Ep 66 Wild by Cheryl Strayed: Grief, Finding Yourself, and Journeying as a Female | Books That Made Us College Follow Up Artwork

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Ep 66 Wild by Cheryl Strayed: Grief, Finding Yourself, and Journeying as a Female | Books That Made Us College Follow Up

June 17, 2025 • Besties and the Books • Episode 66

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Today’s episode is officially our second non fiction / memoir that we’re reviewing on the podcast and a follow up to our “books that made us” series covering our college years. Ashley and Liz both presented five of the books that helped shape our personalities as early 20-something’s in the world, put all the titles into our trusted BATB beanie™, and then chose one to reread. The result: us covering Wild, the super popular story of Cheryl Strayed solo hiking 1200 miles of California’s Pacific Crest Trail with no prior backpacking experience as her way of processing her mother’s sudden death.

This was Ashley’s first time on this journey, and Liz’s second. Follow along as we rate and review the story, writing quality and style, explore the author’s background and purpose in writing a memoir, delve into whether we think their story warranted an entire book dedicated to their journey, if it met our expectations, and if we connected with any of the themes on a personal level.

We discuss high and low reviews, its popularity, the audiobook and movie adaptations, and if we think it deserves the hype. And we also make sure to bring a fave and fail outdoor edition, and a smash or pass PCT / Lincoln commercial edition.

Watch the Books That Made Us Playlist! | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t6T0pPbgkc&list=PLHf5v0KOoZMlj_YBqZCxmyIZi8Idv0mkI&pp=gAQB

Watch the Farenheit 182 Mark Hoppus of blink 182 Memoir | https://youtu.be/NXoRDLDg_iA?si=nDCV8-Pb9lvEowgX

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Check out these author interviews? ⬇️

We interviewed Callie Hart all about her NYT Bestseller Quicksilver! Watch it here! https://youtu.be/CED5s7qDBdQ?si=8xtIRO1IzX6Rsld4

Check the official Author Interview with Lindsay Straube of Split or Swallow! Now a Barnes & Noble & Amazon best seller titled: Kiss of the Basilisk! https://youtu.be/fknhocSNIKM

Need more ACOTAR in your life? Cook your way through Velaris with the help of Chelsea Cole and her cookbook A Feast of Thorns & Roses. Check out our author interview here! https://youtu.be/fjzmqd-x3OA?si=kNJ4D9cxvUjhp-Ik

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Ashley is Wearing: “Read Books Stay Weird” Tee by @Shopwildeshadows | https://www.wildeshadows.com

Liz is Wearing: ”Fire Breathing Bit*h Tee” by @chaptercatchers | https://www.etsy.com/listing/1714014123/aelin-galathynius-baby-tee-throne-of?ga_search_query=Fire%2Bbreathing&ref=shop_items_search_1&logging_key=c1da6191cd33d48291f4deedd9718af946825003%3A1714014123

