A few years ago I had occasion to re-read HATCHET, by Gary Paulsen. I did not do this on my own, but with a fourth-grade boy who was wholly entranced by it. I had never been a big HATCHET fan myself (I preferred the Little House books, if you wanted to get right down to it), but reading it with this kid gave me a new appreciation for what the book allowed us both to do: live in the terrifying wilderness, live in the terrifying aloneness, live in the brave and cold and the that which seems both impossible and necessary. To dig into the vast resources of human resourcefulness, knowing that no matter the outcome, you did exactly the best you could do.

WILD is that, but for the grown-up me. It is brave and cold and terrifying and, above all, compassionate. A woman finding her way. Reading it I was pained for and with Cheryl, wincing at setbacks and feeling elated at successes. Rooting for her to get to the end of the trail as well as to the bottom of her grief. It's a lot of walking but somehow never repetitive, with stories of trail life wound around stories from her pre-PCT journeys. While sometimes I was frustrated to be pulled off the trail, these pre-trail stories were always rewarding. The story of Lady the horse was particularly moving and visceral; it set me on a good cleansing cry of my own, but! Hold on, wait. Don't think this is a sad book. It is not a sad book at all. It is maybe one of the few and only truly happy books that I have read.

Everything painful is written about with warmth and something I just, I don't know if I have a good word for it? I have a couple not-good words. Reality. Actuality. Something. See, it's not: this awful thing happened, and I have written well about it, and I have settled the accounts and all is fine high-five. But rather: this thing happened, and it was hard, and that is what things are. Things are hard. They are not impossible and far away and only written about in memoirs where people do incredible things. The things that happened to Cheryl felt like things that have happened and will happened to me. They are present. Your water will sometimes be filthy and you will be able to fix it; your water has been filthy and you will be able to fix it; your water will sometimes be nonexistent and even then you will survive; your water has sometimes been nonexistent and even then you have survived.

Because while I will probably never hike the PCT, because while I will probably not go through the things that Cheryl went through on her way to the PCT, I have had my own share of what I've had. And her chant, her present-tense chant on the trail (I am not afraid, I am not afraid) is the kind of chant any one of us might have, doing any one of the hundreds of things we must do to live our lives. That is what this book is about, to me. It's beautiful. I want to give it to people. Yes.