She will never get to ask her mother any more questions. Throughout the journey along the trail, Cheryl carries a heavy backpack she fondly nicknames Monster, but the real backpack she is carrying (and I realise this is a bit cliche, but I believe to be true) is all the things she will never have with her mother. She is being alone not because she hates people, but because she needs to find herself again in the loss of her mother. She is looking for a sign, a way to see and go forward. Strayed spends a lot of time alone on the PCT waiting for moments of catharsis to come and release her from her own demons both self- and universe-inflicted. When Cheryl decided to hike the PCT, a drastic gesture of hope, loss, forgiveness, and moving on geographically and emotionally I could understand where she was coming from.

In the summer of 1995, when Strayed hikes the PCT I was eight years old on the other side of the world oblivious that at age 24, two years older than Strayed was when her mother died, I would lose my father to cancer. At its core though, Strayed’s memoir is about grief and walking. Some people have written about Strayed’s memoir as a real life Bildungsroman and others have called it travel writing. She cheats on her husband, takes up a brief heroin addiction, divorces her husband, and then after some time adrift, she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT). She is lost and hurt and in being so, hurts and loses people around her. After losing the glue that held her family and life together, Cheryl starts to spiral. Old hiking shoe with red laces on a white background.Ĭheryl Strayed is 22 when her mother dies rather suddenly of lung cancer.

Pacific crest trail cheryl strayed