Cheryl Strayed - Wild

“What have you heard about the snow levels up north of here?” I asked the woman who worked the cash register. I could tell that she was the boss by the way her eyes followed the waitress as she moved about the room with a coffeepot in hand. I’d never met this woman, but I’d worked for her a thousand times. It occurred to me that I could ask her for a job for the summer and quit the PCT.

“It’s socked in pretty much everywhere above here,” she replied. “All the thru-hikers have come down off the trail this year. They’re all walking along the Gold Lake Highway instead.”

“The Gold Lake Highway?” I asked, bewildered. “Was there a man here in the past few days? His name is Greg. He’s fortyish? With brown hair and a beard.”

She shook her head, but the waitress chimed that she’d talked to a PCT hiker who met that description, though she didn’t know his name.

“You can take a seat, if you’d like to eat,” the woman said.

A menu sat on the counter and I picked it up just to see. “Do you have anything that costs sixty cents or less?” I asked her in a jesting tone, so quiet my voice barely rose above the din.

“Seventy-five cents will get you a cup of coffee. Free refills,” she replied.

“I’ve got lunch in my pack, actually,” I said, and walked toward the door, past pushed-aside plates that were piled with perfectly edible scraps of food that no one but me and the bears and raccoons would have been willing to eat. I continued out to the porch and sat beside Monster. I pulled my sixty cents from my pocket and stared at the silver coins in my palm as if they would multiply if I stared at them hard enough. I thought of the box waiting for me in Belden Town with the twenty-dollar bill inside. I was starving and it was true I had lunch in my pack, but I was too disheartened to eat it. I paged through my guidebook instead, trying yet again to hatch a new plan.

“I overheard you inside talking about the Pacific Crest Trail,” a woman said. She was middle-aged and slim, her frosted blonde hair cut in a stylish bob. In each ear she wore a single diamond stud.

“I’m hiking it for a few months,” I said.

“I think that’s so neat.” She smiled. “I always wondered about the people who do that. I know the trail is up there,” she said, waving her hand westward, “but I’ve never been on it.” She came closer and for a moment I thought she’d try to give me a hug, but she only patted my arm. “You’re not alone, are you?” When I nodded, she laughed and put a hand to her chest. “And what on earth does your mother have to say about that?”

“She’s dead,” I said, too discouraged and hungry to soften it with a note of apology, the way I usually did.

“My goodness. That’s terrible.” Her sunglasses sat against her chest, dangling from a string of glittery pastel beads. She reached for them and put them on. Her name was Christine, she told me, and she and her husband and their two teenaged daughters were staying in a cabin nearby. “Would you like to come back there with me and take a shower?” she asked.

Christine’s husband, Jeff, made me a sandwich while I showered. When I emerged from the bathroom, it was sitting on a plate, sliced diagonally and rimmed by blue corn tortilla chips and a pickle.

“If you’d like to add more meat to it, feel free,” Jeff said, pushing a platter of cold cuts toward me from his seat across the table. He was handsome and chubby, his dark hair wavy and gray at the temples. An attorney, Christine had told me during the short walk from the restaurant to their cabin. They lived in San Francisco, but they spent the first week of July here each year.

“Maybe just a few more slices, thanks,” I said, reaching for the turkey with fake nonchalance.

“It’s organic, in case that matters to you,” said Christine. “And humanely raised. We’ve gone in that direction as much as we possibly can. You forgot the cheese,” she scolded Jeff, and went to the refrigerator to retrieve it. “Would you like some dill Havarti on your sandwich, Cheryl?”

“I’m fine. Thanks,” I said to be polite, but she sliced some anyway and brought it to me, and I ate it so fast she went back to the counter and sliced more without saying anything about it. She reached into the chip bag and put another handful on my plate, then cracked open a can of root beer and set it before me. If she’d emptied the contents of the entire refrigerator, I’d have eaten every last thing. “Thank you,” I said every time she placed another item on the table.

Beyond the kitchen, I could see Jeff and Christine’s two daughters through the sliding-glass door. They were sitting on the deck in twin Adirondack chairs, browsing copies of Seventeen and People with their headphones in their ears.

“How old are they?” I asked, nodding in their direction.

“Sixteen and almost eighteen,” said Christine. “They’re going into their sophomore and senior years.”

They sensed us looking at them and glanced up. I waved, and they waved shyly back at me before returning to their magazines.

“I’d love it if they did something like you’re doing. If they could be as brave and strong as you,” said Christine. “But maybe not that brave, actually. I think it would scare me to have one of them out there like you are. Aren’t you scared, all by yourself?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “But not as much as you’d think.” My wet hair dripped onto my dirty shirt at the shoulders. I was conscious that my clothes stank, though beneath them I felt cleaner than I’d ever been. The shower had been an almost holy experience after days of sweating in the cold beneath my clothes, the hot water and soap scorching me clean. I noticed a few books scattered on the far end of the table — Norman Rush’s Mating, A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, and The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx. They were books I’d read and loved, their covers like familiar faces to me, the mere sight of them making me feel as if I was somewhere like home. Perhaps Jeff and Christine would let me stay here with them, I thought nonsensically. I could be like one of their daughters, reading magazines while getting a tan on the deck. If they’d offered, I’d have said yes.

“Do you like to read?” Christine asked. “That’s what we do when we come up here. That’s our idea of relaxation.”

“Reading’s my reward at the end of the day,” I said. “The book I have right now is Flannery O’Connor’s Complete Stories .” I still had the entire book in my pack. I’d not burned it page by page as I went along, mindful that with the snow and the changes in my itinerary I didn’t know how long it’d be before I reached my next resupply box. I’d already read the whole thing and started back in on page one the night before.

“Well, you’re welcome to one of these,” said Jeff, rising to take Mating in his hand. “We’re done with them. Or if that’s not your taste, you could probably take this one,” he said, and disappeared into the bedroom off the kitchen. He returned a moment later with a fat paperback by James Michener that he set near my now-empty plate.

I looked at the book. It was called The Novel , which I’d never heard of or read, though James Michener had been my mother’s favorite author. It wasn’t until I’d gone off to college that I learned there was anything wrong with that. An entertainer for the masses , one of my professors had scoffed after inquiring what books I’d read. Michener, he advised me, was not the kind of writer I should bother with if I truly wanted to be a writer myself. I felt like a fool. All those years as a teen, I’d thought myself sophisticated when I’d been absorbed in Poland and The Drifters, Space and Sayonara . In my first month at college, I quickly learned that I knew nothing about who was important and who was not.