Cheryl Strayed's Walk on the Wild Side

  Disclaimer: It’s tough to dispassionately review a book when someone else seems to be writing your life. When you share so much geographical and emotional common ground that it becomes both compelling and a bit scary to read the evidence. You’ve been their shadow—or have they been yours? But shared experience is a tricky thing. What if they tell the tale all wrong? Arrive at distinctly different conclusions? Botch the job? Conversely… what if this stranger seems to shoulder the very thing you thought was yours alone to bear? What if they uncover something you’ve never realized? Shine a light on the most painful part of your past such that you recognize your own strength in having endured it? This may be the ultimate goal in reading: to find a kindred spirit who helps you better understand your own journey. And while not everyone has shared this particular junket, I’m sure that its major themes will resonate for many.

Wild. The very word connotes the primordial ooze, a place where ideas are born in the midst of the natural world, where there’s freedom to go places we wouldn’t in everyday life. Where we are released into something that frees us to explore parts of ourself we hadn’t known before, and in the process stand eye-to-eye with many things that scare us. Indeed, wilderness is the land of the real, not the land of the metaphorical challenge. And for most of us framed into the workaday world, it’s a place in which we spend little time, as life seems to demand riding the conveyor belt of familiarity.

From this world, author Cheryl really did stray, changing her name for a reason: a determination to depart from the life she was given and to shape hers in radically different ways than what seemed her fate. This passage began when she lost the mother she adored to cancer at the age of 22. My own mom died of breast cancer when I was about the same age, and it remains the single most painful event of my life. After 9 years of caring for her, I can well-relate to the psychic chaos that descends when Strayed realizes how very different life will look without her mother’s anchoring presence. As I did, the author spends several years feeling completely adrift, wandering. She attempts to assuage her grief through a marriage to which she can’t commit, affairs, heroin, and frequent “geographical cures.” Nothing seems to ease the anguish. But as she spirals downward, a book about thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) appears, and she reads it cover-to-cover.

While this might not sound odd to an REI geek, Strayed is no veteran hiker. At the age of 26, she’s young, passably fit, acquainted but not intimate with the outdoors—and motivated to believe that several months on the trail could give her perspective on her life and a literal path forward.

Strayed embraces her solo-hike the way any young adult might: heavy on enthusiasm, light on practicality. For starters, there’s her pack, “Monster,” which must have tipped the scales at 75-80 pounds when Strayed began straying. In fact, she spends many pages describing how exceedingly difficult it was just to carry the Monster on her back. While this scenario bleeds metaphor, and readers her parents’ age will find it annoyingly short-sighted, it becomes a significant part of her proving her mettle. What she lacks in executive function, she seems to make up for in raw tenacity. And her ability to endure misery reacquaints her with her own inner resources.

“Uncertain as I was as I pushed forward, I felt right in my pushing, as if the effort itself meant something. That perhaps being amidst the undesecrated beauty of the wilderness meant I too could be undesecrated, regardless of what I’d lost or what had been taken from me, regardless of the regrettable things I’d done to others or myself or the regrettable things that had been done to me. Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.”

In the summer of 2008, when I was working through my seemingly doomed relationship with a person I deeply loved, I bounded into the Pacific Northwest with the tempest of my confusion. And as echoes of our endless fights rang in my ears, I distinctly remember walking the PCT craving healing, wanting to give all the words I’d misspoken and things I’d done wrong to the redwoods that bathed me in their consoling, ancient presence. Like Strayed, I welcomed the uncomplicated clarity that walking in nature conferred on me, the simplicity of trees that had weathered so many storms and yet still stood upright, keening toward the summer sky.

As a writer, Strayed does many things well, and her technique is so subtle that readers might not realize just how skilled she is. She seamlessly weaves flashbacks to the specifics of her mom’s death with present-day narrative, which is hard to do well. It feels like the reverie a hiker enters when a tree, rock, or cloud evokes memory recalled to the rhythm of foot touching dirt.

