Wild

I picked up and put down Cheryl Strayed's best seller Wild (#252) several times before I could actually bring myself to read it, but the deadline for my book club was bearing down, so I finally bit the bullet.  The first night as I was reading it in bed, my husband asked me how the book was, and I described the first twenty five or so pages I'd read so far.  "Wow," he said, "that sure doesn't sound like something you'd normally read."  And that's true, I wouldn't normally have read this book, but I must say one thing: Cheryl Strayed sure can write!  As impatient as I found myself with her, her life choices, her values and her lack of judgment, she is a compelling writer.  I just had to keep going to find out what happened next.

In case you've been living under a literary rock somewhere, Wild is the story of the author's decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail (or PCT) following the death of her mother and her subsequent divorce from her husband (which I still don't get!) from Mojave, California, hundreds of miles miles north to the Bridge of the Gods in Oregon, which crosses over the Columbia River to Washington state.  She chooses to do this alone, wearing a backpack that is so heavy and unwieldy, that when she finally packs it with everything she's brought with her in her tiny motel room in Mojave, she can't even stand up properly.  Her total experience with hiking?  Zero.  Along the way she encounters and overcomes numerous obstacles,  many of her own making, but she gains what she was seeking on this trek: the time and solitude to grieve her mother's death, sort out her emotions, and come out at the end having found herself in the wilderness.

Imagine my astonishment when Cheryl's journey ends at a place she'd heard about on the trail grapevine - the East Wind Drive-In in Cascade Locks, Oregon.  Just by chance in September of 2012, my husband and I found ourselves ordering delectable cheeseburgers at the East Wind, and devoured them sitting on the white picnic tables beside the restaurant overlooking the Columbia River, and marveling that an adult, much less a child, could possible finish one of the enormous ice cream cones.  We saw backpackers there, and bought lunch for someone who was in the same financial straits that Cheryl found herself in more than once on her journey.  Another surprising connection for me was the Duluth hospital where Cheryl's mother died   Happily, my experience when I was working on a project there was much more positive, and I have fond memories of the staff barbecue I was invited to attend there.

Although in the end, Wild was not exactly my cup of tea, it was still an engrossing read, with a strong element of redemption.  Worth taking the time to travel with Cheryl Strayed on her journey.