Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Cheryl Strayed (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 20, 2012

Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selection.

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
 
At twenty-two, 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 faces 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2012: At age 26, following the death of her mother, divorce, and a run of reckless behavior, Cheryl Strayed found herself alone near the foot of the Pacific Crest Trail--inexperienced, over-equipped, and desperate to reclaim her life. Wild tracks Strayed's personal journey on the PCT through California and Oregon, as she comes to terms with devastating loss and her unpredictable reactions to it. While readers looking for adventure or a naturalist's perspective may be distracted by the emotional odyssey at the core of the story, Wild vividly describes the grueling life of the long-distance hiker, the ubiquitous perils of the PCT, and its peculiar community of wanderers. Others may find her unsympathetic--just one victim of her own questionable choices. But Strayed doesn't want sympathy, and her confident prose stands on its own, deftly pulling both threads into a story that inhabits a unique riparian zone between wilderness tale and personal-redemption memoir. --Jon Foro

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From Author Cheryl Strayed

Oprah with Cheryl Strayed, author of Book Club 2.0's inaugural selection, Wild.

I wrote the last line of my first book, Torch, and then spent an hour crying while lying on a cool tile floor in a house on a hot Brazilian island. After I finished my second book, Wild, I walked alone for miles under a clear blue sky on an empty road in the Oregon Outback. I sat bundled in my coat on a cold patio at midnight staring up at the endless December stars after completing my third book, Tiny Beautiful Things. There are only a handful of other days in my life--my wedding, the births of my children--that I remember as vividly as those solitary days on which I finished my books. The settings and situations were different, but the feeling was the same: an overwhelming mix of joy and gratitude, humility and relief, pride and wonder. After much labor, I'd made this thing. A book. Though it wasn't technically that yet.

The real book came later--after more work, but this time it involved various others, including agents, publishers, editors, designers, and publicists, all of whose jobs are necessary but sometimes indecipherable to me. They're the ones who transformed the thousands of words I'd privately and carefully conjured into something that could be shared with other people. "I wrote this!" I exclaimed in amazement when I first held each actual, physical book in my hands. I wasn't amazed that it existed; I was amazed by what its existence meant: that it no longer belonged to me.

Two months before Wild was published I stood on a Mexican beach at sunset with my family assisting dozens of baby turtles on their stumbling journey across the sand, then watching as they disappeared into the sea. The junction between writer and author is a bit like that. In one role total vigilance is necessary; in the other, there's nothing to do but hope for the best. A book, like those newborn turtles, will ride whatever wave takes it.

It's deeply rewarding to me when I learn that something I wrote moved or inspired or entertained someone; and it's crushing to hear that my writing bored or annoyed or enraged another. But an author has to stand back from both the praise and the criticism once a book is out in the world. The story I chose to write in Wild for no other reason than I felt driven to belongs to those who read it, not me. And yet I'll never forget what it once was, long before I could even imagine how gloriously it would someday be swept away from me.

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From Booklist

Echoing the ever-popular search for wilderness salvation by Chris McCandless (Back to the Wild, 2011) and every other modern-day disciple of Thoreau, Strayed tells the story of her emotional devastation after the death of her mother and the weeks she spent hiking the 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail. As her family, marriage, and sanity go to pieces, Strayed drifts into spontaneous encounters with other men, to the consternation of her confused husband, and eventually hits rock bottom while shooting up heroin with a new boyfriend. Convinced that nothing else can save her, she latches onto the unlikely idea of a long solo hike. Woefully unprepared (she fails to read about the trail, buy boots that fit, or pack practically), she relies on the kindness and assistance of those she meets along the way, much as McCandless did. Clinging to the books she lugs along—Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Adrienne Rich—Strayed labors along the demanding trail, documenting her bruises, blisters, and greater troubles. Hiker wannabes will likely be inspired. Experienced backpackers will roll their eyes. But this chronicle, perfect for book clubs, is certain to spark lively conversation. --Colleen Mondor

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (March 20, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780307592736
• ISBN-13: 978-0307592736
• ASIN: 0307592731
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2,256 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #57 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Specific Groups > Women

