Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Unabridged)
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4.2 • 485 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Oprah's Book Club 2.0 selection.
A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.
Strayed faces down rattlesnakes and black bears, intense heat and record snowfalls, and both the beauty and loneliness of the trail. Told with great suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild vividly captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Listening to Cheryl Strayed’s account of her life-changing, 1,100-mile trek is an awe-inspiring and uplifting experience. Strayed was 26 when the cumulative strain of her mother’s death, failed marriage, and struggles with substance abuse led to one of the most important decisions of her life: to embark on a solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, which traverses the western U.S. from the Mexican to the Canadian border. Strayed describes her journey in such vivid detail that we can basically feel the unrelenting Mojave Desert sun and smell the crisp mountain air, but it’s her internal reflections that make Wild such a transformative listen. Bernadette Dunne narrates the book with the same nuance and gravitas she brought to memoirs by Sandra Day O’Connor and Katharine Hepburn, perfectly capturing Strayed’s adventurous spirit, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that Strayed had never worn a pair of hiking boots before her ambitious trip. Wild inspired a splashy movie adaptation starring Reese Witherspoon—and the audiobook is not to be missed.
Customer Reviews
Well Written
While many people have hiked the long distance trails {myself included}, what I found compelling was the way Strayed tied her personal journey to the trip. Most people walk into the woods to find something, be it a notch on the belt for completing a thru-hike or the answers to life's big questions. Strayed wrote her own search in a funny, and at times quite heart-wrenching way, but managed to keep it feeling sincere and authentic. If I'd wanted a guidebook, I would have bought one and that is the kind of knowledge that is easily learned. I appreciated the earnest story of someone just finding her way in the world and thinking that the trials, tribulations, and rewards of the trail might help her get there. Totally worth checking out and the audio version was great!
Too close to comfort
I bought this audiobook last summer & forgot about it. At the end of the summer I moved to WA & I finally started listening without paying much attention to the setting. I very quickly noted how much Cheryl & I have in common during our 20’s (minus 2 very important details). It was both inspiring, motivating & painful to listen to this book in such a difficult part of my life. 10/10 if you need that push for yourself for greatness/growth.
Lots of people have done it.
Hiking the entire PCT is certainly a great physical and mental feat, but many people have done it. I've done it and met a 74 year old man that was doing it alone for the 3rd time. His book I'd read. This one doesn't give much that isn't written in the thousands of blogs out there describing the same trip.