Despite my comments tonight, I hope you all enjoy next week's reading of Wild. (By way of a confession: I actually got totally hooked and read most of it in a single sitting this Sunday). As I mentioned as we were leaving tonight, Strayed's book will help us move from the urban to the not-urban, but we should continue to track some of the same issues we've been considering all semester. What's the status of travel here, for example, and one that I'm interesting in thinking through with this book in particular: how do narratives change our interaction with places?
As always, post your questions and comments below.
I'll say more about this as the date approaches, but as a reminder, we've agreed to remove McPhee from the syllabus and instead do a "choose your own adventure" class in which you'll present a primary text, preferably one that speaks back to the dominant cultural "canon" we've been engaging in class. I mention it here as you'll want to do some advance planning, probably starting this week, to track down your text if you don't already have one in mind.
Until next time,
Kevin
(FYI: the above image is from Oprah's photo album, and it's actually the author, not Reese Witherspoon, and I'm happy to see that the pack is actually as big as described)
While this book was a fun, quick read, it was also heart-wrenching. A couple of times midway through, I almost thought that the ongoing discussion of her mother’s death was over; but out of the back of the narrative, exactly the way it does outside of words on a page, the pain and memories would move back in. All it would take was some event on the trail, letter, fellow traveler, random person, or even simply in a moment of quiet or serenity, for everything Strayed had been ignoring, fighting off, or not thinking of right then, to move back in. Forcefully or subtly, quickly or slowly, randomly or with the most obvious lead-in – the pain and memories always came back. The inclusion of this process and actually reading through the process itself were my favorite parts of this book. They were hard to read, and sometimes I very much wished I didn’t have to listen to their suffering, but they made it so incredibly real and visceral. The sentences are well-written, the grammar is fine, and the word choice is all well and good, but returning to the pain reminded me that this was a real woman, and her personal journey through grief was even more real than that.
ReplyDeleteThe argument can be made that this book is cliché, and it is; it’s cliché in that the experiences this woman goes through while making sense of her grief have been explored by many authors before. But the commonness of the experience – in this case – does not lessen its impact, but merely makes it more relatable. This isn’t someone trying so hard to be original that she leaves her audience behind, nor is it someone trying so hard to be emphatic that her writing seems strained and overcompensating. Emphasis merely through inclusion is a humble and unassuming style, and it makes her story that much more powerful.
I thoroughly enjoyed Wild. I was a little dubious about it at first because she is rather melodramatic and whiny in the way that she writes. Once I got over that though, I could appreciate her honesty in the writing. It made me wonder how some writers present their stories in an almost detached method while Strayed was totally in the writing. I read the book and both felt embarrassed and empathetic for her. There were parts of the book that reminded me of the readings from last week when they were saying how they felt free when they traveled, and Strayed felt that at times too. The freedom of being alone, and the necessity of being alone for her. The need to do something on her own and simultaneously face the fears and things she had been avoiding. It was such a powerful narrative to read, even if the beginning was irritating. I wonder if there has to be a choice between an honest narrative or a well-written one. In some instances, the melodramaticness could be counted as over the top and annoying, but it was the point of her story because that is how she was feeling. It was so honest and necessary for her to write it in that way. In some instances, I feel more people should be as honest as she was.
ReplyDeleteHow does Strayed’s travel experience in nature compare with our reading of travels to urban settings? Is it a profoundly more powerful experience? Or would you say the experience of urban and non-urban travel is really not so different?
ReplyDeleteIn “The Accumulation of Trees,” Strayed discusses the origins of the PCT and the people who worked to see it become a reality. She explains how it feels to be a human in the wild and describes it as a “powerful and fundamental” experience to be out in nature (Strayed 207). But I wonder if this experience is as extraordinary as she claims, in comparison to the other travel accounts we have read. During our reading of travel literature we have seen common themes in different writer's journeys, such as suffering and personal growth through these challenging situations. There is also a theme of encountering different cultures and gaining new perspective via encounters with new people. Though "Wild" primarily takes place on a trail through various natural landscapes, a lot of these themes remain the same in Strayed's travels: she suffers under the weight of Monster, loses toenails, and struggles against the elements all along the way to Oregon—and that's not even getting into the way she struggles through the emotional trauma in her life while on this hike. During this trip Strayed also delves into a new PCT-hiker culture, complete with its own vernacular and customs. She meets people on and off the trail who share their world-views and stories with her, often causing her to reflect on her own stories and beliefs.