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grew up at the base of the Sierras where this book begins i'm going to go with horse death on this one horse death how many outdoorsy stories do we have about Yeah men who run ultramarathons or There's a bear at the campsite and she turns to us and says "All I got to do is outrun you guys." Welcome to the Besties in the Books podcast guys i'm Liz and I'm Ashley and today we're going to be diving into the wild with Wild by Cheryl Stray see what I did there this is going to be our second memoir feature/nonfiction book for this podcast and it's also for now kind of like our completion for our books that made us series until we continue on later date maybe we do like books that made us scared i don't know like you know yeah that's actually a good idea this is the first I'm hearing of this but I like that idea my head cuz I never want the chapters to close okay i never want to put a full pin in it so I mean obviously this series has been more about books that made us like who we are in our formative years but hey maybe we can continue it in a different capacity you guys let us know it could be like books that made us get into fantasy books that made you know me get into dark romance books that made us scared i do like that one for us horror girlies you know yeah books that made us time i literally I'll write that down guys i will write that down it's a good idea handy dandy notebook yeah let's do it let's do it okay but what are we here for Liz what is this episode about so let the people know if you've been following along this is our third installment as we've just said we're not ready to wrap it up so it's our it's it's this section is over but it's not a wrap-up on Books at Beta so we did elementary school edition where we reread Well Ashley reread I read for the first time The Dark is Rising we did high school edition where we reread The Great Gatsby and came to the conclusion that we love it even more than we did back then mhm um and now we're here in the college years time yes um and that's how we you know came around to reading wild so you know if you're new here what we do is basically each come to the table with five books that made us from this time period we literally write them down put them into a hat pick one out to reread and Wild was one of my picks yeah if you missed that video I'll pop a little tag up here if you're watching the YouTube you can just click on that watch that video first come back if you want and yeah in the description box of the podcast if you want to see all those yeah I mean they're fun it's fun just like finding out i mean you know Ashley and I have been best friends since the ninth grade i still had no idea what a lot of the books that she would bring to the table like for any of these were so that was cool um so it's fun and it was so nostalgic especially the last episode guys i mean I think we were all like crying over borders you know crying at the club yeah i just My sister just texted me about that episode today she was like "Rip borders and concert tickets that weren't a million dollars." I'm like "Yeah so we cover all things we cover all this stuff." Um but yeah so Wild was one of my picks so this was a first time reread for me so I had not reread it since um you know my early mid20s whatever whenever that time was what is time um and then this was Ashley's first time reading it in yeah it was it cuz I cuz I was confused on that episode i had read it or not i don't think I did okay but now I'm still confused even if I did maybe I would have started it or maybe considered it at the library cuz it wasn't like But I watched the movie for sure in the movie theaters which we'll talk about of course because we did do a rewatch um so you know I don't think I read it but you know hey felt new to me everything felt new to me 10 to 15 years ago we don't know let's consolidate the first read for me i'm okay with that label yeah great um I feel like I got completely different things out of it this time around reading it the second time so I'm excited to discuss that um and you know if you guys were possibly here for our first memoir non-fic episode where we covered Mark Hoppus' book Fahrenheit 182 then you kind of know what the um like the format is a little bit different obviously we're not going to give you a playbyplay we're not going to do a five-s sentence summary or anything like that because memoirs are just a different layout so what we're going to do is we're going to talk about you know was it well written do we feel like this was a cash grab or what you know was this actually something that contributed that we really enjoyed reading but we will start off still with our spoiler-free star and spice rating um and then who we would recommend it for so we still will make sure that you guys have that info you know right in the first 15ish minutes and then we'll give you the the spoiler warning still will be coming yeah and when it comes to memoirs I mean we're not going through it in the trenches like you do in the memoirs you know that's what I gleamed from doing our first covering of the Blinkquin 82 memoir because there's so much that happens in it it's not like obviously reading a fantasy novel where if we say a major plot point it's going to ruin it you know and some people wouldn't even want to read it then memoirs we're not we don't go into like line by line so not really i feel like you could probably stick around you know um even if uh you haven't read it yet to find out if you like it and if you'd be interested in it because it's like you know you know the general things that I always wonder when I pick up a memoir from like a you know fairly well-known person especially because this became a huge hit right is like we know that she survived the hike we know that she's still she's the one that wrote it yeah yeah it's like we know all the important information so it's not like there's going to be a a twistier attorney that you're just going to sit there and be like "Oh my god I didn't see that coming." Especially this one yeah yeah this one it's more about the journey that you want to read yeah like like literally like this is this literally so anything that we say here shouldn't be a spoiler but kind of go into it you know knowing that you're going to get some information but not all of it it's not We're not a 350 page podcast right here so that's the book i think it's more so like hey are you looking to try out memoirs and you're wanting to see if you might enjoy this one find out or like uh did you skip over it maybe because you thought it was overhyped or something find out what we think about it and then maybe proceed from there you know yeah and we'll talk about like you know