 A woman solo hiked the PCT. This is her engaging rite-of-passage memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. I could hardly put the book down, strong was my desire to gobble up every trail and survival detail. I love hiking, along with exploring the backcountry on horses, and primitive camping. While my own two feet have traversed sections of both the PCT and the AT (Appalachian Trail), I can only, thus far, live vicariously through those who have actually “thru-hiked.” Cheryl Strayed didn’t exactly hike through, having started in the Mojave Desert in California and finished at the Bridge of the Gods connecting Oregon to Washington, but she covered 1,100 miles on her weary, blistered, nail-less toes, having started out ill-prepared and untrained. That’s nothing to scoff at, by any stretch. That’s gutsy.
**potential spoilers below** The writing is sharp and the storytelling vivid. I trekked into the pages assuming I could relate to the author as I, too, lost both my parents. I know what it’s like when your family unit sort of disintegrates due to grief; when the strong root is dug up, or the anchor is hoisted leaving you feeling adrift. Yet, I couldn’t grasp the author’s perspective on a number of levels. From her form of recklessness and promiscuity, to feeling a life force—though the size of a grain of rice—recognizing she was pregnant, and then using “I got an abortion” and “learned how to make dehydrated tuna flakes” in the same sentence. I couldn’t comprehend why her editors kept in the dalliance with “rad” man, as it had nothing to do with the story and certainly didn’t move it along. I didn’t understand why she unreasonably obliterated a solid marriage to a great guy, or how she expressed pain. And the incident with her mom’s horse, Lady: horrid. Choices, choices! Still, her descriptions of nature when compared to her state of being proved starkly eloquent. When she hadn’t seen another human for weeks. When silence was tremendous. When she expressed that she was nothing to pebbles, leaves, and branches, yet they were everything to her. “Everything but me seems utterly certain of itself. The sky didn’t wonder where it was.” When she did have encounters with other characters, they were interesting. Clyde’s words moved me while he said he didn’t believe in reincarnation when Cheryl had asked him. He said, “I believe we’re here once and what we do matters.” And Cheryl’s mom having cancer that consumed her before she reached 50. I understood the tragedy of it. And the painful truths that came also from the mom’s mouth, about how she never got to conduct her own life—to be in the driver’s seat. She always did what someone else wanted her to do. The most uncomfortable sentiment, “I’ve always been someone’s daughter or mother or wife. I’ve never just been me.” Sorrowful authenticity is a killer. So, you see, Wild was a weighty, ugly-beautiful book. Hard to rate. It’s like life, you take the good with the bad—which I suppose is the theme of this chronicle. Although I’m a different-thinking person from that of the author, with a contrasting belief system and grief display, and I didn’t quite see in my mind a “healing” take place, I admire Strayed who “strayed” and wrote for us a compelling memoir to digest.
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Pressure prevailed. I caved. Too many had said “You HAVE to read these books!” I usually steer away from overhyped mainstream fiction because I’ve too often been disappointed in the read and left wondering why such buzz?
So, I confess. I read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. Devoured, really. Brilliantly written, suspenseful and meaningful, political and painful, creative and inventive, I was blown away. Although a number of reviewers tended to find the last installment, Mockingjay, too drawn out with an unsatisfying ending, I found it cleverly handled. In a multitude of moments I thought: How is this author going to pull her divergent protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, out of this predicament? It was always a surprise. All the way to the most real and satisfying finish. The future of the United States doesn’t seem so farfetched in this ingenious arc of “Panem” and its districts either. It’s a harrowing yet compelling story through every detail, even the choice names given the characters. Heck, if I had a whole herd of horses they’d all be named after the cast, beginning with Peeta. And the movie? Although some minor details were altered, the film really captured the tragic atmosphere of a dynamic story. How refreshing and scary. Not to mention the scenery was gorgeous, as it was filmed in these parts where I now live…well, western North Carolina anyway. Close enough. |
TESSA STOCKTON, AUTHOR -
Pressing through life, love, a few things that matter, and a lot of things that don't.
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