I'm left wondering if there really is a major difference between these two kinds of travel, aside from the terrain that is traversed and the accessibility of commodities like food, water, and hygiene products. It seems to me that travel has an impact on travelers, no matter where they go.
I found Strayed’s journey to be one of redemption. At the start of her hike, her life was hopeless - mother died, family drifting apart, divorce, drug abuse, unwanted pregnancy, unfulfilling job - but by the end of it, she was rejuvenated, clean and healthy, suddenly strong and worthy, with a new perspective and a new understanding of life. How is self-redemption part of travel?
ReplyDeleteThroughout our class, we’ve been discussing the ways in which travel changes a person, usually for the better. The experience of travel can give someone a bigger/better perspective on the world, can teach lessons of history and culture, and can help develop empathy and independence, among many other important things. Strayed expresses how she felt like she was falling apart and really needed to undertake this pilgrimage to save herself. She put herself to an extreme physical and emotional test and passed. Obviously things got better for her afterwards; she met someone, had a couple kids, became a best-selling author…
I think in many ways travelers do hope to become better versions of themselves through traveling. Strayed’s story epitomizes this. Not only did she just happen to grow as a person while traveling, but she found it absolutely necessary to take this crazy hike in order to reverse the downward spiral of her life. What would her life have been like if she had given up and turned back at the beginning of the hike?
Jessika (Bambi) Caudy
ReplyDeleteOctober 19, 2015
Wild was probably the most heartbreaking book I have ever read. It is books like this that keep me from reading “The Fault in Our Stars”. None the less it was an excellent read and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. There was a question that I kept circling to regarding this week’s topic, gender! “How did Cheryl’s gender affect the way people treated her while traveling?”
We have talked about, numerous times in fact, the privilege of travel. We have touched on the topic of men traveling alone versus women traveling alone before as well, but I believe this book explores this concept in more depth.
It was blatantly obvious throughout the book that Cheryl faced a special challenge being a lone woman hiking through the wilderness. People would repeatedly warn her of the dangers she faced, most of which she already knew, and claim they would never let their own daughters hike the PCT alone. When she met new people, they would regard that they had heard about the crazy woman hiking the PCT alone and were excited/amazed to meet her. These comments, we can assert, were most likely never made towards Greg and other male hikers.
Being a woman I believe helped Cheryl as much as it put her in an awkward situation of social disbelief. As a woman, I believe more people were willing to help her and offer her free showers and hot meals. She was regarded as someone who could be trusted and cared for. A woman in need. I guarantee a man traveling alone, looking in a similar state as Cheryl would not be invited into people’s homes or to people’s tables as often.
However, again, there was a lot of danger Cheryl had to consider that a man traveling alone did not. At the beginning more than at the end, Cheryl remarked that hitch hiking would be more dangerous because she was a lone and venerable woman. She would have to be weary of how men looked and what she perceived their intentions were. She had to assess each situation before approaching a car full of men, something a man would not have to even think of.
The instance in which a waiter gave Cheryl a free glass of wine was a perfect example of the lone woman experience. He was being kind to her because he saw a woman in need, but turned around and invited her over to his trailer for, let’s admit it, sex. This was a unique situation that Greg or the other man would not have experienced.
Overall I believe Cheryl was brave for traveling alone, but we must evaluate the different experience she had compared to the men hiking the PCT, and even that of the two women hiking together.
Hola Bambi!
Delete"the Fault in Our Stars" was a great read! But what that reminded me about was a book called "The Dog Stars." YOU HAVE TO READ IT!! I have a copy and will throw it in my bag for when I see you next!
