While reading Wild, From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, written by Cheryl Strayed, I had that wonderful feeling of being in a different place. I enjoyed the "experience" of hiking the PCT! At one point in the book Strayed comments that she met someone who she liked very much but with whom she felt she would not have been friends had they met off the trail due to differences in world view. This was my experience with the author. I enjoyed the book and could relate to the hiking, the fears, and the pain. Even emotionally I felt I connected with the loss of her mother, with the bad father ghost, and with the lack of money, I never connected with her choices, even down to the decision to hike onto the PCT without reading the guide book all the way through, without talking to anyone who had ever hiked it, without figuring out if she could lift her overstocked, bulging backpack she eventually named "Monster". As a runner I would never have set off in a new pair of boots that I had not hiked in for a trek across the mountain ridges that stretch from Mexico to Canada.. She had hiked some in the past --how did she not know this?? The resulting blisters and excruciating pain that she writes about throughout much of the book could have been so easily avoided. Of course, I have to take precautions such as reading the guidebook, learning from others experience, testing my backpack and boots because there is no way I could have continued had my feet been in her condition and I know that I could not have hoisted and propelled Monster from one end of the trail to the other one step at a time no matter how much I wanted to.
There is one passage in the book that outraged me and it had to do with her dead mother's horse. I cannot even begin to describe the idiocy. I was once young and stupid but never in this horrendous way. There are consequences to just flying by the seat of your pants, to taking on responsibilities, luxuries and especially animals that you cannot afford to maintain or care for. I cried and felt betrayed by the author and it wasn't the first time. I wanted her to be a better person.
Strayed's trek along the trail was supposed to be a revelatory journey of self-discovery and for her I believe it was. I did not relate to many of the lessons she learned because I wasn't sure that she ever really saw what was right in front of her. I believe her Creator displayed before her His great beauty, His awesome power, and His gentle mercy and she never saw it.
Isaiah 6:3
New International Version (NIV)
3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy , holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
AND:
Psalm 19[a]
For the director of music. A psalm of David.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
3 They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
4 Yet their voice[b] goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
The kindnesses she experience along the way she attributed to her gender and despite her grubbiness, her attractiveness. Fellow hikers called her Queen of the Trail. Her ability to push through the pain and to tough out all the bad times allowed her to "forgive" herself. It is a pitfall for those who have special abilities whether they relate to physical endurance, intelligence, charisma. If you feel you can be successful on your own, there is a danger you will believe you have no need for God and no need for His forgiveness.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the experience of the book, while cringing at some of the language and moral disasters.
Interestingly, the author chose her last name - 'Strayed'.
Proverbs 4:26-27 says:
26 Give careful thought to the paths for your feet
and be steadfast in all your ways.
27 Do not turn to the right or the left;
keep your foot from evil.
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