58 pages • 1-hour read
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
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Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Wild”
Part 4, Chapter 11 Summary: “The Lou Out of Lou”
Chapter 11 begins with Strayed hitchhiking outside Chester, California after parting with Stacy and Trina. Jimmy Carter, a reporter for the Hobo Times, pulls up and asks for an interview. Strayed corrects him when he refers to her as a hobo, telling him she is a long-distance hiker. Jimmy is too excited at meeting a female hobo to listen to her explanation of the PCT. After the interview, Jimmy takes her picture and offers her a hobo care package, which includes a beer and groceries. She sits in the dirt and drinks her beer while she explores the contents of the grocery bag. It contains a cigarette, six butterscotch candies, a vacuum-sealed sausage, a can of baked beans, and toiletries. Strayed devours the sausage and candies. She then opens the can of beans and eats them with her Swiss army knife like a hobo. After her meal, a woman named Lou and two brothers, Dave and Spider, pick her up in an old Maverick. Spider tells a story about an ape in a French laboratory who drew his own cage. He hits on Strayed, leaving her aroused and flattered. She notices a picture of a young boy hanging from the rearview mirror and is saddened to learn it is Lou’s son, who died five years ago. Lou pulls over when they near her stop. She laughs at Strayed's hairy legs and tells her she admires her for hiking alone. Lou then confesses that she died inside after her son’s death. The loss changed her, taking “the Lou out of Lou” (186). Strayed sees Stacy and Trina in the distance. The women hitchhike to Old Station, where she finishes The Novel, a book that renews her interest in writing. She burns the book the next morning, orders a burger at the café, and calls Paul. Although she misses Paul and her old life, she does not want to go back to it. She smokes the lone cigarette Jimmy gave her, feeling at peace in her solitude.
Part 4, Chapter 12 Summary: “This Far”
Chapter 12 focuses on Strayed's hike from Old Station to Hat Creek Rim. She expertly packs Monster and heaves it onto her shoulders. Although she still struggles under its weight, carrying it is no longer as burdensome as it was at the start of her hike. It is already hot when Strayed sets off. She rations her water as she weaves through dry creek beds and gullies. At midday, she stops for lunch and admires the raptors soaring above. The barren landscape allows her to see far into the distance, but she fears a mountain lion might be stalking her. She sings songs to distract herself and pass the time. Soaring temperatures make her long for the cold air and snow of the Sierras. Later that afternoon, as she gazes up at raptors, she decides never to return home. She then becomes concerned as her water supply dwindles. Concern turns to self-recrimination when she finds that the water tank she’d been counting on is empty. Strayed hikes to a nearby reservoir, a murky pond bordered by a dirt beach. She purifies the water, pumps it into her two bottles, and adds drops of iodine in case the water is still contaminated. She waits the requisite 30 minutes for the iodine to act and then drinks both bottles. She repeats the operation and then sleeps under the stars. A few hours later, she wakes to the sensation of gentle patting and realizes she is covered with slimy frogs. She scrambles to her feet, finds a place to pitch her tent, and sleeps through the rest of the night.
Morning brings new challenges. In her first hour of hiking, Strayed nearly steps on a rattlesnake. Her blistered feet throb in the heat of the afternoon. She takes a detour to a general store in Cassel. She wants a Snapple lemonade but only has 76 cents. The clerk recognizes her as a long-distance hiker and offers her a place to camp behind the store. She accepts and picks up a Snapple lemonade, which the clerk sells her for 76 cents. She drinks her lemonade outside as she watches traffic whiz by. A man named Rex, when he sees her battered feet, tells her she needs new boots. He then informs her that REI has a satisfaction guarantee policy and suggests she call. She hikes to her next resupply stop the following day. She calls REI and is thrilled when they promise to send her new boots free of charge via overnight mail. She retrieves her resupply box, finds the $20 bill inside, and joins a crowd of tourists lining up for ice cream. Strayed's good mood fades when the package from REI fails to arrive the next day. The following morning she walks back to the store to wait for the mail, but later that day she learns that REI has not sent her new boots yet. She arranges for the boots to be mailed to her next pitstop at Castle Crags. The prospect of hiking 83 miles in her old boots fills her with dread. She then recalls visiting an astrologer, who told her that a father’s job was to teach his children to be warriors. People without fathers had to teach themselves to be strong. She thinks of the way her father belittled her, puts on her sandals, and starts hiking.
Part 4, Chapter 13 Summary: “The Accumulation of Trees”
Chapter 13 offers a brief history of the PCT before describing Strayed's hike to Castle Crags. She spends the night on a wooden bridge spanning a creek and falls asleep to the sound of running water. The next morning, she climbs nearly 1,700 feet through thick pine forests in her sandals. After lunch, she reluctantly puts on her hiking boots to traverse ill-maintained trails. Late that afternoon, she sits on the sloped trail and takes off her boots to soothe her sore feet. Monster topples over, hitting one of her boots and sending it down the steep incline. Filled with frustration, she launches her other boot down the slope and continues hiking in her sandals. She follows the trail until she reaches an area cleared by loggers. The site of barren earth unsettles her, who ponders her complicity in environmental destruction. She then thinks about her family. A week before hiking the PCT, she visited her mother’s grave and went to the house to say goodbye to Eddie, who was throwing a Memorial Day party. she became upset when she saw the kitchen table, which had been defaced by partygoers. Leif led her to the gazebo where she and Paul had been married. The two climbed into the hammock, where Strayed fell asleep thinking about their mother. She and Leif then pondered the values their mother instilled in them.