Cheers,
M
ReplyDeleteWhen comparing Wild to other travel writing tropes we’ve encountered, I found myself going back to exploration of the unfamiliar – the astronaut mentality. The longing to know the “unknown” as we’ve explored in London, Best American Travel Writing, and so on. There were obvious differences and similarities between Strayed’s journey and those of the others going into “foreign” societies and places. One major difference was that Strayed journeyed into a fairly solitary place, and traveled by herself for the most part. I couldn’t identify the exploitation by this author on the “unknown” because, to me, she was not trying to assimilate to or acculturalize another society like other author’s we’ve read. She didn’t pretend to be a botanist or a professional mountaineer. There were no new religions, cultures (aside from the small PCT hiker culture), politics, etc. for her to either adopt or write off. The lack of civilization in general is what seemed to move her to discover herself far more than any travel to a foreign society could have given her. She wrote of the PCT, “[It] had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets (p 207).”
The questions that kept coming up when re-reading Wild were, does solitary travel have more benefits to capturing knowledge of the culture and oneself than traveling with a companion(s)? Can we glean what Strayed did from pilgrimages to other societies, or can it only come from where we lack human contact?
Being an avid back packer and hiker I, as some others have mentioned, found strayed's narrative a bit annoying. I had to actively place myself in an average americans shoes (or strayed's lost shoe) and not my own alaskan grown shoes. This unfortunately made it a little harder of a read for me then expected. However, keeping in mind travel and how this book relates to our previous discussions I found some interesting things to think about. What is the uses of travel writing? We have disscussed in length about how texts about other places define and sharpen our shared understandings of those places. Does Strayed's book do this for the PCT? It is also a very personal account of an experience. We get so many details of Strayed's personal life and these details are what brought Wild to Oprah's book club: the personal struggle of an inexperienced female. What kind of understanding do we gain from this kind of description of the world? Does this solo adventure make general conclusions of our society? There is definitely a gender theme in this book and an underlying theme of female impowerment. Strayed was the only female solo backpacker out on the PCT that summer and I think this fact kept Strayed going. Again the excitement and splender of doing something no one else in your condition has done (or at least not very many) arises. Is it in these "new" views of experience that come from others in which we form our opinions and understandings of our surroundings? I know much of what I know comes from stories family and friends and even strangers have told me and I have remembered. With books like Wild a larger audience hears the stories and that information in imprinted on a social level. Does this invite a deeper level of communication?
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this novel. Despite what Kevin might have mentioned about it, I actually was thoroughly impressed with it. I did find myself reading huge parts at one point and getting lost in the story, something I always appreciate about a good book. I am also happy to say that I was able to hold off on watching the movie until I was completely finished with the book and working with my group on our discussions for tonight. This book fits very well with the gender topic of this weeks discussion. There are my instances that fit well with the gender topic but one that stood out to me was when Cheryl meets Greg. She stated, “I hardly knew him and yet he had become a beacon for me, my guiding star to the north. If he could do this, I could, I thought furiously. He wasn’t tougher than me” (90).
ReplyDeleteUp until this point, Cheryl was traveling alone and about to give up. Did Cheryl feel she needed to prove herself as the only woman after meeting Greg? What influenced her?
I was actually able to relate to this. I was the only girl on my baseball team when I was in the second grade and I really wanted to quit, up until the boys started making me feel like I needed to prove myself to them.
Wild was, for lack of a better term, wild. I was amazed by the almost soap-operatic opening of the book, a little startled by how frank and open and raw the authoress was with her writing, and charmed and amused by her little "adventure vignettes" (the bull, the rattlesnake, being incapable of even lifting her backpack) and the characters of the different people she encountered along the trail. But reading her book did make me think hard about how much of my daily "urban" life I take for granted, and it also made me ask the question: powerful writing aside, how much of her experience was a result of her upbringing and previously urban lifestyle?
ReplyDeleteI mean, I used to live in Las Vegas, but even then my dad took me and my brother on hikes and fishing trips and taught us to appreciate - but not underestimate - the outdoors. Then I lived in what can basically be called "the country" for 12 years when we moved up to Alaska, and now that I'm going to school in Juneau I have to walk outside in nature every day in order to get to and from my classes. Obviously, this is not a hike on the Pacific Crest Trail - but still, the authoress talks about how she spent a lot of her adult life living in cities like New York, and from what I could gather in the intro, she didn't go on a lot of (if any) hikes or camping trips for fun, if at all. So when she did finally get to go into the Great Outdoors, she approached it from the vantage point of "going outside is going to change me." Throughout the entire book, she elaborates on the rough-and-tumble nature of hiking, the struggle of camping and living outdoors, etc., and how it's all making her a better person and she's finding herself "out there."
