I lay unmoving for a good minute. She’d been so transparent and effusive and I so inquisitive all my life that we’d already covered everything. To my monumental relief, there was a large boulder upon which I could sit and remove my pack. It had fallen across the trail, its wide trunk held aloft by branches just low enough that I couldn’t pass beneath, yet so high that climbing over it was impossible. I opened one of its compartments and pulled out an orange whistle, whose packaging proclaimed it to be “the world’s loudest.” I ripped it open and held the whistle up by its yellow lanyard, then put it around my neck. She was 45. On a shelf I saw a book called The Pacific Crest Trail: Volume 1: California. She could not deal with the pain of being alone, that she seemed to be the only one in her family at all distraught, and sought out some unsavory ways to cope with her pain. The only possible distraction was my vigilant search for rattlesnakes. Cheryl Strayed believes she was put on this earth to do one thing: write like a motherf*cker. I woke to raindrops falling on my face and looked at my watch. I scrambled into the manzanitas that bordered the trail, pulling myself into their sharp branches as best I could. Three and a half years later, I was at an outdoor store in Minneapolis. Soon the voice inside my head was screaming, What have I gotten myself into? On a fence post beyond the ditch I spied a palm-size metal blaze that said PACIFIC CREST TRAIL. I was in the midst of such a reverie when I skidded on pebbles and fell, landing on the hard trail facedown with a force that took my breath away. In the panic of the moment, my mind couldn’t wrap around what I was seeing. Crazed with grief, Cheryl began doubting her marriage, sleeping with other men and eventually even doing heroin with one of them. I was someone who could be described as outdoorsy. But now I didn’t have any of the certainty I’d had when I’d sealed those boxes neatly shut with tape. At the age of 22, in 1991, Cheryl Strayed fell into an abyss. Inhaling it now, I didn’t so much smell the sharp, earthy scent of the desert sage as I did the potent memory of my mother. “Cheryl Strayed is one of the most exciting writers I’ve come across in a long time.” —Hope Edelman, author of The Possibility of Everything and Motherless Daughters “Smart, funny, and often sublime, Wild has something for everyone—a fight for survival in the wilderness, a bad girl’s quest for redemption—all in the hands of a brilliant and evocative writer.” I saw that I was engulfed in a cloud, the mist so impenetrable I couldn’t see beyond a few feet. Connect with users and join the conversation at Condé Nast Traveler. The sun warm on my body, I spent the day there with my compass in hand, reading a book about how to use a compass called Staying Found. Cheryl Strayed “Some people have a negative reaction to the word advice.They imagine somebody shaking their finger and telling them what to do. I found north, south, east, and west. In the morning, I had to force them on. Was I supposed to hike wearing it like this? Not just the parts of her that I knew, but the parts of her that had come before me, too. I wrapped bungee cords around all the things that didn’t fit. I reached over and picked a handful of the leaves and rubbed them between my palms, then put my face in them and inhaled deeply, the way my mother had taught me to do. A minivan pulled up and two men, clearly a father and son, got out. Did the article … I buckled my pack and continued hiking through the light rain. I picked it up. My next water source was a daunting nineteen miles away. Read Cheryl Strayed's bio and get latest news stories and articles. I retrieved my guidebook and held the fluttering pages against the wind, hoping that the familiar words and maps would dispel my growing unease. And also for mountain lions and wilderness-savvy serial killers. Walking around it was also out of the question: the trail dropped off too steeply on one side and the brush was too dense on the other. I have a younger brother and an older sister. The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. After checking in, I went to my room and sat on the soft bed. I took out my purifier and began to pump the way I’d practiced in my kitchen sink in Minneapolis. Of all the things I’d made myself believe so I could hike the PCT, the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: Nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. Her college was in Duluth, mine in Minneapolis. Cheryl Strayed hiked 1,100 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail in a bid to escape her demons. I cinched my pack and took the first steps down the trail to a brown metal box tacked to another fence post. Again it did not move. But later I returned and bought the book. We'll only know that whatever that … To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. I was here. Ad Choices. . I didn’t know. It was December 1994. This byline is for a different person with the same name. I couldn’t explain. But after about fifteen minutes, it was clear that I had never walked into desert mountains with a pack that weighed significantly more than half of what I did strapped onto my back. I had to do it, no matter how impossible it seemed. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is the 2012 memoir by the American writer, author, and podcaster Cheryl Strayed.The memoir describes Strayed's 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995 as a journey of self-discovery.The book reached No. I ate a handful of tuna-jerky flakes and fell asleep before sunset. But now that she was dying, I knew everything. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Blood instantly spurted out of three stab wounds on my arm. I can walk! I worked my way through the mountain of things—the thick fleece anorak, the camp chair, the snakebite kit, the tiny collapsible stove—wedging and cramming them into every available space of my pack. The next morning, after the last shower I’d have for days, I piled all my belongings on the bed. It was spectacular to walk without my pack on. She’d begun college when I did, pursuing a dream after years of setting it aside. I wanted to know. I filled two 32-ounce bottles in the bathroom sink and put them in my pack’s mesh side pockets. Also known as Dear Sugar. She would grow old and more beautiful and still work in the garden. I wanted to quit school, but my mother insisted that I still get my degree. I looked up at the blue sky, feeling my mother’s presence, remembering why it was that I’d thought I could hike this trail. But hitchhiking was simply what PCT hikers did on occasion. I couldn’t explain it. That strength crumbled within fifteen minutes, as I ascended into the rocky mountains. All growing up I’d asked and asked, making her describe those scenes, wanting to know who said what and how, what she’d felt inside while it was going on. Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Coast Trail alone, before the modern-day solo female travel movement. I squatted and grasped its frame more robustly and tried to lift it again. The sight of the square concrete pool lifted my spirits enormously, not only because it meant water, but also because humans had so clearly constructed it. Cheryl Strayed, from Portland, Oregon, receives a ton of fan emails about her memoir Wild but one stood out... as it appeared to be from her long-lost half-sister. “You can stop here,” I said to the brother of a friend, who’d given me a ride from L.A., gesturing to an old-style neon sign that said “White’s Motel.” By the worn look of the building, I guessed it was the cheapest place in town. The PCT, I learned, was a continuous wilderness trail, 2,650 miles long, that traversed the entire length of California, Oregon, and Washington, passing through national parks and forests; through deserts and mountains; across rivers and highways. I wasn’t thinking, I’m hiking on the Pacific Crest Trail. By noon I was up over 6,000 feet, and the air had cooled, the sun suddenly disappearing behind clouds. I tried to ignore it, to hum as I hiked, though humming proved too difficult to do while also panting. I knew the names of the horses she had loved as a girl: Pal and Buddy and Bacchus. The minister from the local funeral home, who clearly had … I pulled the little instruction book out and learned that I’d filled the stove’s canister with the wrong kind of gas. Her memoir is a fascinating read, writes Sara Wheeler Cheryl Strayed, the author of "Wild" and longtime Portland resident, shares her favorite things to do, eat and see in Oregon's City of Roses. And then there was the real live truly doing it. It was true that the salespeople at REI had mentioned weight rather often in their soliloquies, but I hadn’t paid much attention. Cheryl Strayed herself even commented, See full article at Popsugar » Permalink; Report this; The 3 TV faces of Reese: Type-a suburban mom (‘Little Fires Everywhere’), no-filter TV host (‘The Morning Show’) and pushy unfaithful spouse (‘Big Little Lies’) — take your pick! How there was no escape or denial. When I crawled out from beneath my pack and assessed the damage, I saw that a gash in my shin was seeping copious blood, a knot the size of a fist already forming beneath it. “I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. Something bloomed inside me as I traced the jagged line of the trail with my finger. There was the quitting of my job as a waitress and finalizing my divorce from a man I still loved and selling almost everything I owned and visiting my mother’s grave one last time. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. I walked jubilantly down a jeep road to see what I could see. “Mooooose!” I shouted louder as I grabbed for the yellow cord tied to the frame of my pack that held the world’s loudest whistle. When I opened my eyes, the bull was gone. Cheryl Strayed has 25 books on Goodreads with 1419137 ratings. I thought. Unless I wanted to walk twelve miles along the broiling shoulder of the highway to reach the trail, I needed a ride. I pulled into the town of Mojave, California, as the June sun dipped into the Tehachapi Mountains a dozen miles behind me to the west—mountains I’d be hiking the next day. Excerpted from Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. Cheryl Strayed’s essay about her mother’s death [“The Love of My Life,” September 2002] reminded me of the death of my beloved grandmother in the midseventies. I made my way to the nearby gas station. Soon the terrain began to change. 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