the audio book ad the movie adaptation all that kind of good stuff to see if it's worth going into the whole I don't know what you call it when it's not uh fiction is it We'll definitely say book versus movie you know for sure we'll do that for sure cuz I definitely have opinions now re-watching the movie so me too for sure i just watched it a few days ago and I definitely have thoughts so before we get into all that we just wanted to say thank you so much for being here dude thank you guys so much for being here taking time out of your day and your book to come and hang out with us we love you guys and thank you we appreciate it make sure to like follow and subscribe if you aren't yet anywhere you listen to your favorite podcast including YouTube like I mentioned we're hanging out there live and in action i don't know something like that we're in the Books podcast everywhere including Tik Tok and Instagram so come and hang out there and if you want to join our fun little virtual antisocial social book club come check us out on Fable at besties in the book club we got our monthly book club picks when we do these little buddy reads we put them up there we're just having a good old time so come read with us we just read Enchantra i thought it'd be funny to start this episode off with a favor fail but like outdoorsy edition oh nice yeah because uh literally the subject matter uh leads us there so let's do it i got him okay let's go liz you go first well okay so my fail is so dumb but it like literally is the one thing that like sticks out in my mind forever like it's never And it has a little nugget of like millennial nostalgia in there too so I was like"Okay." Okay so remember when the Adidas track pants were like literally so popular that everyone was wearing them even if you didn't play sports like just everyone was wearing yeah sporty Spice oh yeah for sure okay did you remember Do you remember the the jacket with the like so navy blue i had the navy blue with the white stripes down the arms and then I had lime green logo loved it it's like almost windbreaker material yeah yeah loved that thing oh my gosh material yeah like every time you walk anywhere yeah m I want that again okay go ahead i do not want that again just let the record state maybe the pants I could do i just watched Bring It On last night okay and the night before yeah so maybe the pants but the jacket too it's too far it's very loud yeah um everyone can hear you coming from a mile away okay literally okay it also sounds like you're scarred from them so let's hear it i'm not scarred from them i'm not okay so I you know we didn't have a whole lot of money growing up so like you know I had asked my parents for this like these Adidas track pants right and it was like this big deal that I not they're not the knockoff ones they're the real ones like I was so excited to get them you know i wore them all the time loved them this is back when I also played basketball so I was kind of like a little bit sporty so it's like I could pull them off and um so my dad is a big camper hiker fisherman outdoorsman he always has been and so as kids he would take my sister and I to do all these things often and um so we were on our like one of our summer camping trips and we were going on our little hike or whatever to go find some fishing spots and I slipped on like a bank of rocks and slid and put a huge hole in my Adidas track pants a and they're so slippery too there's there no traction you're just going down the mountain luckily I was fine i was fine it wasn't like a cliff situation otherwise Yeah i would have been just like long gone um no it was just devastating and to this day I must have been like what 12 13 maybe like I was still in middle school so yeah probably 12 and to this day that stands out in my mind as like this tragedy that like I've never quite gotten over maybe I do need to buy myself a new pair of track pants it's a healing it's a healing thing okay i'll look them up after this they're probably a million dollars now great i don't know now because like Leisure Wear is so popular um you know they probably have like the new version or whatever it's probably fine i'll check i mean if you want those specific ones good luck but you know take the new and improved yeah no it's fine i could just go to the Adidas website and see what they have there but yeah okay i'll report back about this later yeah great um so that was the fail that just like sticks out of my mind i'm sure there's a million more of them but I've never quite gotten over that again yeah we'll read another wilderness book and make it another fail yeah to be continued um my fave I have a lot of outdoorsy faves from over the years um just because of the fact that yeah I did so many fun outdoor things with my family however I feel like we needed to mention just in case if you weren't going to mention it or maybe you were I don't know but Ashley and me and two of our other friends took a camping out of the car road trip from Bakersfield all the way out to Colorado and back um when I wasn't even 21 yet I remember that nope so just me yeah doing some getting you know some supplies occasionally in the places we could i remember we definitely camped in a couple dry counties where it's like there was Yeah um but that for sure stands out in my mind as one of the best outdoorsy experiences I've ever had for sure absolutely mhm oh I mean just like driving through Vegas with you guys in the middle of the night and like just driving around trying to find good places to camp and all these beautiful like mountainy areas and like going to Bryce Canyon and hiking that and like yeah it was just it was just such a it was like a care there's nothing more carefree than going on a trip like that like when you're that age because your responsibilities are so few yeah like you don't have like quote unquote real jobs yet you know you don't have real responsibilities yet and it's just about you in the road man and your gaggle of friends y agree so good i mean I think about it now like literally knock on wood I've only ever been in one major car accident and it happened like right before we were meant to leave i I was fine like luckily everyone involved was fine and it was just like a stupid thing but my car I drove like a little Kia at the time was completely 100% totaled okay well I had to figure out a way to get rid of it so I remember I literally was able to like drive this tin can clicketity clacky like up to my apartment cuz the um the accident happened like right down the street i literally just like parked it in like the end parking lot of my apartment complex and then just like left and went on this camping trip for like a week and a half or whatever like no cares in