Wild: Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail By Cheryl Strayed

While reading Cheryl Strayed’s biting memoir Wild, I couldn’t help but become fascinated with her life story. Throughout this novel I found myself agreeing with her words, crying at her stories, and feeling uplifted to my core. This novel isn’t just about how Cheryl hiked the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT) from the Mohave Desert in California and Oregon to Washington, but also a story of grief and sorrow that many people could relate to becoming much more than just a hiking tale. It’s a beautifully written prose about how she found herself because she had become so lost. She needed to lose herself on this trail to find the person she was supposed to be. The experience is one of a kind.

Beginning her memoir, Part 1 of Wild: Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail discusses the loss Cheryl suffered early on in her life. When she was in her early 20’s, Cheryl’s mother Bobbi was diagnosed with lung cancer that had progressed so far that there was nothing the doctors could do to prolong her life. The doctors seemed to do what they could to make Bobbi comfortable, but within a few months she had passed. The heartbreaking loss devastated Cheryl and sent her life down a spiraling path she never expected.

Wild takes readers down the riveting path that is known as self-discovery. After essentially feeling as though she threw her previous life away and didn’t know who she was any longer, Cheryl decided to hike the PCT to fix herself. While on the trail, the goal was to be able to think about everything she had done prior to that point in time and figure out a way to work through it. Another key factor Cheryl felt the need to sort through was why losing her mother was something she couldn’t move past and was an event that she dwelled on instead. She wanted to become a better version of herself and was set on the idea that hiking the PCT was the solution. “Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.” This statement was never truer than while Cheryl was on her 3-month trek in the mountains. She was secluded but made the most of her time and finally returned to being herself for the first time since her mother passed, 4 years prior.

The pain, confusion and sense of loss Cheryl portrays are palpable. She will have you crying throughout her memoir, feeling as though everything that happened to her has happened to you. She illustrates the scenes of hiking the PCT so vividly you can imagine it right in front of you. Wild: Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is a must read. Cheryl Strayed beautifully captures the essence of loss and being able to live through it. I highly recommend it to anyone who has felt lost and wanted to go to extreme measures to find themselves. Cheryl is a living example of this and her journey is wonderfully captured in this memoir.