Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

by Cheryl Strayed

☕︎☕︎

“I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back."

Here's my honest take: I wish this book was more about the world around Cheryl Strayed’s turmoil inside. The Pacific Crest Trail deserves to be the star, the landscape, the silence, the strange ecosystem of long-distance hikers, the way wilderness has a way of recalibrating you whether you ask it to or not. I

Instead, the trail often feels like a backdrop for a memoir that is, at its heart, deeply egocentric. Strayed's inner life takes up most of the oxygen, and by the midpoint I found myself wanting her to just... look up.

Strayed walks over a thousand miles of the PCT grieving her mother, escaping a marriage, and trying to find something she can't quite name. But it felt more “woe as me,’ and inside I wanted to scream at her to go touch grass.

Two cups: beautifully written, important to many readers, and genuinely not for me. If you want a trail book that meditates on the world rather than the self, I have better recommendations. Keep scrolling.