Book & Movie Review: Wild, by Cheryl Strayed

"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." - John Muir

When Wild the movie came out, I was doing my mountain craft course. I went and watched it. 

This is my review.

It's a mediocre movie. The acting was minimal. The actress really doesn't look like she hiked the whole day. Or that she has a pack that weighs half of what she does. On the emotion, it's just a little annoying. I don't know how to put it. It doesn't feel...realistic.

I felt that a book that boring simply could not have made it to film, so I went to read the novel.

The book was, as expected, better. Perhaps I was substituting what I would do, or what I knew to be the best ways to do things (eg. how to safely put on your pack, how to ). If you have some outdoors experience, it's easy to laugh at her efforts and noobiness. But that doesn't change the fact that she pushed her limits and took risks.

The story begins with the death of the author's mom. Basically, she came from an abusive family, married abusive men, worked in a chemical factory, found out too late she had cancer and ended up dying of it.

So the author becomes depressed and ruins her life. Despite being in a stable marriage, she commits adultery and becomes a drug addict. However, thanks to her supportive husband and friends, Strayed files for divorce and sets out to "do something difficult in the wild".

Strayed set out to do the Pacific Crest Trail on her own. But through self-sufficiency, self-responsibility and solitude, she realizes instead, that she is never alone. And of course, she meets many people on the way, who are on the same trail, facing the same problems and it turns out there are lots of kind people help her on the way. She finds herself, at one with nature.

There's a lot of stuff I won't go into detail here. The story itself is a lot like walking on a long trail. One step might not change the scenery much, but a thousand will. The journey's plot is intertwined with flashbacks to her past, just like how one would think when on a long walk. It's not literature-quality, but that was not necessary.

Update:

If anything, Wild exemplifies the very pioneering spirit that made America - "my current life sucks and I'm going to go try something totally crazy, downright scary and new!". It doesn't matter why your past-life sucks, you can go do something awesome immediately! That, I believe, is what makes this book a sensation. It's a story told countless times throughout history in context. It's the story of the Pilgrims, the War of Independence, the Lewis & Clark Expedition, John Muir, the Chinese Immigrants who worked on the Railroad, the Donner Party, Ayn Rand, Chris McCandless, Apple, the modern startups...

Now I want to go do a long trail.

Because, as the American naturalist and conservationist John Muir says, 

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks."

Photo Source: http://idyllway.blogspot.hk/p/the-john-muir-trail.html