She hikes through the logged area until she realizes she is lost. She breaks her sandal climbing a heap of dirt, forcing her to repair it with duct tape. Although she is lost, she is not afraid. She has enough food and water to survive for more than a week in the wilderness. She is confident that if she keeps walking, she will eventually find civilization. The next morning, she realizes that she left her beloved Bob Marley t-shirt on a branch to dry the day before. She is saddened by the loss but not enough to backtrack. She presses forward until she finds a highway. A man in a pickup gives her a ride to the PCT, which is nearly an hour away. Strayed resumes her hike, reaching Castle Crags by midafternoon. She goes to the post office to pick up her resupply box and is thrilled to find her new REI boots. Afterward, she encounters hikers who also became lost on the PCT. The group eats cheeseburgers and fries before drinking cheap wine at the campground. She throws up. The next morning, she takes a shower, reads the letters her friends sent, and gets ready to finish the California portion of the PCT.
Part 4, Chapter 14 Summary: “Wild”
Chapter 14 centers on Strayed's final days hiking in California before entering Oregon. She is optimistic that her new boots will ease her pain, but they soon cut into her skin. Her despair lasts well into her second day out of Castle Crags. Close encounters with rattlesnakes exacerbate her misery. Feeling hot, sick, and angry, she stops for lunch beneath a tree and inadvertently falls asleep. She wakes after having a nightmare that Bigfoot is kidnapping her. Later that day, she meets Stacy and Rex, who tell her they want to attend the Rainbow Gathering at Toad Lake, an event that includes music, bonfires, and cookouts. She is excited, having attended the Rainbow Gathering a few years earlier. She digs out the condom she saved from Kennedy Meadows and hikes faster than usual, keen to participate in the Rainbow Gathering. When she, Stacy, and Rex arrive at Toad Lake, however, there is no one in sight. The dejected trio come across a pickup filled with revelers, who complain that the Rainbow Gathering is a bust. Strayed and Stacy return to Toad Lake, where they meet other hikers and talk about their experiences on the PCT.
Strayed's bad luck continues the next day when she encounters a bear. Other obstacles include icy snow, which causes her to fall on the trail. Conditions are so bad she resorts to crawling. Feeling vulnerable, she starts to envy the people hiking in pairs. Then she reminds herself that she is brave and unafraid. She encounters an errant llama later that day. The llama’s owner, an elderly woman named Vera, thanks Strayed for catching it. A five-year-old boy with Vera bonds with Strayed because he, too, lost a parent. Vera takes a picture of her with Monster before the three part ways. That afternoon, she comes across a picnic table with fresh fruit, vegetables, and a Snapple lemonade. A note reveals that the gift is from Sam and Helen, two hikers she encountered earlier on the PCT. This act of kindness blunts the day’s hardships. Strayed ends the day thinking about her father. She decides not to be amazed by his lack of love, choosing instead to be amazed by nature, which makes her feel both safe and humble.
Part 4 Analysis
Strayed's ambivalent relationship with hiking plays a central role in Part 4 as it does in the rest of her memoir. In Chapter 12, for example, she bemoans the conditions on Hat Creek Rim, a barren landscape where “the temperature moved from hot to hotter” (192), causing the water in her bottles to get “so hot it almost hurt [her] mouth” (192). She sweats profusely as she hikes. She compares her sweat to tears, thereby alluding to her pain on the trail: “I stopped and bent over, pressing my hands to my knees to ease my back for a moment. The sweat dripped from my face onto the pale dirt like tears” (193). Heat is not the only obstacle she faces on Hat Creek Rim. The rugged landscape is full of “jagged desert plants” (193) that scratch her calves and are “entirely inhospitable to human life” (193). Although Strayed rations her water as she hikes, she is nevertheless parched when she reaches the water tank described in her guidebook. The note taped to the tank–no water–leads to an intense episode of self-recrimination:
I kicked the dirt and grabbed fistfuls of sage and threw them, furious with myself for yet again doing the wrong thing, for being the same idiot I’d been the very day I set foot on the trail. The same one who had purchased the wrong size boots and profoundly underestimated the amount of money I’d need for the summer, and even maybe the same idiot who believed I could hike this trail (194).
Despite experiencing physical and mental hardships on the PCT, Strayed ultimately derives pleasure and purpose from long-distance hiking. In Chapter 13, she describes the power that comes from walking in nature without a set purpose: “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. The experience was powerful and fundamental” (207). In Chapter 14, she stops to admire the vibrant colors of a patch of flowers swaying in the wind: “When I tossed the peach pit, I saw that I was surrounded by hundreds of azaleas in a dozen shades of pink and pale orange, a few of their petals blowing off in the breeze. They seemed to be a gift to me” (232). She even finds beauty on Hat Creek Rim, despite being desperately low on water: “A wide valley spread below me into the distance, interrupted by green volcanic mountains to both the north and the south. Even in my anxious state, I couldn’t help but feel rapturous at the beauty” (195).
