Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There is a vast amount of trail literature, a type of writing that is uniquely American. I am not aware of any other book in this genre, however, that has received the public acclaim accorded to Wild, Cheryl Strayed's recent memoir of her life on and before her hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. Wild is one of the top selling books of the year and will become a classic of trail literature in the future. But why is Wild so successful? It helps, of course, that Strayed is already a critically acclaimed author. A grant from the Oregon Arts commission to write the book certainly improved the text. Unlike many trail memoirs, this is a polished affair and clearly not composed as an afterthought to the day's work. But the main reason this book is so successful is the story of redemption it tells. Strayed's life fell apart when her mother died while she was in her early 20s. Unable to deal with the grief, she first cheated on then divorced her husband (I was unable to stop feeling bad for Paul throughout the book), took heroin, and went through some gut wrenching events while slowly trying to self destruct. But when she began to hike, her life began to change. She forced all her material concerns out of her life, helped in part by two overaged boy scouts who removed many items from her pack, and focused on the immediate activities that allowed her to survive in harsh conditions. And conditions were tough in 1995. My wife and I began hiking the trail together that same year and like Strayed, we made the decision to avoid certain sections. But Strayed perserved and by the end of the trail was a changed, more confident person. She went on to start writing, got married and had children. People like redemption stories, and this book will remain popular for a long time to come because of how well this one is told. But I worry that this book's very popularity will prevent people from seeing the bigger picture. As one prominent long distance hiker noted to me, most hikers are not messed up when they begin a trail, nor fully healed when they end. But hiking itself, especially for long distances, does profoundly shift one's perspective on life. Almost everyone who writes about the experience feels the need to say how they are changed by the trail experience, and yet in almost every case, including this one, words do not seem adequate to describe what has happened. Strayed herself has changed, but after 250 pages of reflection on how miserable her life was before the trail, a few pages on how nice forgiveness (of oneself) and settling down in life after the trail seem almost like magic. Strayed has substituted listing the differences in her pre and post trail life for explaining them. But it is not magic. Trail life is a form of modern mystical discipline. Hikers do not have words to adequately express how their lives are transformed because our society, with its focus on material wealth and abundance, lacks the language necessary to convey the experience. Nevertheless, mysticism is a common, albeit minority experience in the human condition. It changes perspective and leads to balance and peace. Strayed's book details how dramatic the change was to her life, but truly, this sort of experience is available to anyone. You don't need to divorce your husband, shoot heroin, or try to self destruct first. All you need to do is lace up your boots and go.