Of the many evocative scenes in the book, one stands out as one of the saddest and most poignant I’ve ever read. In it, Strayed realizes her mother’s favorite horse must be put down, and her family must be the ones to do the deed. But when the aged horse refuses to succumb, Strayed’s fantasy of her mother’s riding Lady to the other side devolves into the harsh light of killing a beloved family pet. After I read it, I literally threw the book across the room. One of death's many aftershocks is realizing that you’re still earthbound, and need to deal with the things that were so precious to the person you loved.

But Wild is not emotionally overwrought or desperate, in the ways that Eat, Pray, Love can be every now and then. And while the female body count on the PCT may increase in the next few years, the book is not as overtly feminist, or urging, in its tone. God willing, there will be no commercial tours following in the author’s footsteps, as there have been with EPL. And though I adore EPL, I find Strayed’s comparative restraint a good thing. Though not as gooey and effusive as Gilbert’s can be, her insights are spot-on.

I like this passage:

“I didn’t know my own father’s life. He was there, but invisible, a shadow beast in the woods; a fire so far away it’s nothing but smoke. That was my father: the man who hadn’t fathered me. It amazed me every time. Again and again and again. Of all the wild things, his failure to love me the way he should have and always been the wildest thing of all. But on that night as I gazed out over the darkening land fifty-some nights out on the PCT, it occurred to me that I didn’t have to be amazed by him anymore. There were so many other amazing things in this world.”

Like Gilbert, Strayed ultimately derives a profound sense of self-acceptance from her long journey. In one revelatory paragraph, she begins to get that she can forgive herself for betraying her husband. “What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? What if I’d actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all of those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was also what had got me here?”

This was the graf that took the 500-pound backpack of guilt I’d also been shouldering and left it by the side of the road. Because, of course, it’s true. We only get to where we are by living through what we do, and making choices we believe at the time are right. And their rightness extends to an existential level, as they are the chips of the chisel that shape us into the people we are meant to become.

My own walkabout took me to a town Strayed also knows: Ashland, Oregon. In addition to being overtly quirky and magical, Ashland plays temporary host to many PCT thru-hikers, whom you’ll often see at the post office, retrieving their resupply boxes (the value of which can’t be underestimated).  I stayed in the same room Strayed did at the Ashland Hostel, and encountered plenty of thru-hikers, who dazzled me with their filthy roguishness and earthy charm. One morning I overheard a phone conversation between a skirt-clad hiker and her parent, and as she begged for another month’s subsidy to finish the trek. And when she hung up, after fighting for this like a mother bear defending her cubs, I apprehended her completely differently: I knew what a significant, all-encompassing journey she was enveloped in. How we both were undertaking a quest away from civilization that would shift our paradigms for the rest of our lives.

Though my own trip was not as strenuous as that of a PCT hiker, after it my life did indeed change, and I found some of the strength and context and meaning I’d been craving. Like Strayed, I understood how to ride out the many obstacles that come when traveling and camping. And how enduring them and finding solutions and making it to the other side gets you very familiar with how strong and tenacious a mofo you can be. When you’re left early without a mother, these are facts that it takes time to learn--and taking care of yourself goes from being a great mystery to a necessity to a point of pride.

Strayed is at her best when she shows us not only this painful part of her life, but the path that brought her insight into and transcendence over it.

**********

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed (Alfred A. Knopf; 315 pages; $25.95)

For a followup on this piece, about the 2012 thru-hiking season in OR and the influence of this book, please see my 7/13 entry.

On Letting Go

Excerpted from Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert

[Elizabeth Gilbert is in an ashram in India, talking about her lingering feelings for her ex-partner, David, with her friend Richard.]

“What’s got you all wadded up?” he drawls, toothpick in mouth, as usual.

“Don’t ask” I say, but then I start talking and tell him every bit of it, concluding with, “And worst of all, I can’t stop obsessing over David. I thought I was over him, but it’s all coming up again.”

He says, “Give it another six months, you’ll feel better.”

