“There’s always a sunrise and always a sunset, and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it,’ said my mother. 'Put yourself in the way of beauty.”
Cheryl Strayed hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 1995 - the stone ages of the internet, as she described. It was also the year O.J. Simpson went on trial.
This book was written 17 years later in 2012 and adapted into a movie starring and produced by Resse Witherspoon. I vaguely remember the movie and used it as a mental reference while reading this book.
Motivations
This is a good read. Cheryl Strayed (aka Queen of the PCT) blends in stories from her prior life as she describes her hike on the PCT. We understand some of what motivated her to commit to weeks on the PCT Trail -
- loss of her mom, who was in her early 40s, to cancer
when my mother asked him for more morphine, she asked for it in a way I had never asked for anything - a mad dog.
- infidelity and divorce
we talked for close to an hour, our conversation loving and exuberant, supporting and kind. It didn’t seem like he was my ex-husband. he seemed like he was my best friend
- Addiction to heroin
In the beginning, it was a few times a week; then, it was every day. First, we smoked it, then we snorted it, but we would never shoot it, we said - absolutely not. Then we shot it.
- pregnancy, and abortion
it was the size of a grain of rice, and yet I could feel it in the deepest strongest part of me - taking me down, shaking me up, reverberating out.
Inspiration to hike the PCT
When shopping for a shovel, Cheryl came across the book “Pacific Crest Trail California Volume 1” at REI.
She makes numerous mentions of this book, which by its own author's admissions - had never hiked parts of the trail.
Her Relationship with her StepFather
Soon after her Mom’s death, Cherly and her Step Dad grew distant. Yet, she acknowledges the various times her stepdad took her and taught her how to go camping and that she wouldn’t have been able to hike the PCT without those lessons.
He hadn’t loved me well in the end - but he loved me well when it mattered.
Doug’s exclusion from the movie
After reading the book, I decided to look up how closely the movie held up, and I was surprised to learn that Doug wasn’t part of the story in the movie. Doug was a hiker whom Cheryl had met early on in the hike and had given her a Raven feather for good luck. She loses touch with Doug during the hike only to reunite with him during the last leg of the hike in Oregon.
Sadly, she only learned about Doug’s passing nine years later when researching this book.
Places to visit
One of the places that this book has inspired me to visit is - Crater Lake National Park.
According to Wikipedia - Native Americans witnessed its formation 7,700 years ago when a violent eruption triggered the collapse of a tall peak.
According to the book, the water is supposed to be so pure and deep that it only reflects blue back.
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| By WolfmanSF, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23466412 |