Wild

Wild Cheryl Strayed 4/5	Published March 2012 First Sentence "My solo three-month hike on the Pacific Crest Trail had many beginnings. "
Publisher's Description: A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.  Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
Dear Reader, This book has heart. I listened to this as an audiobook and the only downfall of this format was the narrator they selected. She had done a book I had read recently (this past year) that I didn't like. The Author was pretentious and it embedded in my mind with this narrator. I know that is quite unfair to the narrator but unfortunately, this is what happened. I can't say it ruined it for me, because obviously based on my rating... it didn't. Wild is the story of a woman who had the courage and conviction to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. This trail is extremely dangerous and she did it alone. Girl power! Cheryl went through some hard patches in her life that included divorce and her mother passing away. These events brought forth a yearning for her to do something exciting and challenging. I can relate to this COMPLETELY. I went through a divorce as well, and after I struggled to find my own self. I went back to school, changed careers and then decided to leave it all to join up with Nature's Classroom and live life very differently from most people. This was refreshing and ultimately changed my life , in good and bad ways. Doing something like this is possible for everyone and I can only say that everyone should do something unexpected of them once. This is the biggest point the Author touched home with me and I think is an excellent lesson for us all. Getting back to the book, Cheryl not only decided to hike this dangerous trail but doing it alone (as a woman) makes it ten times as dangerous. Throughout the whole book I was on edge, wondering when something really bad was going to happen. Isn't it a little sad that memoirs and biographies have done that to me? I don't know about you but it seems that most books dealing with real life events have to revolve around tragedy in order to be published. This was not the case here and even though I was still on the edge of my seat waiting... it was so refreshing to read a book that was true to the nature of the story, the wild. Cheryl is such a strong woman to have done this, she is quite the role model. The best part about her is that she has faults, and many of them. She is not little Miss perfect, the girl with enough money and time to burn. She comes from a poor background, dropped her low income job (after saving enough money) and planned this trip with nothing left for the end except a few hundred dollars and a semi-plan to move where she ended up. Anybody who says they can't just up and leave to do an impromptu trip will be sorely mistaken after reading this book. There is such a gritty truth to Cheryl's story and now I see why the book got such rave reviews. I highly recommend you read this one. Happy Reading, AmberBug