst, extreme temperatures, blisters, bears and rattlesnakes as she hiked from the Mojave Desert north through California and Oregon all the way north into Washington. The most remarkable part of the book though comes from seeing Strayed's own emotional growth and recovery. Her memoir covers flashbacks to what in her life led her astray, and the awareness and fulfillment that came as she conquered physical obstacles along the way. The book reached the top of the New York Times Bestseller list and was made into a popular feature film in 2014 starring Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern.

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ABOUT CHERYL STRAYED

Cheryl Strayed has written two other well received New York Times best-selling books - Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough . Both books share advice on love and life from her Dear Sugar advice column on The Rumpus, a blog like website (www.therumpus.net) dedicated to fantastic writing. She has also written a novel called Torch. Strayed's essays have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, and elsewhere.

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GREAT QUOTES FROM WILD

“The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.”

"Big-hearted, keen-eyed, lyrical, precise...Cheryl Strayed reminds us in every line that if defeat and despair are part of human experience, so are kindness, patience, and transcendence."
- George Saunders

INTERESTING LINKS:

"Strayed" is her real legal name, and it has been since 1995. She chose it herself.
Strayed's "Forty-Five", a story about an emotional trip to the Principality of Andorra, is featured in An Innocent Abroad, a 2014 collection of travel writing from Lonely Planet.