The Journey Of Wild By Cheryl Strayed

Wild, this book in itself, was a journey for me; at first not appreciating the book nor the story it held, but after reading it I saw why it is highly talked about. Not only was the story interesting, but it was the way Cheryl Strayed wrote it that made it come to life. Wild does not just tell a journey, but makes you feel as if you are on the journey yourself. Strayed wrote Wild from her life story, but almost each sentence had some kind of parallel meaning to it. The main theme I thought that was an important one was how Cheryl carried a burden with her throughout her life and used the PCT to overcome it. At the beginning of Wild, Strayed writes about her mothers death and how it obliterates her. Throughout her hike of the Pacific Crest …show more content…
Each individual helped “lighten” her burden either mentally or physically. One particular character was at her first stop Kennedy Meadows, there she met Albert. He helped her realize that some things she packed were unnecessary or even ridiculous to have with her. When Albert, who she looked at in a fatherly way, pulled out a fat roll of condoms Cheryl was embarrassed and forced herself to put them in the “leave pile”. She realized she was the ridiculous one for that and it made her understand that she needed to not pursue a life of engaging sexually with men she barely knew. Albert helped lighten her pack and without any words helped her better herself. Cheryl also met a hiker named Greg who believed in her and told her she could keep going even when he couldn’t. The PCT hikers, her friends, made her feel like she could not quit, as if they depended on her. This helped her lessen her burden by making her keep going and on the way bettering herself. Cheryl even states at one point that hiking the PCT was the most challenging thing she had ever done. Before the trail she thought her mother dying, her self destruction, her divorce, everything, was the hardest thing she’d done, but now she knew. Being hard in different ways, the trail and her burdens were one, she now felt a since of settlement, like the beginning of the trail was the end of her sorrows (Strayed …show more content…
This is just what she needed, a distraction. She got it. The aches and pains she developed in her body and the blisters, cuts, and bruises she endured, all while her muscles grew stronger and her mind more blank. The PCT broke her down, but also built her up. Her burden on the trail was now only survival. She still grieved her mother’s death and her divorce, but never did she want to go back to the life she had—or destroyed. She was at peace. This hike was a realization for her. Once stuck in a life of darkness and repetitive mishaps on her part, she was clear headed, new,—reborn. “This was once a mountain that stood nearly 12,000 feet tall and then had its heart removed. This was once a wasteland of lava and pumice and ash. This was once an empty bowl that took hundreds of years to fill. But hard as I tried, I couldn 't see them in my mind’s eye….There was only the stillness and silence of that water: what a mountain and wasteland and empty bowl turned into after the healing began” (Strayed 273). Strayed writes these lines in her book and to me she is not only talking about the mountain, but herself. In this she states the mountain got its “heart” ripped out, in parallel so did she. Her mother was like her center, and suddenly taken away from her by death. The wasteland of the mountain after it got its heart removed turned into lava and ash. Cheryl did the same after her mother died, she self destructed just