WILD, by Cheryl Strayed

Títle: Wild
Author: Cheryl Strayed
Country: U.S.A.
Year: 2012


This book abso-freaking-lutely rocks! It's an incredible memoir (i.e. real story) of an incredible woman hiking away Western U.S.A. in an attempt to find the identity she had long lost. The story is told with brutal honesty and nerve-ending detail, describing really intimate feelings and thoughts (and actions) with an easy-going, casual tone. Strayed tells us about her difficult divorce, her terrible grief after her mother's death, her struggle with heroin and other heart-wrenching things with the ease of someone who has sailed through the storm and has come victorious.

Cheryl Strayed on the PCT in southern California, June 1995.

But all these things are only casually mentioned throughout the book, like scattered pieces of a puzzle. They are the background story that led author Cheryl Strayed to that moment in 1995 when she took the impulsive decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, a trail over 1,000 miles long that crosses the length of California, Oregon and Washington states. Her journey started short of the Mexican border, in the town of Mojave. From there, she hiked her way through mountains, forests and deserts to the Bridge of the Gods, the point where the states of Washington and Oregon meet in an astounding landscape above the Columbia River.

And astounding it is! I can assure you that as I've been there myself. That was the reason this book caught my attention and after I read what it was about, I decided I had to read it. I've laughed, mourned and bit my fingers throughout the book, not being able to put it down, feeling I couldn't read fast enough and yet re-reading entire chapters because of the depth of Strayed's words.

It's a book that inspires. People (fellow hikers and others) come in and out of the story, making an impact, leaving a print but not necessarily coming back. It's a story as unexpected and real as life is. It will break your heart and put it back together again, only stronger.

It's a book that inspires. And, like the people Strayed met on the PCT, if you let it, it can even change you.