For Strayed, solo long-distance hiking is both terrifying and lonely. She wishes she had someone to lean on as she struggles in icy conditions in Chapter 14: “I felt stupid and weak and sorry for myself, vulnerable in a way I hadn’t felt on the trail before, envious of the couples who had each other, and of Rex and Stacy who had so easily become a hiking pair” (229). Similarly, in Chapter 11, she worries about her safety as she hitchhikes from Chester to Old Station: “I felt a sick flutter in my gut as I attempted to discern, in the flash of a second, what [the driver’s] intentions were. He looked like a nice enough guy, I decided, when I glanced at the bumper of his car. On it, there was a green sticker that said IMAGINE WHIRLED PEAS. Has there ever been a serial killer who imagined whirled peas?” (177). Strayed's fear turns to loneliness in Chapter 12, when the other hikers leave her behind in Cassel to wait for her new boots: “As I gazed at the thundering water, I felt almost invisible among the people with their cameras, fanny packs, and Bermuda shorts” (201). She is particularly impacted by the couples, who remind her of her failed romantic relationships: “To witness the way they leaned into each other and laced their fingers together and tugged each other tenderly down the paved path was almost unbearable. I was simultaneously sickened by it and envious of what they had” (201).
Solitude on the PCT engenders not only fear and loneliness but also a sense of freedom. Strayed touches on the issue of freedom several times in Part 3. Chapter 11, for instance, describes a conversation between her and Spider about a curious experiment. According to Spider, researchers in France wanted to know if apes could create art. To this end, they showed apes paintings and equipped them with charcoal pencils. One of the apes eventually drew its own cage, an act Spider interprets as a commentary on freedom: “What it draws is the bars of its own motherfucking cage. Its own motherfucking cage! Man, that’s the truth, ain’t it? I can relate to that and I bet you can too, sister” (184). She replies that she can, indeed, relate, while Dave stresses that the desire for freedom is universal: “‘We can all relate to that, man,’ said Dave, and he turned in his seat so he and Spider could do a series of motorcycle blood brother hand jives in the air between them” (184). At several moments during her hike, Strayed finds strength in herself and embraces her solitude: “Maybe I was more alone than anyone in the whole wide world” (189), she writes at the end of Chapter 11. Then she adds, “Maybe that was okay” (189).
Hiking the PCT alone gives Strayed the time and space she needs to quiet her mind and gain the perspective she needs to make important life decisions. In Chapter 12, while struggling under the heat of Hat Creek Rim, she decides not to return to Minnesota at the end of the summer: “I will never go home, I thought with a finality that made me catch my breath, and then I walked on, my mind emptying into nothing but the effort to push my body through the bald monotony of the hike” (193). Her decision reflects her growth on the PCT. She realizes that the place she called home no longer exists: her mother is dead, her relationship with her siblings and Eddie has grown distant, and her marriage has ended. By not returning home, she is accepting the hard truth that the life she once had is irretrievably lost.
Strayed's transformations on the PCT are both mental and physical. In Chapter 12, she describes packing Monster in five minutes (a task that used to take her an hour) and carrying the pack with more ease than she did at the start of her journey. Weeks of hiking made her strong and muscular. The wounds created by Monster, moreover, had finally healed, a transformation she describes with imagery drawn from nature:
Bearing Monster’s weight had changed me on the outside too. My legs had become as hard as boulders, their muscles seemingly capable of anything, rippling beneath my thinning flesh in ways they never had. The patches on my hips and shoulders and tailbone that had repeatedly bled and scabbed over in the places where Monster’s straps rubbed my body had finally surrendered, becoming rough and pocked, my flesh morphing into what I can only describe as a cross between tree bark and a dead chicken after it’s been dipped in boiling water and plucked (190).
Strayed's mental transformations are harder to discern but no less significant. In addition to deciding not to return to Minnesota, she also came to terms with the emotional wounds left by her biological father. Her abusive father abandoned her when she was six years old. His inability to love her stunned her: “It amazed me every time. Again and again and again. Of all the wild things, his failure to love me the way he should have had always been the wildest thing of all” (233). After nearly two months on the PCT, she is no longer amazed by the lack of love her father showed her, choosing instead to focus on all the other amazing things in the world:
There were so many other amazing things in this world. They opened up inside of me like a river. Like I didn’t know I could take a breath and then I breathed. I laughed with the joy of it, and the next moment I was crying my first tears on the PCT. I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn’t crying because I was happy. I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I wasn’t crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full (234).
Strayed's transformation coincides with a key moment in her journey—the shift from California to Oregon. She describes the road behind her in evocative and unvarnished terms: “I was entering. I was leaving. California streamed behind me like a long silk veil. I didn’t feel like a big fat idiot anymore. And I didn’t feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too” (234). To lift the veil on something is to divulge or reveal a thing that was once secret. She alludes to this idiom by comparing her journey to a veil, thereby underscoring the newfound insight she has into her life.
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