Cheryl Strayed - Wild

Has there ever been a serial killer who imagined whirled peas?

“Hey there,” I called amiably. I was holding the world’s loudest whistle, my hand having traveled to it unconsciously over the top of Monster and around to the nylon cord that dangled from my backpack’s frame. I hadn’t used the whistle since I’d seen that first bear on the trail, but ever since then, I had a constant and visceral awareness of where it was in relation to me, as if it weren’t only attached to my backpack by a cord, but another, invisible cord attached it to me.

“Good morning,” the man said, and held his hand out to shake mine, his brown hair flopping over his eyes. He told me his name was Jimmy Carter, no relation, and that he couldn’t give me a ride because there was no room in his car. I looked and saw it was true. Every inch except the driver’s seat was crammed with newspapers, books, clothes, soda cans, and a jumble of other things that came up all the way to the windows. He wondered, instead, if he could talk to me. He said he was a reporter for a publication called the Hobo Times . He drove around the country interviewing “folks” who lived the hobo life.

“I’m not a hobo,” I said, amused. “I’m a long-distance hiker.” I let go of the whistle and extended my arm toward the road, jabbing my upright thumb at a passing van. “I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” I explained, glancing at him, wishing he’d get in his car and drive away. I needed to catch two rides on two different highways to get to Old Station and he wasn’t helping the cause. I was filthy and my clothes were even filthier, but I was still a woman alone. Jimmy Carter’s presence complicated things, altered the picture from the vantage point of the drivers passing by. I remembered how long I’d had to stand by the side of the road when I’d been trying to get to Sierra City with Greg. With Jimmy Carter beside me, no one was going to stop.

“So how long have you been out on the road?” he asked, pulling a pen and a long, narrow reporter’s notebook from the back pocket of his thin corduroy pants. His hair was shaggy and unwashed. His bangs concealed then revealed his dark eyes, depending on how the wind blew. He struck me as someone who had a PhD in something airy and indescribable. The history of consciousness, perhaps, or comparative studies in discourse and society.

“I told you. I’m not on the road,” I said, and laughed. Eager as I was to get a ride, I couldn’t help but feel a little delighted by Jimmy Carter’s company. “I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail,” I repeated, gesturing by way of elaboration to the woods that edged up near the road, though in fact the PCT was about nine miles west of where we stood.

He stared at me blankly, uncomprehending. It was midmorning and hot already, the kind of day that would be scorching by noon. I wondered if he could smell me. I was past the point where I could smell myself. I took a step back and dropped my hitchhiking arm in surrender. When it came to getting a ride, until he left I was screwed.

“It’s a National Scenic Trail,” I offered, but he only continued looking at me with a patient expression on his face, his unmarked notebook in his hand. As I explained to him what the PCT was and what I was doing on it, I saw that Jimmy Carter wasn’t bad-looking. I wondered if he had any food in his car.

“So if you’re hiking a wilderness trail, what are you doing here ?” he asked.

I told him about bypassing the deep snow in Lassen Volcanic National Park.

“How long have you been out on the road?”

“I’ve been on the trail about a month,” I said, and watched as he wrote this down. It occurred to me that maybe I was perhaps a tiny bit of a hobo, given all the time I’d spent hitchhiking and bypassing, but I didn’t think it wise to mention that.

“How many nights have you slept with a roof over your head in that month?” he asked.

“Three times,” I answered, after thinking about it — one night at Frank and Annette’s and one night each at the motels in Ridgecrest and Sierra City.

“Is this all you have?” he asked, nodding to my backpack and ski pole.

“Yeah. I mean, I have some things in storage too, but for now this is it.” I put my hand on Monster. It felt like a friend always, but even more so in the company of Jimmy Carter.

“Well then, I’d say you’re a hobo!” he said happily, and asked me to spell my first and last names.

I did and then wished I hadn’t.

“No fucking way!” he exclaimed when he had it all down on the page. “Is that really your name?”

“Yeah,” I said, and turned away, as if searching for a car, so he wouldn’t read the hesitation on my face. It was eerily silent until a logging truck came around the bend and roared by, oblivious to my imploring thumb.

“So,” Jimmy Carter said after the truck passed, “we could say you’re an actual stray.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I stammered. “Being a hobo and being a hiker are two entirely different things.” I looped my wrist into the pink strap of my ski pole and scraped the dirt with the tip, making a line that went nowhere. “I’m not a hiker in the way you might think of a hiker,” I explained. “I’m more like an expert hiker. I hike fifteen to twenty miles a day, day after day, up and down mountains, far away from roads or people or anything, often going days without seeing another person. Maybe you should do a story on that instead.”

He glanced up at me from his notebook, his hair blowing extravagantly across his pale face. He seemed like so many people I knew. I wondered if I seemed that way to him.

“I hardly ever meet hobo women,” he half whispered, as if confiding a secret, “so this is fucking cool.”

“I’m not a hobo!” I insisted more vehemently this time.

“Hobo women are hard to find,” he persisted.

I told him that this was because women were too oppressed to be hobos. That most likely all the women who wanted to be hobos were holed up in some house with a gaggle of children to raise. Children who’d been fathered by hobo men who’d hit the road.

“Oh, I see,” he said. “You’re a feminist, then.”

“Yes,” I said. It felt good to agree on something.

“My favorite,” he said, and wrote in his notebook without saying his favorite what .

“But none of this matters!” I exclaimed. “Because I myself am not a hobo. This is totally legit, you know. What I’m doing. I’m not the only one hiking the PCT. People do this . Have you ever heard of the Appalachian Trail? It’s like that. Only out west.” I stood watching him write what seemed like more words than I’d spoken.

“I’d like to get a picture of you,” Jimmy Carter said. He reached into his car and pulled out a camera. “That’s a cool shirt, by the way. I love Bob Marley. And I like your bracelet too. A lot of hobos are Nam vets, you know.”

I looked down at William J. Crockett’s name on my wrist.

“Smile,” he said, and snapped a shot. He told me to look for his piece on me in the fall issue of the Hobo Times , as if I were a regular reader. “Articles have been excerpted in Harper’s ,” he added.

“Harper’s?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Yeah, it’s this magazine that—”

“I know what Harper’s is,” I interrupted sharply. “And I don’t want to be in Harper’s . Or rather, I really want to be in Harper’s , but not because I’m a hobo.”

“I thought you weren’t a hobo,” he said, and turned to open the trunk of his car.

“Well, I’m not, so it would be a really bad idea to be in Harper’s , which means you probably shouldn’t even write the article because—”