More About the Author

Cheryl Strayed is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the memoir WILD (Alfred A. Knopf), the advice essay collection TINY BEAUTIFUL THINGS (Vintage Books), and the novel TORCH (Houghton Mifflin). WILD will also be published in Brazil, Finland, Germany, Spain, China, the Netherlands, Korea, Sweden, Israel, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Denmark, France, Poland, Norway and Italy. WILD was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. It has been optioned for film by Reese Witherspoon's production company, Pacific Standard. IndieBound selected WILD as their #1 Indie Next pick for April, Barnes and Noble named it a "Discover Great New Writers" pick on their Summer 2012 list, and Amazon named it a "best of March" pick. Strayed's debut novel, TORCH was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and was selected by The Oregonian as one of the top ten books of the year by writers from the Pacific Northwest. Strayed has written the "Dear Sugar" column on TheRumpus.net since March 2010. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Allure, Self, The Missouri Review, Brain, Child, Creative Nonfiction, The Sun and elsewhere. The winner of a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Sewanee Writers' Conference, her essays and stories have been published in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS, THE BEST NEW AMERICAN VOICES, and other anthologies. She holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota. She's a founding member of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts, and serves on their board of directors. Raised in Minnesota, Strayed now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, the filmmaker Brian Lindstrom, and their two children.

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

(What's this?)

#6 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs

#8 in Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs

#10 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#15 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#99 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

#6 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs

#8 in Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs

#10 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure

#15 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Action & Adventure

#99 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

623 of 659 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Journey within a Journey December 30, 2011

By CLR VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Why read "Wild: from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail"? In a nutshell, because Cheryl Strayed is brutally honest about her weaknesses as well as her strengths, because she writes magnificently, and because she speaks for so many women who have suffered similar insults and assaults and have never had such an articulate writer to tell their story. Her first twenty-six years constitute a life often lived but rarely told. The hundred days before her twenty-seventh birthday make up the substance of the "Lost to Found" journey within a journey -- the unifying theme of this book, a theme of personal confrontation and self-willed rebirth in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

If you are able to read even the Prologue you will see evidence of Strayed's unique voice. If that is unavailable and you're still on the fence as to whether to buy this book, I urge you to go to cherylstrayed.com and read some of Strayed's essays. Perhaps her raw honesty will seize hold of you as it did me and give you no choice but to get the book.

This is not to say that everyone will love this book or its author. Readers will respond very differently. Some will be as enthusiastic as the 5-star reviewers and some as unimpressed as the 3-star (there are no lower reviews at this point, which is a testament to the books' quality). Strange as it may seem, I see the perspectives of those who are enthusiastic and those who are dissatisfied and believe that both the accolades and the criticisms are legitimate. It is a sign of considerable courage to hike 1,100 miles alone, while it is a sign of great weakness to wallow in personal sorrow while toying with drugs and ruining a marriage....

Before I saw Amazon's listing, I had not heard of Strayed although she clearly already has a following. It was, however, not the author but the subject matter -- a woman's solo journey over 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail - that first attracted me to the book.

But do not be misled. This book is not a hiker's guide. Two of the mistakes Strayed made are as basic as can be: wearing shoes a size too small and carrying an overweight pack. Many pages are devoted to Strayed's complaints about these two major errors and the pain and injuries they caused to her body. Hard as long-distance hiking is, one need not be impaired by shoes that cause most of your toenails to fall off and a pack that is more than half your body weight.

Rather than a guide, this is a memoir. Strayed's qualities are not common sense or preparedness. Her work is of great value because she confronts and reveals parts of herself that others would deny and hide. In her childhood she was seriously damaged by violence and neglect and yet nurtured within herself a spirit so indomitable and a talent so unusual that she has been able to pull herself through terrible hardship to a place of personal transcendence and victory. She confronted the damage done to herself by her violent and absent biological father, the abandonment imposed by her mother's untimely and painful death, and the destruction wrought at her own hand when she repeatedly cheated on her husband and became involved with heroin.

This is not a cautionary tale. The author was already living a life of extraordinary and unnecessary risk before she ever took a single step on the PCT. Her heroin use and eagerness to be intimate with strangers surely were as life-threatening as the rattlesnakes and bears she eventually met up with on the PCT. So it was not the danger of the trail that captivated me. Rather, it was the fact that almost everyone Strayed met on the trail was kind, interesting, and generous. My guess is that the PCT attracts unusual people who have more than the usual amount of kindness and gentleness in their souls. Or maybe Strayed just brings out those qualities in people. She surely comes across as a warm, open, easy-going person.

This is not to say that the people Strayed met were universally good. Two bowhunters stand out as particularly offensive and potentially dangerous. That Strayed was able to avoid being brutalized by them is further testament to the quickness of her insight and the strength of her personality.

Few have Strayed's courage to live their own truth and to tell that truth without wavering. She is remarkable as a person and as a writer. If you are willing to travel with a damaged woman who puts herself in harms way and tells about it with raw honesty, who looks at herself without blinking, and who emerges from her daunting journey with greater insight and wisdom, you want to read Wild. Read more ›

145 of 158 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Story Great, Oprah Edition Awful June 3, 2012

By Krista Chesal

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

If I had known that every few pages I would have to see passages underlined by Oprah I would not have bought this edition. Not only does it bump me out of the narrative, but it deprives me of experiencing the book on my own; instead forcing me to think Oprah's underlines are the important parts. It makes what could otherwise be a beautiful story feel like a cheap used textbook. I should at least be able to hide the obnoxious underlining and get to experience the story on my own.