This is not the experience I have with nature. When I feel the occasional urge to "find myself" - and I will confess that nothing as horrible as what happened to the authoress has happened to me, but I'm speaking in more general terms - I find myself wanting to go to big cities, to see famous sites and explore back streets. My version of Wild would be about me flying off to Barcelona to live in a tiny studio apartment and frantically try to pick up some Spanish while experiencing immersion in city life. It was just interesting to read this book and think about those differences, and imagine reasons behind why people glamorize "the wilderness" and uphold it as a place to "find themselves."
While I agree that Wild had honesty going for it, I felt it was lacking in finesse. I guess I’m having a problem here with how Strayed is her sentimentality, which may not even actually be a problem. The last few weeks we have seen a sense of escapism in literature and now we’re dealing with Strayed and her inability to let go no matter how she tries. Is it that travel is helping her cope or is it merely happening in the background while she’s learning how to deal with so much? I think that helps with the story. It’s that she’s dealing with these things that may feel more relatable than what the initial few writings were. She doesn’t try to hide it within events that happened, rather the travel helps accentuate what has happened to her. Strayed is writing a much more open account of her time traveling that doesn’t require finesse While we shouldn’t ignore problems within her writing we should be able to see a less escapist route for travel within her work.
ReplyDeleteThe contrast between this novel and previous readings is interesting, because it is a more modern version of travel and exploring oneself. Rather than traveling to Spain or the American Western city, Strayed decides on wilderness. She forces further suffering upon herself by doing this, because with suffering came her discovery.
Kayla
ReplyDeleteHow does nature travel differ from urban travel? Does the mode of travel make a difference?
I really enjoyed Wild, a lot more than I expected to. It was definitely a little melodramatic at times, but was also extremely honest and unashamed for the most part. All I knew about Wild was from the movie previews, which is basically to say “A woman goes on a hike to become the person her mother thought she was”. I was expecting a story of self-discovery through nature, not her brutally honest memoir about getting over her mother’s death, affairs, heroin, etc. I enjoyed the change from the previous travel stories we’ve been reading. I find the topic of “nature” traveling very interesting. How is it different from urban travel (besides the obvious “nature” bit)? When one is traveling in nature, the entire physical “traveling” process is different. For urban travel people get on planes or in cars to go somewhere, and the place they’re going is the main purpose of this physical traveling. For nature traveling, specifically hiking/backpacking, the whole point is the physical traveling, the actual moving from place to place, not so much the destination. In fact, when traveling in nature, the destination is really the end of the traveling experience.
It's fair to say that our readings have now completely shifted from modernism to the postmodern world. What stuck out to me most about this writing has to be the level of personal conviction in the text; what I mean is, in writing like London and Hemmingway, we encountered concepts of hegemony, poverty, war, post-war disillusionment, and the birth of globalization (the postmodern era). I don't want to downplay anything that the author went through, but the troubles in Wild are all middle class, urban issues that manifest in ennui and a lack of direction. Maybe there's nothing wrong with that, but Strayed seems to me like another symptom of blasé in postmodern society. How "lucky" are we that we can "find ourselves" by going for a several month trek on a cross country backpacking trail. While sentences like that make me roll my eyes and say oh brother, I do find it pretty fascinating and symptomatic of our society that we receive disillusionment, a blasé attitude from it, and then create a form of escape by which we can step back a few paces from it. Specifically for me, I'm very interested academically by the postmodern concept of "wilderness". It's something which I don't believe in as an ideology, but I see it inextricably linked with globalization. In Strayed's example, the PCT functions as an escape mechanism from urban life, though to me they seem dialectically connected, both linguistically (rhetorically the two create each other) and as societal functions. I see travel in this novel, specifically the escape to wilderness, as a symptom of the blasé attitude caused by late-capitalist society.