the world it's fine you know that's that's a problem for me in two weeks not now exactly i remember my landlord called me when we were gone you know we had like the tiny like Nokia cell phones with no internet on them you know that's another thing is it was just like very you were actually disconnected so you had to be very present with the people you were with because there just there wasn't other options um and I remember they called me on my cell phone when I finally got service and they were like"Hey you have to do something about this like total car you just left here." And I'm like "Yeah I'm in Colorado right now i'll take care of it when I get back." Yeah it's just that level of carefreeness is hard to replicate you know what I mean like once you get older so I just I have very very many good memories from that trip i think it's that carefree and the responsibilities plus technology you know we talk about having just little Nokia phones you could check in but we're not all glued to our phones and also just the my my mom has actually talked about this before is just like how accessible everybody is all the time like that has been that was such an adjustment especially for my mom's generation that like was well if I'm not if I don't answer my phone leave a message I'll get around to it now it's like you're available all the time unless you set those boundaries so having that road trip where like that doesn't even exist yet and you're just going i mean we're probably using maps and map quests at that point like literal maps i think one of our guys had like a old school TomTom or something we used i don't I remember we had I we had paper atlases this is what I remember we had paper atlases and maps because we didn't have any other like you couldn't pull up a map on your phone or anything like that i don't think they had anything because I remember at one point we got lost and we had to pull over and call one of our friends so that they could like go on Google and look up directions and give them to us verbally over the phone ah yes so hey yeah we had this we had this great we had and it was a little sedan one of our friends cars and we were packed to the gills like with wood and everything for campfires and so we had a we had a rule that it was whoever is driving you have to have a the passenger has to stay awake you know the back people can sleep cuz we were driving throughout the middle of the night and everything it was awesome and that was so so that was so fun too cuz we're just going through different CDs and I remember so I'll just continue on as a fave outdoorsy for me too because of course that's what I was going to talk about lots of outdoorsy things that I loved but that road trip especially Bryce Canyon to this day nothing has been more beautiful to my eyes than that and I've seen a lot of beautiful things so like to me I'm Bryce Canyon over the Grand Canyon you know you guys planning your summer trips It's fine like it's grand but like the beauty of the colors in Bryce Canyon it's a little bit easier too you know of like different hike levels and stuff where the Grand Canyon you kind of just go to the rim and you're like cool unless you're going to do like this really strenuous activity so a little bit more difficult um but I don't know i'm like there's prettier things but hey so that was probably my favorite part uh visuallywise but yeah just I remember when we were driving through like the forever um might have been at some point in Arizona and I was like we are going to remember this for the rest of our lives like we will never have another I mean maybe we will but like theoretically this could be like the only time ever in our lives that we have this moment and that is a time in my life where you know Andy in the office says I wish that we knew the good old days when we were in them that I knew like I was purposely very present for the whole thing not that there's some things I didn't I'm sure I forgot multiple things i don't remember calling a friend phoning a friend for maps but like in general like I knew this is a sacred moment for sure beautiful beautiful time and there was we only kind of roughly mapped out what we were going to do and we had wiggle room which I think is the way to do it you know it's like a balance yeah well now now it's just different anyways because no matter where you are you're going to be connected most likely in some way right it's like if something happens like you're probably close enough to figure out how to get to a hotel or close enough to call someone or go on the internet or maybe even call an Uber or like it's just it's a different level of winging it that now would just be kind of impossible to do yeah and so yeah unless you just don't have service and then you'll probably be back into service in a little bit anyways you know what I mean it's like yeah we're not going to you know we weren't in like a crazy like Alaskan wilderness like you know what I mean we were camping but it wasn't like in the middle middle of nowhere yeah yeah it was more like oh we're setting up this tent now in the middle of the night oops bears around but oh well yeah hey we we're fine more advent it's definitely more of an adventurous feeling for sure and also just like a like a carefreeness that comes from being young and like unconcerned about probably some things you should be concerned about for sure you know what I mean for sure yeah like the bear situation like did any of us have any bear spray like I don't even know i don't think so no which brings me to my next story my bear encounter okay good segue okay good segue so yes I did grow up also you know we Liz and I grew up at the base of the Sierras so we were all this book begins yeah where this book begins so very nostalgic and it was really cool to see like all the read about all the different places and I'm like "Hey I know that place hey I know that place that's crazy." So yeah our family also was super into camping and things like backpacking so that was like a huge bonding thing me and my family would do and it was it was the summer of no I think I was in 8th gradeish and the one of the biggest backpacking trips that we were going to do it was like seven or eight days in Mammoth Lakes and shout out to Mammoth what's up i got to go there in a few weeks i'm so excited so yeah we were planning this big backpacking trip and for backpacking like you need a condition for it and everything it's pretty intense like we're out in the wilderness there's no plumbing there's nothing so and it's my family of there's seven of us including my parents but I think my little sister didn't go cuz she would have been really young so she might have stayed with the grandparent and so it was four plus my