Yay, it's officially spring! Yes, I know I live in Canada, which means it's probably going to keep snowing off and on for a while yet, but I don't care. In my mind, there are butterflies and flowers.
In my mind, there are hikes.
Last year, on the first day of spring, I posted a list of "Seven Seasonal Reads for Spring". You can find that list here.
I thought, in honour of the season, I'd compose a full review of one of the books from that list.
Reviews have been mixed, but many have read it. I figured it was about time I add my own voice to the mix.
If you don't know the premise, this memoir chronicles Cheryl Strayed's independent hike of more than one thousand miles of the Pacific Coast Trail. Four years previous, her life seemingly fell apart after the death of her mother.
“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
I read this book one spring, one of those glorious sun-finally-came-out days when the air is still quite cold, but the heat of the sun goes right through all that into you. I actually read it in my hot tub, and believe me, the contrast between Strayed's experiences on the PCT and mine while reading about her on the PCT, were not lost on me.
Some people really don't like this book. The biggest complaint is about Strayed herself. She is woefully unprepared for her hike, and everything just keeps working out for her. That's rather frustrating, sure.
Unprepared she is. Shockingly, so, in fact. She is unrealistic, and naive, and totally vulnerable.
And yet...
Yet she's fine.
Yet she finds strength, and makes it through, and does what she set out to do:
Heal.
“I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back. And, most surprising of all, that I could carry it.”
She doesn't hike all of the PCT. If you're after a book about a woman hiking the whole thing, this isn't it. If you're looking for a "how to" hike memoir, this isn't it.
It IS, however, a book about one woman's struggle through self-destructive behaviour, and the way in which she undertook an impulsive, intense, life-changing, probably not super smart but still rather impressive, endeavour.
She has some kick-ass, Amazonian moments, and I'd love it more if she was more sympathetic, or somehow more admirable, or if she learned things. But she is terribly flawed and, well, human.
Maybe that's what bothered so many people. We want to cheer for her. And we do, sometimes. We also roll our eyes.
We also want there to be something about her, something about what she's accomplished - and yes, she HAS accomplished - that makes us feel better about ourselves.
Her decisions are not smart. She isn't terribly fit, at least at first (though hiking that far can change that pretty quickly!). If she can do all that and end up fine, what is my excuse for not daring something, even on a much smaller scale?
If something bad had happened, we'd all feel justified in our safe existence. If she'd become somehow superhuman, we'd all feel justified in not trying. "Can't do that; don't want that to happen." Or, "Can't do that; not that strong/smart/prepared."
Sure, she's lucky. But she still dared.
And, while I have no desire to hike that far, or really very far at all, there is something admirable about that daring, that trying, that wanting to do something and then just doing it. That idea of, "She believed she could, so she did."
She did believe. And she did find strength. And she did let go, and she did heal. That's what this book is about. And yes, there are also some great descriptions of the trails and nature, something raw.
I'm not saying it's a perfect book, or even a great book, but it does what it sets out to do, and I do know that I've remembered it long after I've read it, and that's saying something.
“How wild it was, to let it be.”
Have you read this book? What about seeing the movie? What did you think? I'd love to read your comments below, or via my contact page, here.
What is a book that makes you think of spring?