October 9, 2015 - 16:06
Alison
ESem Paper #6
October 9, 2015
A Step Forward in Life
Forward is an objective word describing a motion or intention “towards a place or position that is in front” in English, and it includes more positive emotions nowadays. “Forward” is always used to indicate that things are happened in a promising way or things are in progress. The memoir “Wild," written by Cheryl Strayed, is a story about going forward.
Many people had a relatively negative impression towards Cheryl Strayed after reading this book, they argued that she acted irresponsibly and impulsively in almost everything. She seems to exaggerated her pain in her mind and find reasons to lost despite the fact that a lot of people suffer from the same pain as her but still live a normal life. Some people even denounced this book as a “bourgeois travel pornography” (Lugg, "Reading Cheryl Strayed's Wild: Towards a 'Basic' Environmentalism”). It is true that Cheryl makes some bad choices, she loses herself after her mother’s death, she uses drugs and has sex with different people, which all accelerated the dispersion of her family. She decided to go to the PCT suddenly so that she does not have time to prepare for it at all. However, those facts cannot deny the changes she makes in and after the trail, Cheryl Strayed shows her changes. Cheryl goes forward, whether in this trail or in her personal life.
Moving forward to a place that is in front of her, Cheryl Strayed experiences so many harsh situations. She does not have many knowledge neither about PCT nor about hiking, and she carry a huge and heavy backpack filled by many useless stuff with her. Her boots are “sailing irretrievably off the side of a mountain” in the trail. The animals and insects, lack of water and desolated environment are all treats of life. But she never gives up, even though she has the thoughts. The wild trains her body and her mind. thus when she reaches the end of this trail, Cheryl changed from a person who can only walk for several miles per day to a hiker who keep walking “until walking become unbearable," until she believed she “couldn’t walk even one more step”. (288) She is in a forward motion, and that destination and precipitant power in this motion will ensure that she can overcome the difficulties in life.
Cheryl also moves forward to a different kind of mood. She used to complaining and thinking a lot about her lovely childhood and frustrated life before the trail; most of the first half of the book is composited by her memories. However, as time goes by, she gradually thinks less of them, but describes more about the people she encountered instead of her old family members. In this trail, she thinks alone, she meets the friendly people and she gets inspirations from this process. At the end of this trail, she unloads the stress and painful memories that consistently appear in her mind, just as she drops things in her extremely heavy backpack. She goes towards a good result; she moves forward.
Moving forward is not only indicates that Cheryl finishes the trail in PCT, but also means that she moves a step forward in her life. She learns to accept the imperfect part in life, such as the death of her mother and the fracture of her family, and she needs to do things she “at lasted wanted to do”.(69) She accepts that sadness, heartbreak and lost are parts of life. She accepts the mistakes she made in the past: instead of feeling guilty about those mistakes, she accepting them in a more positive way. The things happened would never change, but what people can do in the present is using the experiences to guide themselves, and not doing the same thing again. Following the things she learnt from this trail, she stop using drugs, she has a family again and she becomes a writer inspiring more people. Therefore, Cheryl Strayed moves forward in this trail, also in her life. She goes to a new stage with more positive emotions and less burden related to her past. Even though it might not directly resulted form PCT itself, she still uses this trail to think and make improvements, to push herself forward with all imperfections in life and to find the certainty in the uncertain world.
Work Cited
Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. New York City: Random House, 2012. Print.
Lugg, Robert. Reading Cheryl Strayed's Wild: Towards a ‘Basic' Environmentalism: presented @ ASLE,