Wild (Cheryl Strayed)
My local book club decided to pick a memoir for this month’s read: Wild by Cheryl Strayed. The memoirs I choose for the blog are usually written by the people dying, not the people grieving, so this was a new adventure for me too.
When Strayed’s mother died of cancer, her family fragmented and scattered. Her marriage fell apart and she became briefly addicted to heroin. After four years of grieving, her divorce newly finalized, Strayed embarked on an 1,100-mile trek along the Pacific Crest Trail (the PCT), which stretches in its entirety from the California/Mexico border all the way to British Columbia (Strayed hiked a stretch from the Mojave desert to Washington). To say she was underprepared would be a wild understatement.
There was unforgiving terrain, poor signage, empty water tanks, rattlesnakes, and icy landslides. There were also blisters, black toes, clogged water filters, lost shoes, busted camp stoves, and wet sleeping bags. And yet, it’s obvious that by the end Strayed is healed. Of course, the question I most wanted answered was how.
At the beginning of her journey Strayed imagined she would spend her hike thinking, deeply contemplating life and mortality and her mother’s death. Instead, she says the grueling hike emptied her mind… that the hard monotony shifted her brain “into a primal gear that was void of anything but forward motion.” With such extreme physical exertion there was simply no effort left to ruminate, there was only pushing her body forward. Strayed had spent four years thinking about her mother’s death, playing over her grief again and again. Perhaps we all feel that more thinking will be the solution to our problems (despite all evidence to the contrary). Maybe what we more badly need is a break from the relentless inner chatter. Strayed also finds a more positive, redemptive arc for the pieces of her life story. While she’s deeply saddened that her stepfather, Eddie, became estranged when her mother died, she now thinks “he hadn’t loved me well in the end, but he’d loved me well when it mattered.” Not only did the hike help Strayed work through her emotional distress, it opened her up to new perspectives – she became a more generous, forgiving storyteller.
I’m curious what others think underlies the how – how 3 months of hiking did what 4 years of ordinary day-to-day didn’t. Is it because doing something hard makes you feel like you can do other hard things? Or maybe it was the relief of feeling horrible in a new way after so many years of feeling horrible in old ways (is pain a hierarchy… physical pain temporarily able to eclipse emotional distress?) Did escaping engrained patterns of thinking – by escaping thinking altogether – help pave the way for new perspectives? Maybe it’s as simple as mood-boosting endorphins? Exercise is beneficial for all types of mental health, but is there something special about grueling, weeks-long physical immersions? Does undertaking a behemoth task like a 1,000+ mile trek help you regain some sense of control, or is it about not being in control (not being okay)? Perhaps it has less to do with exercise, or accomplishment, or endorphins, and more to do with being in nature – that being in nature forces you into the present, rejuvenates you, helps you dissolve your personal problems into something larger.
I’m not sure if Strayed has ever written about how the journey healed her, pinpointed those mechanisms of rehabilitation, but even without them the story is entirely satisfying. Her writing is energetic and precise and hilarious and heartbreaking. Wild is a memoir about finding yourself that you’ll actually want to read.