Finished

Wild: From Lost To Found On The Pacific Crest Trail

by Cheryl Strayed




Un-be-liev-able.  It was hard not to rush and skim through a book so gripping as this.  But as I wrote that comment, I realized something--that is the reason it'll get four stars on Goodreads instead of five.  It's a delightful combination of movement, retrospection, and introspection, and I highly recommend it to anyone.  But it lacked the sense of place I want to experience when I'm reading someone else's travels.  The looking out at the world around you and experiencing the jaw-dropping wonders of the natural world.  I never wanted to go back and read a passage twice.  She could have written this book on any trail, anywhere.

This she explains, and apologizes for.  Most of the time she was staring at the trail in front of her and concentrating on putting one foot in the front of the other.  In place of the "sense of place" I wanted to feel, this book substituted human encounters--people.  The people of her life, past and present, and the myriad interconnections that make a human being.

And that's a lot to get out of a travel book.