Starting Wild, by Cheryl Strayed right now (1/16/13).
1/20/13 – I finished this book this morning. And what a wonderful, wonderful book it was. This woman writes so well, so clear and true; and near the beginning, where she writes about the death of her mother, I felt it so acutely – it brought me back so close to the occasion of my own mother’s death, that I found myself sobbing. My sister had the same experience. And today would be my mother’s 83rd birthday. I miss her.
But the book soon moved on to describe her experiences hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and again, it was so vivid – I found myself wishing that I could have done the same thing back when I was younger. This book was very moving, and I am very glad to have read it.
Here is a video my sister found after reading this book that conveys what the experience is like. I also really like the Coldplay music that goes with it, and so very well and appropriately. This is great:
The Pacific Crest Trail Hike
I marked a passage in this book that I loved; this was towards the end of the book:
“There were so many …amazing things in this world. They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn’t know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. …I wasn’t crying because I was happy. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I wasn’t crying because of my mother or my father…. I was crying because I was full. Of those fifty-some hard days on the trail and of the 9,760 days that had come before them too.”