The Rainforest Trail

How is one supposed to view the world, if everything that they have counted on and loved was stripped away from them? The narrator of strayed is no stranger to loss. The ones she has loved and counted on most have left her side either by tragedy or by choice. The narrator’s inconsistent upbringing forces her to view the world and people close to her to be temporary, however a quest along the pacific crest trail will lead her to the self-reckoning she has always longed for, to view the world from an entirely new perspective. Throughout the life of the narrator, inconsistency has been a far too common theme. “My father left my life when I was six, my mother died when I was twenty-two. My stepfather morphed from the person I considered my dad, into a man I occasionally recognized. My two siblings scattered in their …show more content…
“But a woman who walks alone in the woods for eleven-hundred miles? I had nothing to lose by giving it a whirl. I’d made the arguably unreasonable decision to take a long walk on the PCT to save myself” (Strayed 5). This piece of the prologue shows the reader the importance of the trail. The narrator must go through the hardships of the trail to dig deep down within herself, to discover who she really is. The Pacific Crest Trail also represents a symbol of walking away from her past and conquering the demons that haunted her throughout her life, hardships in which she overcame. Each problem Cheryl Strayed faces, she takes head on. Regardless of the barrier she must break, the narrator rises above, by herself and for herself. This is shown in the text. “I’d trekked across deserts and snow, past trees and bushes, walked up and down mountains and over fields and stretches of land I couldn’t possibly define, except to say I had been there, made it through.”(Strayed