Cheryl Strayed - Wild

A deep bow to my children, Carver and Bobbi Lindstrom, who endured with grace and good humor all those times I had to go off alone to write. They never let me forget that life and love matter most.

Thanks also to my stellar writers’ group: Chelsea Cain, Monica Drake, Diana Page Jordan, Erin Leonard, Chuck Palahniuk, Suzy Vitello Soulé, Mary Wysong-Haeri, and Lidia Yuknavitch. I’m indebted to each of you for your wise counsel, honest feedback, and killer pinot noir.

I’m deeply grateful to the friends who have nurtured and loved me. There are too many to name. I can only say you know who you are and I’m so fortunate you’re in my life. There are some people I’d like to thank in particular, however — those who helped me in specific and numerous ways as I wrote this book: Sarah Berry, Ellen Urbani, Margaret Malone, Brian Padian, Laurie Fox, Bridgette Walsh, Chris Lowenstein, Sarah Hart, Garth Stein, Aimee Hurt, Tyler Roadie, and Hope Edelman. I’m humbled by your friendship and kindness. Thanks also to Arthur Rickydoc Flowers, George Saunders, Mary Caponegro, and Paulette Bates Alden, whose early mentorship and endless goodwill has meant the world to me.

Thank you to Wilderness Press for publishing the guidebooks that were and still are the definitive texts for those hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Without the guidebooks’ authors Jeffrey P. Schaffer, Ben Schifrin, Thomas Winnett, Ruby Jenkins, and Andy Selters, I’d have been utterly lost.

Most of the people I met on the PCT passed only briefly through my life, but I was enriched by each of them. They made me laugh, they made me think, they made me go on another day, and most of all, they made me trust entirely in the kindness of strangers. I am particularly indebted to my fellow 1995 PCT alumni CJ McClellan, Rick Topinka, Catherine Guthrie, and Joshua O’Brien, who responded to my inquiries with thoughtful care.

Lastly, I would like to remember my friend Doug Wisor, whom I wrote about in this book. He died on October 16, 2004, at the age of thirty-one. He was a good man who crossed the river too soon.

Miigwech .

The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California , Jeffrey P. Schaffer,

Thomas Winnett, Ben Schifrin, and Ruby Jenkins. Fourth edition,

Wilderness Press, January 1989.

Staying Found: The Complete Map and Compass Handbook , June Fleming.

* The Dream of a Common Language , Adrienne Rich.

As I Lay Dying , William Faulkner.

** The Complete Stories , Flannery O’Connor.

The Novel , James Michener.

A Summer Bird-Cage , Margaret Drabble.

Lolita , Vladimir Nabokov.

Dubliners , James Joyce.

Waiting for the Barbarians , J. M. Coetzee.

The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 2: Oregon and Washington , Jeffrey P. Schaffer and Andy Selters. Fifth edition, Wilderness Press, May 1992.

The Best American Essays 1991 , edited by Robert Atwan and

Joyce Carol Oates.

The Ten Thousand Things , Maria Dermoût.

*Not burned. Carried all the way.

**Not burned. Traded for The Novel .

ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Wild , Cheryl Strayed’s powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe — and built her back up again.

ABOUT THE BOOK

“Cheryl Strayed reminds us, in her lyrical and courageous memoir Wild , of what it means to be fully alive, even in the face of catastrophe, physical and psychic hardship, and loss.” —Mira Bartók, author of The Memory Palace

“Stunning … An incredible journey, both inward and outward.” —Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain

At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State — and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. “The Pacific Crest Trail wasn’t a world to me then. It was an idea, vague and outlandish, full of promise and mystery. Something bloomed inside me as I traced its jagged line with my finger on a map” (this page). Why did the PCT capture Strayed’s imagination at that point in her life?

2. Each section of the book opens with a literary quote or two. What do they tell you about what’s to come in the pages that follow? How does Strayed’s pairing of, say, Adrienne Rich and Joni Mitchell (this page) provide insight into her way of thinking?

3. Strayed is quite forthright in her description of her own transgressions, and while she’s remorseful, she never seems ashamed. Is this a sign of strength or a character flaw?

4. “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told” (this page). Fear is a major theme in the book. Do you think Strayed was too afraid, or not afraid enough? When were you most afraid for her?

5. Strayed chose her own last name: “Nothing fit until one day when the word strayed came into my mind. Immediately, I looked it up in the dictionary and knew it was mine …: to wander from the proper path, to deviate from the direct course, to be lost, to become wild, to be without a mother or father, to be without a home, to move about aimlessly in search of something, to diverge or digress ” (this page). Did she choose well? What did you think when you learned she had assigned this word to herself — that it was no coincidence?

6. On the trail, Strayed encounters mostly men. How does this work in her favor? What role does gender play when removed from the usual structure of society?

7. What does the reader learn from the horrific episode in which Strayed and her brother put down their mother’s horse?

8. Strayed writes that the point of the PCT “had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets” (this page). How does this sensation help Strayed to find her way back into the world beyond the wilderness?

9. On her journey, Strayed carries several totems. What does the black feather mean to her? And the POW bracelet? Why does she find its loss (this page) symbolic?

10. Does the hike help Strayed to get over Paul? If so, how? And if not, why?

11. Strayed says her mother’s death “had obliterated me.… I was trapped by her but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could fill” (this page). How did being on the PCT on her mother’s fiftieth birthday help Strayed to heal this wound?