Title by Author: Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Series (if applicable): none
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: June 2012
Page Count: 311
Source: library
e-book
Blurb:
A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an
eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from
catastrophe—-and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—-and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.
Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—-and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.
Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
My Interest in
this book is: Saw a blurb about it right after watching The Way with Martin
Sheen and hiking El Camino in
Spain. I thought that this might give me
more insight into long-distance hiking.
Loved the cover, too!
My Review:
When Cheryl
got divorced from a man that she loved, but cheated on, she was able to choose
her last name; she chose Strayed: “to wander from the proper path, to deviate
from the direct course, to be lost, to become wild…” This new last name was a
moniker she carried because she felt lost and gone from the proper path. Cheryl needed to be found!
This book was
more than just a recount of her journey of hiking 1100 miles along the Pacific
Crest Trail, it was all of the drama that led to her taking a hike that she was
quite ill-prepared for. However, you
have to give this woman kudos for completing the hike, in not quitting, and in
losing all of her baggage by the end of the trail and ready to start a new
life. It was like a trial by fire to be
able to pass in to the next phase of her life, but hers was a trial by trail.
I know that
there are people out there who are lost in their lives. They do things that are harmful to
themselves, mess up good relationships with bad choices and it is amazing that
they even survive. Cheryl Strayed did
more than survive, she conquered her past and was able to move forward with
change. This is the tale of that
journey. It is more about the emotional
journey than the physical one – as she was healing the scars from her former
life, the trail attacked her body along the way.