I love the story, and I love Oprah, but I hate having her perspective forced on me as I read. I'll never buy an Oprah digital book again.

162 of 183 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A walk in the wild... to save her life and her soul... December 23, 2011

By Wulfstan TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Cheryl Strayed had her life fall apart when she was still in her mid 20's- personal disasters, tragedies, poor life decisions. Her Mother had just died painfully from cancer, she was dabbling in drugs, she divorced her husband, no decent job, no money- and even more bad things.

She then made a courageous and unusual decision- to solo through hike the Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mojave desert to the Washington border (in this case about 1100 miles, as she didn't hike through Washington, and parts of the trail were snowed under and considered impassable). This is a grueling trip that makes even hardened trail fanatics think twice, but the author set off on her trip with a minimum of experience.

Now, being a hiker of some experience (but never having attempted a through hike of the PCT), I was reading this book more about her hiking experiences and misadventures. Interspersed with her trail story are many back-flashes to her personal history, including mostly the tragedies and poor life decisions. I am sure these will be of primary interest to others.

It would seem madness to set off on a hike like this with your life in complete shambles. But, if you have ever gone deep into the wilderness on a solo hike, you can see the method in her madness. Once you get a few days into your trip, it is a HUGE life-changing experience. You will never look at Life the same way again. You are Alone- but also feel a part of nature, so you don't feel lonely. Your "huge personal problems" drop away, while you grapple with immediate issues such as blisters, drinking water, hunger and rattlesnakes. Those suffering from sleep problems find those go away like magic about two nights in....

Now, yes, this is a "personal journey" "soul changing" " heal-myself memoirs" book, and that's the theme. But besides that, it's also a pretty good book to read so that you don't make her mistakes if you decide to set off on a trip like this yourself. Don't worry, you'll make plenty of others, and certainly minor misadventures are what make the trip interesting.

I don't know if you need 1000 miles to change your life. But a week or two may well do it.

Fascinating, a real-page turner. Read more ›

367 of 434 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing and at times utterly ridiculous. I had no idea that the adventure I'd get would include a sexcapade in the forest. July 5, 2012

By Ti

Format:Hardcover

This is not one of those times where the hype ruined it for me because I picked it up before Oprah selected it for her book club and I went into it with a completely open mind. BUT...it was a complete fail for me.

After losing her mother to cancer and divorcing what seemed like the most supportive husband ever, Strayed decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. The idea comes to her after seeing a book on the subject and since she doesn't seem to have anything else going for her, why not? She is essentially homeless as she can't figure out where she wants to settle down and without a job to tie her down, the decision is easy. She's in her mid-twenties and healthy, it can't possibly be that hard, right?

It's not unheard of for a non-hiker to hike a trail like this one. Lots of people find closure and peace of mind on the trail. Stripping yourself down to the bare essentials, pain and hunger all have their place in clearing away the cobwebs so Strayed's decision to hike the trail, was not that unusual. However, I expected her story to be about her coming to terms with her mother's death. After all, that is why she set out for the trail in the first place. Instead, what I got is a silly book about a woman who is just a little too full of herself.

Here are just a few reasons why this book falls into the ridiculous category:

The contents of her pack included an entire package of condoms. Really?

Her decision to hike alone. Really not safe and in fact, stupid.

Her care packages to herself included sexy lingerie for her potential hook-ups with strange men. Okay, she said it was for her to feel good but when you pack an entire box of condoms you've got to to wonder.

The possibility of sex on the trail is of great concern to her.... Not her shredded feet or the lack of boots that fit.

The actual sex that takes place and her getting a kick out of being able to attract smelly men on the trail. Ick.

Ahem, the drug use. She was a hard-core heroin user before the trip and if my memory is correct, manages to find drugs at least once while taking a break from the trail.

Clearly, there was not enough hiking and true self discovery for me to take this book seriously. It veered off into numerous directions and although I felt for her at the beginning of her story, I had lost all respect for her by the end of the book. The writing is choppy and I didn't care for her self-absorbed nature. Every thought seemed to turn towards sex or the possibility of sex or had something to do with her looks. I got tired of it. You are hiking and haven't showered in days. How can you be concerned with your looks? Seems like more important things should have been a concern.

I can't recommend this one. It's not what it's described to be. I don't feel that she really got the closure she needed and it angers me to see it flying off the shelves just because Oprah picked it for her club.

Trust me, it's not all that. Read more ›