Don't be confused by the rugged looking boot on the cover. Even I, a committed couch traveler, hater of camping, lover of the idea of nature but not so much the bugs and dirt and other yucky stuff, even I enjoyed this book.
When given the book I looked at the sub-title and thought, "Ha. Me? A hiking book? This must be for my dad." And so it sat on my nightstand for probably a year, next to reference books about writing and three books I've started and just can't finish (Everything is Illuminated, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Reading Lolita in Tehran: see my post about being a literary fraud), until it was THE LAST BOOK. This is a desperate state for me. I will read my daughter's Highlights magazines if there isn't any other option, so in this condition, I finally picked up Wild.
I found a pleasant surprise. While truly about her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail (a mountain top trail from Mexico to Canada, which Strayed hikes for most of California and all of Oregon), it's also a completely cathartic experience for both writer and reader. Strayed goes on the hike because her mother dies, her siblings scatter, and her marriage dissolves within just a few years. She starts to veer off the path she imagined for her life and needs a new path to walk, so even though she's not an experienced hiker, she decides almost on a whim to do this thing. She encounters every expected but not truly imagined obstacle: bears, lack of water, losing five toenails, rain, snow, heat, and just plain pain. She also meets generous and loving strangers and real characters in unexpected ways and places. All the while Strayed journals and retells her experiences, memories of her mother, self abuse, and self love, hence the subtitle.
The remarkable transparency Strayed displays in her story reminds me of, my favorite, Anne Lamott, but also of Eat, Pray, Love. She simply doesn't back down from anything, both in the wilderness and in her self-exploration. It's endearing rather than off-putting, reminding me of how broken we all are, how close to the brink we could all be if we lost those people most dear to us, the ones who ground us and make us who we are. This seems to be a trend in both books and blogs, as I read Jen Hatmaker and Glennon Doyle and Rachel Held Evans admit over and over again that they don't know what they're doing as women, mothers, humans, but they are just putting it out there so that everyone else can admit the same thing. I can't hike the PCT (I would literally die) but I can be brave like all these women, Strayed included, and be a truth teller, admit that I would be even more of a mess than I am without this huge tribe that is holding me together. For Strayed, her tribe changes both on the trail and after, but she finds one, and find herself within it.
No comments:
Post a Comment