A book report

The Pacific Crest Trail traces the backbone of Washington, Oregon and California. Border to border. I know people who’ve hiked some or all of it and I keep intersecting the trail whenever my wanderings have me crossing the Sierras and Cascades. One of these days I might actually walk on it—for a couple of miles, anyway.

Writer Cheryl Strayed hiked hundreds of miles on the PCT. Alone. With a backpack even the burliest hikers thought was ridiculously heavy. She hiked because she was devastated by her mother’s death. She hiked because her marriage crashed and burned. She hiked because she had gotten sucked in by heroin.

Strayed’s reasons for hiking are the main point of Wild, I suppose. As the cover says, from lost to found. But I was more interested in the actual hiking. Because a life in turmoil isn't unusual. Walking alone through hundreds of miles of difficult and amazing terrain is. Common disease, uncommon cure. The farther I got into the book the more I skimmed the parts about her non-PCT life.

There was little doubt Strayed would make it to the Columbia River filled with peace, enlightenment and closure. Stories that end in failure and disappointment don’t sell well or get made into movies. So when the ending can be safely assumed, I prefer more about the journey.

“Ah,” some might respond, “the real journey was internal. Mountains, dehydration, heavy packs, lost toenails and all that are merely metaphors. The hero’s quest is never actually about the quest. It’s about the change in the hero.”

Yes, well, thank you Joseph Campbell.

I still recommend Wild. Oprah did. And if you’ve never been in the Sierras and Cascades, I highly recommend them too.