![]() ![]() ![]() Somehow indicative of this is the fact that the landscapes she crosses (which we know are breathtaking) are often an afterthought–she writes quickly, almost dismissively, of the jagged mountains and sweeping panoramas more words are spent on her physical struggle–the battle to keep her toenails, the weight of her pack, Monster, the monotony of hiking: Strayed relates that though she had, before the hike, imagined herself reflecting and meditating on these struggles, she instead finds nearly all of her time consumed by the physical difficulty of hiking the PCT. As she relates the story of her physical journey across and 1,100 mile stretch through California and Oregon, she interjects the events of her life that had shattered and dumped her at the start of her hike: the death of her beloved mother, the end of her marriage, struggles with addiction–a jagged, zig-zagging, criss-cross of trails that stand in stark contrast to the single, straight line of the PCT. The at times scorching, at times freezing, frequently wet and always heavy surface of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild is enough to be engaging: a hapless, amateur hiker taking on one of America’s most scenic and formidable hikes, the Pacific Crest Trail (the PCT, in hiker vernacular). ![]()
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