Wild: Cheryl Strayed

Image Credit: Writer's Edit

This is a first for me. Reading the book AFTER I have seen the movie on which it was based. I saw Reese Witherspoon put in a compelling performance in the 'Wild.' And that stayed with me enough for me to pick up the memoir also called the Wild. Cheryl Strayed as been vilified and glorified after she wrote her experience of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or the PCT as it is more commonly known. I read some of the reviews on Goodreads and I was amused. So many people have vented their ire because they think Cheryl was 'self-absorbed' and doesn't really gain in experience or understanding through her trek on the trail. Others have said that she was inspiring. For me though, I find it hard to dislike a memoir. There is something intensely personal about that genre. Something that invites us to lay bare the starkest of our follies and the most mundane of our experiences to the harshest of public views. It's the relentless exposure to the most private part of yourself - and a good memoir becomes personal to the reader when the writer has stripped all the last layers of selfdom. A memoir screams. This is me. Read me. Hate me. Love me. Or like Cheryl does on the PCT, burn the book.

Cheryl as during her hike in 1995. Image Credit from NY Mag

And that's what we to got as well. A cross of hatred and love for this book. Cheryl Strayed is a deeply flawed individual and her writing has been slammed as pedestrian. But it doesn't matter. There  is a brutal honesty to it. To her. I felt at times I was reading a murder mystery or a thriller. I would settle down for lunch at my office waiting to read the next page. I would imagine the snow. The sheer harsh terrain of the desert. I could feel Cheryl's search to find herself almost as my own. It's because I am at on my own search. I am not on the PCT. I have fleeting dreams of me doing it but like everything else in my life, I dream a lot and do not a lot. So, I keep searching for an alternative version of myself. The person who I think is inside somewhere, who can be happier, more laughier, more kind and somehow more of a better person than what I have been.

The book might just seem to be about Cheryl. But there is also the secondary character of her mother who looms large over all of her anguish. For someone who so deeply adored and loved her mother, it surprised and amused me to read that Cheryl has started a new brand of feminism that screams itself as 'motherfucker.'

Image Credit: Melville

But being a motherfucker, it’s a way of life, really… It’s about having strength rather than fragility, resilience, and faith, and nerve, and really leaning hard into work rather than worry and anxiety. 

But how much of the book is of the PCT? Not much. Yes, you learn of blackened toenails. Missing toenails. Hardened as a tree bark skin. You read of loving strangers. The agony of blistered feet screaming for rest. But you don't get to read ALL of the PCT. It's not meant to be a travel book in that widest sense. It's a book that was made by the PCT. But it's a book made by Cheryl for a journey that was her own. I am happy she made me a part of it. Yes, she was stupid in not preparing. But she does show us that fragility and resilience exist in equal parts. Which do we feed first?

Verdict: Tough as nails memoir that can change the way we think. I am kidding. It's brutal and effective. Read it because it's worth it.

Rating: 4/5

If you like the book, you can buy it through LW's own affiliate link on Amazon.