Wild
Field of wildflowers on the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington state in summer of 2016. This is in the Wenatchee National Forest. This trail also offers views of Mount Rainier. Obtained from Shutterstock.
Obtained from Shutterstock. Editorial credit: EWY Media / Shutterstock.com
https://support.shutterstock.com/s/article/How-can-I-use-editorial-content?language=en_US
I first read Wild about 5 or 6 years ago. I was looking for stories that showed messy life. I was at a point where I wanted to read the stories of others and the mess in their lives to face the messiness of my own. Wild was one of the books recommended by a friend. It was the beginning of my love affair with the memoir, but that is a topic for another blog.
Image to left:
Cascade Lock, Oregon – 2016: Sign for the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), a National Scenic Trail in the USA from the Mexican to Canadian border. Near Bridge of the Gods at the Washington Oregon border.
Wild is the story of Cheryl Strayed and her trip hiking the Pacific Coast Trail (PCT). The PCT stretches approximately 2,650 miles from Campo, California, along the US Mexico border, and ends in Manning Park, British Columbia. It follows the crest of the Sierra Nevada Mountains through California and then the Cascade Mountains in Oregon and Washington. It takes the average hiker 4-6 months to travel the entire trail. Catherine Montgomery first conceived of the idea of a border-to-border trail in 1926. However, while groups began working in the 1930s to organize and promote the formation of a border-to-border trail, it wasn’t until 1968 when the National Trails System Act established policies and procedures for the formation of this system Johnson endorsed. The route for the PCT was first published by the Forest Service in 1973. The trail was completed in 1993.
A map of the Pacific Crest Trail. Obtained from the Pacific Crest Trail Association Website.
“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Cheryl started this journey in 1995, about a year after her mother’s death. In the year before she began hiking the PCT, her marriage imploded, her relationship with her siblings and stepfather fell apart, she became addicted to heroin and kicked that addiction, and had an abortion. She felt generally lost in life. Still grieving the loss of her mother, she started planning a hike of the PCT. She needed a change and felt hiking the trail would give her the space and time to think and get herself straight. She was called on this journey.
She spent time preparing for the journey:
• Gathering supplies for the trip.
• Learning a bit about the trail and gear she would need.
• Packing resupply boxes that a friend would send to her general delivery during her trek.
It was common for PCT hikers to mail care packages to themselves to pick them up in the towns along the PCT. She would later discover on the trail that she was far less prepared for her trip than she thought. She was constantly learning and adjusting while on her journey. Are we really ever fully ready for any journey we take?
North Cascades National Park – Pasayten Wilderness, part of the PCT. Obtained from Shutterstock.
“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. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Along the way, Cheryl met other hikers (pilgrims) and “trail angels” (people who help the hikers on their journey). She began listening more deeply to herself and the world around her. She felt the oneness/connection with others and the world around her. She had to change her plans, find other routes when the mountains were socked-in with snow, order new boots when the pair she had hurt her feet, and carry a pack named “Monster” that contained everything but the kitchen sink.
“I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
The journey gave her time to think, examine, remember, and process all that had happened to her and where she wanted to go next in life. It also showed her how much stronger, creative, and resourceful she is than she ever imagined, how the kindness of those we meet in the world can make all the difference, and how wonderful the little things are when a complicated life gets very simple. She was lost and found on the trail, both metaphorically and literally.
Cheryl’s hike removed her from the world and created the space she needed to do internal work. The walking, the challenges, and the journey allowed Cheryl to open her mind and focus her energies on what was before her. It let her get herself right. The journey up the PCT was just the mechanism for her own internal work and growth. This is what a pilgrimage provides the pilgrim.
Cheryl’s trip inspired me to take a pilgrimage of my own, though at the time, I didn’t realize that was what I was doing. While I didn’t hike from Mexico to Canada, I did bike the Paul Bunyan Trail from Crow Wing State Part to Bemidji State Park.
In Without Oars: Casting Off Into a Life of Pilgrimage, the author writes, “Sometimes books are our first step before our feet begin the journey” (p40). Reading Wild was my first step into my own pilgrimage.
Other stories of pilgrimage:
Pilgrim in Time by Rosanne Keller
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Gift of the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindberg
A Year by the Sea by Joan Anderson
The Alchemist By Paulo Coelho
The Pilgrimage By Paulo Coelho
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
Without Oars: Casting Off Into a Life of Pilgrimage by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
Marrow by Elizabeth Lesser
Siddartha by Herman Hesse
References
ActionHub Social, (2020, June 22). 8 Amazing Pacific Crest Trail Facts. Retrieved on January 28, 2022 from https://www.actionhub.com/stories/2020/06/22/amazing-pacific-crest-trail-facts/.
Backpacker, (2022). Pacific Crest Trail. Retrieved on January 28, 2022, from https://www.backpacker.com/trips/long-trails/pacific-crest-trail/#:~:text=The Pacific Crest Trail is,in Manning Park%2C British Columbia.
Granberg-Michaelson, W. (2020). Without Oars: Casting Off Into a Life of Pilgrimage. (1st ed). Broadleaf Books.
Pacific Crest Trail Association, (1998-2022). Pacific Crest Trail Association. Retrieved January 28, 2022, from https://www.pcta.org/.
Strayed, C. (2013). Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. Atlantic Books.
This blog is part of an arch that began with a discussion on pilgrimage and the book Wild.
Click HERE to read part 1 of my trip up the PBT.
Click HERE to read part 2 of my trip up the PBT.
Click HERE to read part 2 of my trip up the PBT.
© Catherine Haslag
© Catherine Haslag