ReplyDeleteThe question I had while reading Wild was, in what ways do travellers come to assert a kind of "ownership" of sorts in regards to the place their travelling? For Cheryl, it seemed that her identity came from the trail. She tells us so many times about how she had to explain the PCT to people, and I thought her "interview" with the Hobo Times reporter was a part where she stands on that identity and even insists on it. She starts to become familiar with the language of the PCT hikers, just like a foreigner in a different country, and that helps her take on that identity too. She takes her children to the same white bench to tell them her story. I understand the sentiment behind this sense of 'ownership'--when I see pictures of friends travelling to places I've gone, I've felt a strange jealousy/nostalgia. And of course I've thought about how fun it would be to bring a friend to different places I've been. In fact, when a friend from Juneau visited me in Germany, I loved being the one who wasn't "playing tourist"--I knew the city, I knew the language...a lot like Cheryl's experience in some ways. When we travel, what does it mean for us to invest our time and energy into getting to know a place, or even getting to know how to BE in that place? Is a sense of belonging tied to a sense of "ownership"? (I'm not sure if I have a better word, haha, but I'm not implying that I think that Cheryl thinks that she literally owns the PCT. But there's a pride and familiarity that develops, you know?)
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ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would and am very glad we chose to read it. The most obvious question is, why the Pacific Crest Trail? Not necessarily that particular trail, but why a long, desolate, dangerous backpack journey? I think that a lot of factors play into Cheryl’s reasons behind the journey, but most of them relate to her need to find herself – the person that she used to be. She tried everything she could think of: drugs, sex, friends, family, solitude, etc. Her entire life is essentially blown up after her mother’s death, and she desperately wants to find a way back to her sanity. Her reasons may include the idea that nothing else had worked thus far, so why not try something ridiculous and crazy. Cheryl’s ex-husband says that she wants to be alone, so maybe she figures that walking into complete alienation from civilization will allow her to find out who she is when she is solitary, so that she can again be with other people without losing herself. Another reason that Cheryl may or may not have realized is the independence of such a journey – she is completely responsible for herself, but only herself. She is free to do whatever she pleases, and has no one else to worry about. All her concerns are with survival and preservation. This constant vigilance to herself surely played a major role in her reasoning for the journey and the healing it evoked.
ReplyDeleteOh "Wild" how I thought little of thee.
ReplyDeletethough you my dear went through much did not you see
the error of your ways and the blame you did misplace.
From the drug addled life you lead after your un-favoring court case?
your mother's death was intense
and after had you vowed a life to abstinence
the loss of life now propelling you to fame
might have found you to blame
not for things you can't control
but for those that seek to divide the whole
haven't we all suffered in some way, some form
and is writing about them now the norm
so that when we need to leave our world behind
let me carry a quill in hope to find
a worthy path of which to pen
my story and find within
a sadness in which yields
an Oprah sticker and a deal
that offers money to fill the gap
that the feelings you let lapse
that in the end gave you fame
and me an ideal in I can frame
That wealth offers more in the end
than the journey can ever hope to mend.
This book was easier to identify as travel literature than some of the other readings we have done so far this semester. I also found her annoying and dramatic at the beginning, mostly when her mother was being diagnosed but I didn’t feel that way as much after her mother’s death. Many of the themes we discussed this semester were present in this reading. I think Strayed fits the idea of a traveler that is trying to find herself, in fact that is implied in the title of the book. There is also the number of challenges that she faces throughout her journey which fits into the ideas we have discussed in detail that you can’t have a good travel story without struggle. She also learned that she probably didin’t prepare the best for her trip as she had previously thought even after all her trips to REI. Her boots didn’t fit, she didn’t account for how much each gallon of water weighed, and he pack was too large and heavy. I understand the feeling of needing to escape your daily life with things get tough but I don’t think I could take a such an extreme step.
ReplyDeleteIn reading this book I was interested in why Strayed chose to intersperse the story of her journey along the PCT with so many anecdotes of backstory and memoir. It certainly contributes to its ability to draw the reader in, but it seems to be more than that. She uses the journey as a metaphor in some places to reflect back on her other experiences. This is an interesting recurring element that I've seen in travel writing - especially in this sort of narrative of self-discovery. The author travels through an unknown landscape and is able to understand their own life in the process of understanding the place to be explored.
ReplyDelete