Wild is a very personal journey on the Pacific Crest Trail,
an 1100 mile journey that deserves congratulations. It is a story of a personal odyssey that is
created by the death of Cheryl’s mother and the dizzying path that Cheryl
careened on as she sought a closure.
It is a tale of Cheryl in which the trail is the background
to a soul searching and not the focus of the book. It is as much about her divorce, her
flirtation with drug addiction, numerous men in her bed, and the need to purge
herself and find a new starting point.
She begins without any preparation and enters the trail as
more than a novice. The cliché – an accident
waiting to happen - comes to mind. And
she makes many mistakes and pays penalties, but never the ultimate loss of limb
or life and for this she is lucky. She
meets only a couple of shady characters – the kind that frightens every hiker
and solo person, not other hikers, but people who she encounters along the
transect that is a trail.
It is a definite woman’s voice and perspective and it is
well written and provocative. It did not
become one of my favorites because I tend to like more interaction with the
land and the land is mentioned, but not really pertinent to the books mission,
but I would still recommend the book and say that is captures the reader and
makes you want to follow the journey to the end – both the trails end and the
psychological one.
No comments:
Post a Comment