Cheryl Strayed: "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail"

 

            One of my favorite nonfiction novels is Cheryl Strayed’s memoir, “Wild.” The book details her three month solo journey backpacking on the Pacific Crest Trail. Throughout her journey she confronts painful memories including the death of her mother, absence of her father, divorce, and addiction. I really enjoyed her memoir because she doesn’t sugarcoat her rock bottoms. She analyzes how every low impacted her and how she could move on from them, if possible. This passage really stuck with me because the pain she feels over her mother’s death from cancer and the end of her first real relationship is ground breaking:

“I sat in the darkness beside him, wanting to believe that I was capable of finding the kind of love I had with him again, only without wrecking it the next time around. It felt impossible to me. I thought of my mother. Thought of how in the last days of her life so many horrible things had happened. Small, horrible things. My mother’s whimsical, delirious babblings. The blood pooling to blacken the backs of her bedridden arms. The way she begged for something that wasn’t even mercy. For whatever it is that is less than mercy; for what we don’t even have a word for. Those were the worst days, I believed at the time, and yet the moment she died I’d have given anything to have them back. One small, horrible, glorious day after the other. Maybe it would be that way with Paul as well, I thought, sitting beside him on the night we decided to divorce. Maybe once they were over, I’d want these horrible days back too.”