Book Review - Wild

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Cheryl Strayed's excellent memoir of her time hiking the Pacific Crest trail is a journey not just on aching feet and with a heavy pack on her back, but through the trail of grief left behind by her mother's passing and the subsequent dissolution of the family unit she'd always called home.

Newly divorced, floating from job to job, idly doing drugs and sleeping with men, working service jobs here and there, Cheryl is lost. So lost, in fact, that when signing her divorce papers she chooses her own, new last name. Strayed, because she feels like a stray, drifting in the world.

The beginning of the hike is an impulse, and almost seems without purpose, but as she leaves miles of wilderness behind her, she falls into herself in amazing ways.

I loved this book. I related to this book in a significant way, although the journeys I took in my life on impulse were slightly different (and LOTS easier on my feet!). It's a wonderful coming-of-age tale, worth reading by those fascinated by the wilderness and those not.

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