How did Strayed's childhood influence her decision to hike the PCT?

From previous blog posts, you may know that the reason Cheryl Strayed went on the hike is that her mother died. Her mother died, and she started becoming more promiscuous and gained an addiction to drugs. But when I was looking at the book again, particularly the flashbacks of Cheryl’s childhood, I began to think “maybe she was lost before her mother died”, and that “her mother’s death was the last straw”. While growing up Cheryl was not too fortunate, she had the love of her family, but they did not have many material things. Her mother made her own clothes and she spent her time in and out of women’s shelters.

Originally Cheryl’s mom was with Cheryl’s dad, an abusive man. She grew up thinking that it was okay for women to be abused, and that that was how a man should treat a woman. Her and her siblings had to watch their mother be beaten. After they moved away from her dad, she would see her mom having sex with random men. This gave her the belief that this was normal behaviour, to be abused by men, and to give her body to men.

Later in her life, at University, she started following in her mother’s foot prints, with giving her body to multiple men, and having less self respect than most women. She married young, and even though it wasn’t an abusive relationship and they loved each other, it was still a rash decision getting married at age 21.

After her mother’s death, she started fully embracing her mother’s life choices, with her sleeping with multiple men, and even going as far to do heroin on multiple occasions. She “fucked the ex-boyfriend of the women who owned the exotic hens. I fucked a cook at the restaurant where id picked up a job waiting tables. I fucked a massage therapist who gave me a piece of banana cream pie and a free massage. All three of them over the span of five days” (36).

She became this different person, a person who would sleep with anyone, a person who thought that the only solution to feeling sad was to get joy out of sex.

She soon decided that she could not live her life like this, and started on the Pacific Crest Trail. This made her face her internal and physical problems (bears, etc.). No one believed the Cheryl had a chance to finish this trail. But she finished that trail alone and inexperienced. I think it was important for me to fully look at how her childhood lead to her hike, and how to influence the choices she made. She defied the stereotypes that are put on women, but finishing this physical hard trail.

Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. Print.

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