Title: Wild Pdf From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Wild is a powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an 1100-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe - and built her back up again.
At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than "an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise." But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.
Strayed faced down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Animal neglect and animal murder This book is as much about the author's mother dying (and the aftermath) and her dysfunctional life as it is about the hike itself. Fine, that was all very interesting and well written, and I applaud the author for her honesty. After her mother died, I thought, "And who's looking after the family's animals? Horses and dogs and chickens. Pages and pages about her infidelities etc, and her regrets, and mother dying, but nothing about who then went to either re-home or look after the animals.At 49% in the book you find out what happened! The animals have "either died themselves" (no WONDER) and her mother's stunning thoroughbred horse Lady (who had saved her mother's life and been her pride and joy) ended up shot in a botched, agonizing murder by someone (her brother, while she watched on) who had never shot a horse before. Needless to say, the horse did not die straight away but keeled down on her knees in agony in a slow death.If the book had dedicated as many pages to the author's regret and disgust at these actions and the part she played, and a begging for forgiveness, I could have understood (maybe). But, no. It seemed that the author didn't agonize over this at all. Just mentioned it, as if she were blameless. As if she were the victim! Doing the one thing that would have BROKEN HER MOTHER'S HEART!A woman who had enough money to buy heroine but not enough to at least pay for a vet (and how about at least TRYING to re-home Lady or send her to a refuge? Not even mentioned.And all these readers, too, who have adored this book, did this not bother you?How sad this world we live in when shooting a horse who has been abandoned and mistreated by self-absorbed, selfish people seems to go completely unnoticed. If it is accepted so readily in this book, no wonder there is so much animal abuse out there.I actually thought I was going to hate this book I actually thought I was going to hate this book. I hated Eat, Pray, Love and this one came up on my list of recommendations after reading that but I gave it a try anyways. I am so glad that I did. This book was nothing like this "you have everything you've ever wanted in life but go try to find something else" books that are so popular these days. Cheryl writes in a way that really made me feel her own pain and her own fears and struggles. She captured grief in a way that I found very relatable. This story is one of failure, of mistakes, of mourning and above all of rising above all of those things to continue to carry on throughout life. I really loved it.A heck of a ride...er, walk There is something fascinating about the idea of going far away from everything and everyone you know, being alone in the world, and searching for who you really are in a setting where the only expectations are those you impose upon yourself. This is what Cheryl Strayed did in Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. One of the things she discovered is that the impulsivity and lack of direction which plagued her in her "real" life dogged her as she trekked the Pacific Crest Trail. She was both woefully unprepared for the challenges of the trail and almost laughably overprepared with a backpack that was, by her estimation, half her own weight.Fortunately, Cheryl met some good Samaritans along the way who helped to educate her in the art and science of backpacking and assisted her in editing the contents of her backpack to a more reasonable and sustainable level. She wrote frankly about her mistakes, miscalculations, and mishaps as she slowly made her way northward through the Mojave Desert to the Sierra Nevada mountain range (most of which she bypassed by hitchhiking because of record snowfall that year) and all the way up to the Bridge of the Gods at the Oregon/Washington border.As for the book itself, this is one of the few times I would recommend seeing the movie before reading the book, simply because the book is long and somewhat dense and if the movie doesn't appeal to you, the book probably won't, either. I enjoyed both the descriptions of the beauty and difficulty of hiking such a long way as well as the flashbacks of Cheryl's life before and how she came to make the decision - impulsively, as always - to take on this journey. She did educate herself about the gear she would need, apparently overly so, since she ended up with so much in her backpack she had to sit down, strap on the backpack, then get up on all fours and gradually move herself into a semi-upright position. However, although she bought a book about hiking the trail as well as one on navigating with a compass, she apparently just skimmed the first book and although she intended to read the second book on the plane from Minnesota to California, she did not do so. In fact, she didn't read the navigation book until she was actually lost, at which time she discovered she really didn't understand either the language or the principles the book contained.I will admit, the most difficult thing about reading this book besides its length and the density of the prose was dealing with Cheryl's character. I can only assume she was being honest about herself, since I don't believe anyone would portray themselves in such a negative light if it weren't the truth. Besides being heedless and impulsive, Cheryl betrayed, over and over again, a husband who seems to have had almost unlimited patience and love for her, even after their divorce. The loss of a loved one, especially one as close as Cheryl and her mother were, can cause people to react in strange and sometimes self-destructive ways. The best thing Cheryl did was to take herself out of the environment she was in and away from the temptations she found irresistible. But you know the old saying: Wherever you go, there you are. Cheryl was Cheryl, whether in Minnesota or on the PCT. The one thing she did do while on the trail was resist, almost to the very end, her rampant libido.I am glad I read this book. In a way, it reminds me of books I read years ago about people who had moved far away from civilization to live off the land. That, too, is an attractive and romantic prospect until you factor in the backbreaking labor involved. Most of the characters in those books were infinitely easier to like but far less memorable. Cheryl is certainly someone I will never forget
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