Because these mega-hikes are modern, secular cousins of the sacred, peripatetic rites of passage known as the pilgrimage and the Aboriginal Walkabout. All that nature walking, sacred or secular, accomplishes roughly the same thing: purging and healing by way of physical hardship, loneliness, silence, and beauty. Based on a true story, the very fine “Wild” depicts one woman’s inner transformation, out on the PCT.
Hitting Bottom
Following the 1991 cancer death of her mother (Laura Dern), Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) wrecks her marriage with hard drugs and cheating. She hits the PCT in ’95, with no previous hiking experience. The Pacific Crest Trail is for black-belt-level hikers.There are things that one really needs to know. Like, how even slightly-too-small hiking boots will rasp the toenails right off your feet when you’re crunching across the Mojave Desert, and how duct-tape-wrapped Tevas make a poor substitute. Had Cheryl known what she was getting herself into, she might never have started.
Packing gear at the trailhead, in her motel room, her first lesson is that the water bladder for her pack weighs a million pounds after filling it in the bathtub. It takes a 10-minute wrestling match just to stand upright with it. Still, she’s clearly thinking “How hard could it be?”
The PCT
Finally she’s out there. It’s scorching; deadly, the thought of quitting is all-pervading and the trial-and-error learning starts: She bought the wrong gas canister for the stove. Now she gets to eat cold mush for weeks on end.Bolting from her sleeping bag, she blows her giant red trail-whistle (it looks like Wile E. Coyote ordered it from the ACME Whistle Company). After much frantic bag-shaking, a tiny woolly bear caterpillar is ejected.
All of this is absolutely no fun for her but is often funny for us, experiencing her tribulations from the safety of our couches. Everything hurts constantly. As a fellow hiker says, “All the prep and training in the world can’t prepare you for the pain and the heat.” But Cheryl’s committed.
There are many flashbacks of Cheryl’s downward spiral into depression; a classic spiral for someone with an abusive alcoholic father, codependent mother, and an addictive personality.
Reese
Reese Witherspoon had already left her ditzy “Legally Blonde” period behind via an Oscar win as June Carter in “Walk the Line,” but “Wild” solidified her serious-leading-lady status.Despite there being too much playing of the Simon & Garfunkel version of “I'd rather be a hammer than a nail,” the story is captivating and the Pacific Northwest and desert scenery are stunning.
A vision quest is different. It’s a stationary pilgrimage of the soul: Four days and four nights in a 10-foot-diameter circle in the wilderness with no people, food, phone, computer, books, writing utensils, or tent. The outfits that run quests tell you (I’ve done four of them) that the most powerful visions are where you don’t feel like you had one.
These types of life-changing experiences don’t need to end with a bang. If you focus on the trail, or on the rocks, ants, pine needles, and whippoorwill birdsong in the night—you'll get where you’re going. A profound change is a given.
If you try one yourself someday, learn all you can beforehand instead of running out the door like Bilbo Baggins. He was another initially clueless long-distance hiker who came back profoundly changed.
