Cheryl Strayed: Wild

The four of us lay wedged in across the futon’s expanse as the truck bumped over the dark roads — me, Rick, Josh, and Richie, in that order across the truck’s bed. There wasn’t an inch to spare, just as it had been on the deranged ranger’s couch the night before. The side of Rick’s body was pressed against mine, ever so slightly tilted in my direction and away from Josh. The sky had finally cleared and I could see the almost full moon.

“Look,” I said just to Rick, gesturing toward the window of the camper at the sky. We spoke quietly of the moons we’d seen on the trail and where we’d been when we’d seen them and of the trail ahead.

“You’ll have to give me Lisa’s number so we can hang out in Portland,” he said. “I’ll be living there too after I finish the trail.”

“Absolutely, we’ll hang out,” I said.

“For sure,” he said, and looked at me in this delicate way that made me swoon, though I realized that in spite of the fact that I liked him perhaps a thousand times more than a good number of the people I’d slept with, I wasn’t going to lay a hand on him, no matter how deeply I longed to. Laying a hand on him was as far away as the moon. And it wasn’t just because he was younger than me or because two of his friends were in bed with us, pressed up against his very back. It was because for once it was finally enough for me to simply lie there in a restrained and chaste rapture beside a sweet, strong, sexy, smart, good man who was probably never meant to be anything but my friend. For once I didn’t ache for a companion. For once the phrase a woman with a hole in her heart didn’t thunder into my head. That phrase, it didn’t even live for me anymore.

“I’m really glad I met you,” I said.

“Me too,” said Rick. “Who wouldn’t be glad to meet the Queen of the PCT?”

I smiled at him and turned to gaze out the little window at the moon again, intensely aware of the side of his body so warm against mine as we lay together in an exquisitely conscious silence.

“Very nice,” said Rick after a while. “Very nice,” he repeated, with more emphasis the second time.

“What is?” I asked, turning to him, though I knew.

“Everything,” he said.

And it was true.

The next morning the sky was clear blue, the sun shimmering on Olallie Lake, views of Mount Jefferson framed perfectly to the south and Olallie Butte to the north. I sat on one of the picnic tables near the ranger station, packing Monster for the final stretch of my hike. The Three Young Bucks had left at dawn, in a hurry to reach Canada before the High Cascades of Washington were snowed in, but I wasn’t going that far. I could take my time.

Guy appeared with a box in his hands, sober now, breaking me out of my contemplative trance. “I’m glad I caught you before you left. This just came,” he said.

I took the box from him and glanced at the return address. It was from my friend Gretchen. “Thanks for everything,” I said to Guy as he walked away. “For the drinks the other night and the hospitality.”

“Stay safe out there,” he said, and disappeared around the corner of the building. I ripped open the box and gasped when I saw what was inside: a dozen fancy chocolates in shiny twisted wrappers and a bottle of red wine. I ate some chocolate immediately while pondering the wine. Much as I wanted to open it that night on the trail, I wasn’t willing to lug the empty bottle all the way to Timberline Lodge. I packed up the last of my things, strapped on Monster, picked up the wine and the empty box, and began to walk to the ranger station.

“Cheryl!” a voice boomed, and I turned.

“There you are! There you are! I caught you! I caught you! ” shouted a man as he came at me. I was so startled, I dropped the box on the grass as the man shook his fists in the air and let out a joyous hoot that I recognized but couldn’t place. He was young and bearded and golden, different and yet the same as the last time I’d seen him. “Cheryl!” he yelled again as he practically tackled me into an embrace.

It was as if time moved in slow motion from the moment that I didn’t know who he was to the moment that I did know, but I couldn’t take it into my consciousness until he had me all the way in his arms and I yelled, “DOUG!”

“Doug, Doug, Doug!” I kept saying.

“Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl!” he said to me.

Then we went silent and stepped back and looked at each other.

“You’ve lost weight,” he said.

“So have you,” I said.

“You’re all broken in now,” he said.

“I know! So are you.”

“I have a beard,” he said, tugging on it. “I have so much to tell you.”

“Me too! Where’s Tom?”

“He’s a few miles back. He’ll catch up later.”

“Did you make it through the snow?” I asked.

“We did some, but it got to be too intense and we came down and ended up bypassing.”

I shook my head, still shocked he was standing there. I told him about Greg getting off the trail and asked him about Albert and Matt.

“I haven’t heard anything about them since we saw them last.” He looked at me and smiled, his eyes sparkling to life. “We read your notes in the register all summer long. They motivated us to crank. We wanted to catch up to you.”

“I was just leaving now,” I said. I bent to retrieve the empty box I’d dropped in the excitement. “Another minute and I’d have been gone and who knows if you’d have caught me.”

“I’d have caught you,” he said, and laughed in that golden boy way that I remembered so vividly, though it was altered now too. He was grittier than he’d been before, slightly more shaken, as if he’d aged a few years in the past months. “You want to hang out while I organize my things and we can leave together?”

“Sure,” I said without hesitation. “I’ve got to hike those last days before I get into Cascade Locks alone — you know, just to finish like I started — but let’s hike together to Timberline Lodge.”

“Holy shit, Cheryl.” He pulled me in for another hug. “I can’t believe we’re here together. Hey, you still have that black feather I gave you?” He reached to touch its ragged edge.

“It was my good luck charm,” I said.

“What’s with the wine?” he asked, pointing to the bottle in my hand.

“I’m going to give it to the ranger,” I replied, lifting it high. “I don’t want to carry it all the way to Timberline.”

“Are you insane?” Doug asked. “Give me that bottle.”

We opened it that night at our camp near the Warm Springs River with the corkscrew on my Swiss army knife. The day had warmed into the low seventies, but the evening was cool, the crisp edge of summer turning to autumn everywhere around us. The leaves on the trees had thinned almost undetectably; the tall stalks of wildflowers bent down onto themselves, plumped with rot. Doug and I built a fire as our dinners cooked and then sat eating from our pots and passing the wine back and forth, drinking straight from the bottle since neither of us had a cup. The wine and the fire and being in Doug’s company again after all this time felt like a rite of passage, like a ceremonial marking of the end of my journey.

After a while, we each turned abruptly toward the darkness, hearing the yip of coyotes more near than far.

“That sound always makes my hair stand on end,” Doug said. He took a sip from the bottle and handed it to me. “This wine’s really good.”

“It is,” I agreed, and took a swig. “I heard coyotes a lot this summer,” I said.

“And you weren’t afraid, right? Isn’t that what you told yourself?”