These are the essential questions in our next book, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. When Strayed was 22, her mother died of advanced lung cancer. After her death, Strayed’s stepfather and siblings withdrew from the family, and Strayed withdrew from her marriage to a kind, supportive man, becoming involved in serial affairs and heroin use. More significantly, she withdrew from a sense of herself as the person she wanted to be. Impulsively, and with no previous experience, Strayed decided that the way to mend her life was to walk, alone, into the wilderness of the Pacific Crest Trail, which stretches over 2,000 miles of challenging terrain from California to Oregon, and into a life-and-death struggle with the wildness of her own grief and regret.
What do you think? Strayed is candid in her description of her own choices and mistakes, and while she seems remorseful, she never seems ashamed. Is this a sign of strength or a character flaw? Strayed is also forthright about her lack of wilderness survival skills, and some readers might feel that she placed herself in foolish and unnecessary danger and suffered needless physical hardships. What does this naive walk into the wilderness represent for her, how does her physical suffering help her cope with her emotional pain, and how does the experience change her? What does it mean to be wild, and can it be a sane and rational choice to go wild?
Wild has remained on the New York Times bestseller list since publication and has been translated into over 20 languages. In it, we recognize the wise and kind voice of the popular advice column Dear Sugar, which Strayed wrote for The Rumpus, which has also appeared on the bestseller list as Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. In an interview with Kirkus Reviews, Strayed says about her success, "I didn't try to write a bestseller. I had no idea that this story about my hike and my grief would resonate with so many people. When people talk to me about my book, they say, 'I loved Wild and here's why,' and they go on about their own lives, and what's happening is that they're recognizing themselves in my work, in my life. So many people have said, 'We have so much in common.' They say, 'We have parallel lives.' How can that be? And maybe the answer to that is, we're all human, and there's a universal experience, and the writer's role and task here is to be the truth-teller, the storyteller."
With unflinching honesty and earthy humor, and with absolutely no sentimentality or self-pity, Strayed recounts her parallel journey, forward on the trail and back into the life experiences that led her there, to her ultimate realization: “It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That it was enough to trust that what I'd done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was . . . It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.” We are invited by this compassionate self-assessment to trust in the wisdom of our own life’s path.
Wish you could see photographs of Strayed's life and hike? View a slideshow of her journey in photos on Oprah's website.
We hope you will join the discussion: Tuesday, October 1, at 6:30 p.m. at Main Library; Thursday, October 17, at 11:00 a.m.; and here on the blog.
