Wild - A Journey From Lost To Found

Howdy people! I have just beaten a bad flu and cold with a severe body pain to boot. Oh the pain...it gives me the shivers even now. I haven’t been able to do anything, leave alone exercise a few gray cells to make simple decisions. I am so glad the flu has flown away...hehehe. I have been gearing up for what was going to be a busy busy week for me with back to back training assignments happening and a content development deadline looming over my head. I had to cancel two of the training programs and have had to pump myself with antibiotics to not miss the rest.

The author on the PCT

Just as the flu took on its full blown avatar I managed to finish Cheryl Strayed’s amazingly written, bare-it-all book “Wild – A Journey From Lost to Found.” I had read the last few pages of the book just as my eyes had started watering (because of the flu, in case you were wondering) and my head started getting hammered from within. To think of leaving such a good book almost at the end because of a nasty flu, especially when the said book deals with the author’s journey of 1100 miles over seriously wicked and tough terrain that traverses mountains, snow, desert and plains all by herself, and with a monster of a bag strapped on. When you are reading a book like that you don’t like to make a big deal of a cough, sneeze and minor aches and pains.

When I had seen this movie which was nominated for an Oscar in 2014, I didn’t quite relate to it. I think it was on the heels of delivering Anakutti and all that jazz that was a permanent in my life at that time – the feedings, the diaper changes, the lullabies and walking about with a fluffy, sweetly scented yet immensely irritable sleepy baby in the arms. The contemplative narrative of the movie was perhaps lost on me. Not so this time. The book is un-putdownable. For a long, long time I am going to remember this book to have made my Metro rides memorable. I love riding the Metro, but the book added value to my journeys. Cheryl is a Virgo like me and we share the same birth dates, so I am extra happy in advocating the book. I could relate to her in many places and in others, the writing is so descriptive that the Pacific Crest trail that she is walking/trekking on comes alive. 

There is never a dull moment in the book and there are no advices thrown in nor any big life’s lessons learnt. It seemed more a documentation of the events that lead to saving herself from herself. What the book achieves in doing is to perhaps take us through the journey of opening herself up to healing, which incidentally happens long after she completes the Pacific Crest Trail. In the trail, she hardly has time to focus on the problems that plagued her or the depression that her mother’s death had brought on. In the trail, she was merely surviving one day after the other and almost mechanically – putting one foot in front of the other.

“Many of the techniques – triangulating and cross bearing and bracketing – had perplexed me even when I’d been holding the book in my hand. I’d never had a mind for math. I simply couldn’t hold the formulas and numbers in my head. It was a logic that made little sense to me. In my perception, the world wasn’t a graph or formula or an equation. It was story. So mostly I relied on the narrative descriptions in my guidebook...” That is so me – the person who looks at life minus the math. I admired people who could make sense of numbers and angles, but I looked for the nuances and the intentions of people and experiences.

I found her deep grief over the loss of her mother very touching and the deep sense of loneliness she feels in spite of having a tender, loving husband is understandable though not easily relatable. Many parts of her reaction to the cruelty dished out by life is quite unimaginable especially when we are sitting in the comfort of our sturdy houses, surrounded by family and close friends who one might hope will be there to support when some calamity fell. The book, however, helped me empathize and appreciate the lengths she goes to correct her life and face the demons that had threaten to derail her. But most importantly, how much she tries to come to terms with her mother’s death.

“...I’d imagined endless meditations upon sunsets or while staring out across pristine mountain lakes. I’d thought I’d weep tears of cathartic sorrow and restorative joy each day of my journey. Instead, i only moaned, and not because my heart ached. It was because my feet did and my back did and so did the still-open wounds all around my hips.”

The writing is crisp, lean (just like the way her muscles feel at the end of the long, hard trek – without an ounce of fat anywhere) and smooth (very unlike the path she traverses – the 1100 miles from Mojave desert to the Oregon-Washington border). But for the fact that the book is laden with such emotional and physical challenges that betrays the novice in her, one might be forced to believe that Cheryl Strayed had efficiently typed out the words of the book every time she crisply packed her oversize backpack after her stop for the day. She is no novice at writing. It is that crisp. Every word looks like it belongs in the sentence and is just so.

I admire every bit of this rugged woman who had the punk to face her shortcomings and after a low phase after her mother’s untimely death, to stand up, dust the dirt of her hands and write the way she does. Great job!

Verdict: This one goes to my library. I am going to buy a copy. 

Oh and a big thanks for P and Nans for lending me the book!