“I’ve already given it twelve months, Richard.”

“Then give it six more. Just keep throwin’ six months at it till it goes away. Stuff like this takes time.”

I exhale hotly though my nose, bull-like.

“Groceries,” Richard says, “listen to me. Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing and you were in the best possible place in the world for it – in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace. Take this time, every minute of it. Let things work themselves out here in India.”

“But I really loved him.”

“Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don’t you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching. I mean you got zapped, kiddo. But that love you felt, that’s just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That’s just limited little rinky-dink mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, Groceries – you have the capacity to someday love the whole world. It’s your destiny. Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not laughing.” I was actually crying. “And please don’t laugh at me now, but I think the reason it’s so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed David was my soul mate.”

“He probably was. Your problem is you don’t understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can’t let this one go. It’s over, Groceries. David’s purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of your marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it’s over. Problem is, you can’t accept that his relationship had a real short shelf life. You’re like a dog at the dump, baby – you’re just lickin’ at the empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you’re not careful, that can’s gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.”

“But I love him.”

“So love him.”

“But I miss him.”

“So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it. You’re just afraid to let go of the last bits of David because then you’ll be really alone, and Liz Gilbert is scared to death of what will happen if she’s really alone. But here’s what you gotta understand, Groceries. If you clear out all that space in your mind that you’re using right now to obsess about this guy, you’ll have a vacuum there, an open spot – a doorway. And guess what the universe will do with the doorway? It will rush in – God will rush in – and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed. So stop using David to block that door. Let it go.”

“But I wish me and David could —“

He cuts me off. “See, now that’s your problem. You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.”


For my review of her latest book, Committed, see:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5616306/committed_a_skeptic_makes_peace_with.html?cat=38

Son of Eat, Pray, Love

A review of Elizabeth Gilbert's most recent book, Committed 

While Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest book is not anywhere near as juicy as Eat, Pray, Love, it did manage to keep me reading till the morning hours the past 2 nights. This is the book that will probably be known by most as “the follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love,” which, like being the child of a celebrity, confers a burden so enormous that it would be difficult for any writer to overcome. If she had not been Liz Gilbert and this had not been Son of EPL, we might just deem this an interesting patchwork quilt of a book by an insightful writer on the topic marriage. Or more specifically, how a marriage-fearing woman who is forced by the government to marry the man she loves eventually makes an uneasy peace with the institution.

Gilbert had actually penned a 500-page first draft of this book that she trashed. I mean, completely set aside. Just the thought of that makes me cringe. Her rationale was that its perky tone was no longer that of her nearing-40 self. Hmmm. Yet this was the voice that drove EPL, a voice that 7 million readers were altogether fond of. And thus, I found myself wanting to gently inquire, “Could I just page through your trash can for a few hours?”

Yes, this is a more mature voice, and maturity is, well…often a desirable quality, especially in doctors and barristers and funeral directors. But some of what we look to younger works for is their youthful joie de vivre, and EPL had that in spades. It was truly a coming-of-age book, almost a bildungsroman, of a woman who deeply comes to know herself after a painful divorce prompts her to question her life and life itself. In it, she takes us through three of life’s most powerful moments: eating (feeding oneself), finding a spiritual path, and falling passionately in love—while traipsing through some of the most romantic geography on Earth. Now, if there’s a more irresistible premise, please tell me. EPL was like a torte. My partner and read the book over the phone to each other, savoring every rich page and delaying reading the final few chapters, as we didn't want the adventure, the jokes, the insights to end. As I’m sure Gilbert was keenly and painfully aware, that sort of appeal is nigh-impossible to top—or follow.

