Book Review: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first few chapters of this book I didn't think I was going to be able to finish. Seriously, heroin. Really? I have known people addicted to heroin and I am sure that it is something that people wanting to self-destruct do, but this seemed the most far reaching of ideas.

I digress, her mom dies, she sleeps around - a lot, she divorces -see the sleeping around, she meets a guy who hooks her up with heroin - again I'm a bit incredulous, she shoots her mom's horse and sometime in there she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.

Now, that is why I picked up the darn book in the first place.

Hiking the PCT is something I have always imagined myself doing. It is in my far off fantasy life. It is what I want to do when I have 3 extra months - and money to cover them. It is a dream.

So, reading a first hand, albeit 20 year break, look at what it takes a solo woman hiker to do the trail is what drew me in and kept me reading. Her memory, journals and letters to past PCT hikers brings the entire experience alive. It is fresh, it is grueling, and it is a rock this world for women adventure. Great fun to live vicariously through Cheryl... despite the heroin thing.

She is just about my age, I think, and walked it in her early 20's - when the trail was fairly new - and I am so glad that she took the time to share her adventure. She is triumphant and we get to experience a little of that with her.

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