In the summer of 2005, Cheryl Strayed set out on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) — a 2,663 mile trail running through California, Oregon, and Washington, stretching from the Mexican to Canadian border.
Strayed was 26 at the time and reeling both from the death of her mother four years previous and the more recent collapse of her marriage. Pushed into a state of confusion and depression by this turmoil, she says she “made the arguably unreasonable decision to take a long walk alone on the PCT in order to save myself.”
She describes this story in her memoir called Wild, which was published last year and quickly became a bestseller. The story is a true page turner, written in a way that demonstrates both her keen observations and brash ignorance at the time: she has almost no experience when she sets out on the journey and at times ignores obvious warning signs indicating her imminent danger.
I was interested in her story not only because it was a spectacular feat, but also because it presented itself as a modern retelling of the pilgrimage. It’s a story we keep hearing and love to hear: the retreat to the wilderness that births a personal, creative, or spiritual restoration. Historically, we have the tradition of the mystic fathers and countless religious pilgrimages. And growing up, many of us read this tradition continued in Walden and Into the Wild.
Strayed fits right into this tradition. Her self-portrait, with an oversized burden of a pack she calls “Monster” — a physical representation of the sins she bears (the infidelity and heroin she used to alleviate her grief) — and a path that beats her down both physically and emotionally, calls to mind the iconic Pilgrim’s Progress.
Like Christian’s journey from the City of Destruction, Strayed walks away from a life destroyed. Her life is absent of any unifying faith. Standing at her mother’s side when she receives the devastating news of terminal cancer, she says “a prayer marched through my head,” though her prayer is not “Please, God, take mercy on us.” It is “F*ck them.”
But as she follows the PCT north to her destination, the poignantly chosen “Bridge of the Gods,” she begins to warm to the idea of a spiritual purpose to her journey: she keeps a feather as a talisman; wears a Rastafarian shirt with sacred devotion; uses her trail guide as a Bible; and appears to embrace ornithology and spiritualism. One woman she meets on the trail states it plainly: “We call what you’re doing the pilgrim way.”
She’s grasping for some sort of meaning wherever she can find it, but she’s not sure which direction she’s heading. “I was a terrible believer in things, but I was also a terrible nonbeliever in things. I was as searching as I was skeptical. I didn’t know where to put my faith, or if there was such a place, or even precisely what the word faith meant, in all of its complexity.”
At this point she presents a question for herself and for the reader: has the trail shaped her into a new being, one that no longer needs to remediate herself with men? Has she become a strident individual, self-sufficient and autonomous?
It turns out not much has changed. She takes a weekend break from the hike and immediately jumps into a weekend fling with a stranger. There’s no effect on her apparent obsession with appearance and need for acceptance, something she only realizes as she heads back out on the trail: “It had been an indisputably good time, but now I felt empty. Like there was something I didn’t even know I wanted until I didn’t get it.”
It’s at this moment that we realize this isn’t a pilgrimage in line with historical tradition. This is the modern pilgrimage: not a journey toward something greater than ourselves, but a journey inward, a journey towards who we are and what we’ve become and a cool acceptance of that, however weak and broken that may be.
Flickr photo by Tammy Strobel