She could have simply kept going, stitching together outtakes from EPL into a second act that readers would have hungrily devoured. But to her credit, she was attempting to grow stylistically as a writer, satiate her intellectual curiosity, and share the results of her research. However, as with any monograph, as fascinating as the information uncovered may be (and it is), there’s little plot. Here we enter Wait, Think, Wait territory. Gilbert has embodied the Hanged Man of the tarot deck, on a trip through hell via a holding pattern in the airspace of Homeland Security. However, as maddening and frightening this place is, it doesn’t offer enough of the sort of dramatic trajectory that made EPL famous. To make matters worse, Gilbert opts to lose her narrative tension almost immediately when she tells us that ultimately she will marry. A little “will she or won’t she?” could have bought her some momentum.

Gilbert’s forte are her interviews with people of other cultures, often those bearing scant resemblance to modern-day America's, such as the Hmong of Vietnam. I don't know what drug she slips them, but she establishes an amazing amount of instant rapport with her interview subjects. Here is this tall, blonde, white, American female who drops into a remote country such as Vietnam for a few days, immediately finds a 12-year-old translator, then sets about quizzing 3 generations of Hmong women on their feelings about their marriages—after little or no introduction. Granted, just her very being is an immense novelty to them, and I'm sure her lovely spirit warms them up, but trust? It is here where she sparkles most brilliantly, and here where I wish she’d lingered longer, as in EPL.

But curiously, Gilbert foregoes the luster of her real-world anecdotes to lead with extended passages about the history of marriage. And despite some fascinating facts, they seem to go on for many pages at a time, with little of her trademark humor. The “Marriage and History” chapter is 32 pages long, tossed in right as she starts to get some traction and grinding things to the halt like a droning Sunday sermon. It’s sad because this could have been a reasonably quick fix. Her research simply needed to be assimilated more, spoken through her own lovely voice, and lavishly punctuated with fine examples from her globetrotting.

Part of this chapter is needlessly soapbox-y, specifically her assertion that “gay people can and should have the right to marry.” Well, yes, obviously—and I think her average reader would share that sentiment without its even having to be proffered or expounded on. Perhaps I’m overestimating her target audience, but this bit of preaching to the choir could have been nixed.

As Gilbert’s editor, I would have sent her back to the parts that really sing: Her obvious affection for people and fascination with other cultures. Her capacity to sort through the noise and cull her own truths, after assimilating the perspectives of others. And her ability to turn our cherished paradigms on their ears by presenting radically different points of view. I will say that she does do some of the latter when she interviews the Hmong women, who seem to possess few romanticized notions about marriage—or the specialness of personal identity overall. To these people (whom she characterizes as throwbacks to ancient history), “one man is the same as the next.” Unless the translator wasn’t doing her job, they seemingly can’t even grasp how a woman would fall in love with a man’s specific qualities or personal za za zsu. They simply don’t differentiate themselves from others—a fascinating concept, especially for Westerners hung up on their own personal punch lists of traits they bring to the party and those they can’t live without. And, as Gilbert discovers, these marriages tend to endure far longer than ones driven by love and personal preference. As odd as it may seem, arranged marriages statistically stand a better chance of lasting. And thus, she worries—and worries and worries—that her own marriage to Felipe may not.

The book also lends many perspectives on marriage of which the solipsistic Westerner steeped in the culture of $40,000 weddings may be completely unaware. For example, in the 14^th and 15^th centuries, nuptials were extremely drab affairs, conducted in street clothes at home and lasting for just a few minutes. There were no websites, no destination weddings, no caterers, no videographers, and certainly no guests boogeying down to “I Can Love You Like That.”

But I really started to perk up about 2/3 of the way through, when Gilbert takes a sudden left turn, becoming much more personal, as she sifts the marriages and child-rearing experiences of her matrilineage. The excellent questions she raises about what constitutes happiness and satisfaction within the confines of marriage and rearing children provoke much thought, as they ask what we sacrifice or subsume in order to sustain a long-term marriage or family.

Despite its many strengths, Committed has still left me a bit cold, and I can’t tell if that’s because I so adored its predecessor or due to its blatantly patched-together quality. I found myself wondering why her editor had apparently fallen asleep on the job--and how I might apply for the position next time around. Give me a jingle, Liz.