A summer's read

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

I know it's officially autumn, but this was the best book I read all summer. I just finished it last night and have been reading as quickly as I could turn the pages.

Cheryl Strayed, a 26-year old from Minnesota, got it into her head that she would hike some 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. Alone. All by herself. So what that she had never backpacked in her life, was a novice to the trails and had no money. With disadvantages and inexperience like that you know there will be some adventures along the way. And there were.

There are back stories and subplots to the hike. Cheryl's mother had died some four years earlier, a complicated and intense relationship that needed to be unpacked. Cheryl herself had just gotten a divorce the week she began the hike. Another relationship to deeply consider. And Cheryl had made a series of poor choices with men and drugs, and for what reason? She hardly knew.

So the hike was something of a vision quest, although she never uses that term, and time to think through where she was in life as well as where she was on the PCT.

It turns out that this is actually the author's second book, the first was a novel. To me, she was totally new. While she was finding herself, I'm glad I found her!

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