sister's boyfriend at the time so there was seven of us okay anyways so let's fast forward it's grueling we do like 8 miles a day we're all loving it we're having a blast it's a day four into our trek into Mammoth Lakes and at the time bears were starting to become a problem but we were still not having mandatory bear boxes which bear boxes obviously they're more bear safe they will you know protect your food so back then we were still being able to tandem tie them to the trees to try to keep bears out well day four didn't work so we wake up in the middle of the night my mom is like"Ashley don't freak out." Instantly makes me freak out my sister has a headlamp on and is putting on her hiking boots because there's a bear at the campsite and she turns to us and says "All I got to do is outrun you guys." Like "Thanks sis." She's a high schooler like what are you going to do that's what they do so I'm like scared but also like it's going to be fine but I'm definitely like "Oh my gosh." Like shaking and it's going to be fine so we can hear him climb the tree take his nail and just flick the rope it drops on the ground and he just had his Yogi Bear feast and ate all of our food and so what it was funny it was a very like it's one of a fave story of mine now because like you know obviously you survive you live it it's like funny in high in the moment you're like so freaked out my dad I remember like 20 minutes into us just listening to the this bear eat all of our food and he finally like left but there was a stream nearby so we were like don't get out of the tent dad he's like I got to go to the bathroom so he's we're like don't go he's probably just getting a drink or something so he starts getting out to go runs back in he's not going yet and my boyfriend my sister's boyfriend and my brother were in another tent so that was kind of funny we were like talking is he still there yep he's still there you know you guys good we're good so uh anyway so he eventually left and we all went to sleep to deal with it tomorrow cuz Yeah that's tomorrow's problem what are you going to do yeah yeah and the tent the campsite was trashed and he had even the bear had taken a toothbrush and like dipped it into one of those powders that you eat on the trail and was like eating it like that dude it was crazy we had nothing but like maybe a couple we brought like a lot of these peanut butter individual packs we had like a couple of those so what did we have to do that day with no food walk the four days back into town into our car cuz we had nothing you know we had fishing poles but what are the chances you're going to catch enough fish to feed seven people you know so dude it was crazy that was very grueling but you know what made me stronger for it for sure and look at here i'm now I'm sitting here telling the story i got to tell so it's a fail in that it was definitely a time that like I said canisters were coming onto the scene for backpackers in that area the bear problem is really bad there especially now so um you know they never made that mistake again so canisters from then on out yeah yikes me and my family have a lot of bear stories so I'll save it for the next one yep yeah my husband loves to tell a bear story about how when he was a kid he and his I don't know if it was both of his parents or just his dad had taken him and his sister camping and a bear came into their campsite and his dad grabbed his sister and ran away and Kanan was just there by him oh jeez everyone was obviously fine but he he loves to tell that story like about how he just he got left behind i'm sure it wasn't as dramatic as it sounds yeah but to a kid Yeah yeah yeah okay so should we get into just our spoilerfree Well I have a question for you before we get into our spoiler-free reviews because I saw this on Bookstagram actually yesterday and um it kind of made me start thinking about it a little bit do you think that because memoirs are the you know recounting of real people's lives that we should be reviewing them at all yes because we're not reviewing whether their life is worthy or not necessarily too life get out of here yeah terrible bye we're a lot of times reviewing this as like was it good quality yeah like not the life but the book itself you know cuz you could have a awesome story and not know how to write it you know or you know yeah sometimes people's memoirs you know like you say maybe they don't need to have it out there but hey yeah I agree with you i was just kind of curious to hear your take obviously I know you agree with it cuz we're like filming this episode otherwise you'd be like I have problems with the ethics of this um but I agree with you too on there are many different ways to rate a book and you know we're talking about writing quality writing style um the story in general like if we feel like it was worth telling or is it just you know to sell sell more books um and how we found it relatable to us and so yeah I agree but someone was just talking about it yesterday and so I thought it brought up an interesting point like how you know how do we rate people's real life stories about their lives well this is how Yeah we're doing it just Yeah come on i think sometimes we can overthink things a little bit a little bit i agree so my personal opinion also we're not going around rating people's lives or lived experiences or stories that didn't choose to publicly write and publish them so there's also that you Yeah we're allowed to critique things because then in that argument you can say well this fantasy story came from their heart and they really believe in it you know it's like let's it's a slippery slope here so yeah we're not saying their life is not worth living if we're giving a poor review most of the times it's like what was this mess like why did a mess as in writing quality yeah not them as a person so or maybe them as a person isn't good too but that's Yeah maybe they're a bad person so I don't know yeah we'll say it so hey so okay okay so why don't you just give your uh spoilerfree star rating and who you'd recommend the book for yeah so I would give this memoir a five star against other memoirs that I've also read and enjoyed while for me personally it wasn't profound just for me I could see how it could be for other people and I personally would definitely reread this again it feels like what would have the makings of a comfort read for me m absolutely yeah and then who it would be good for um uh let's see a lot of people people looking into self-discovery people that like outdoors things and maybe don't and want to glean some information on that um people that like journey books of self-discovery yeah totally i agree with you so um yeah if you enjoy memoirs in general um yeah I would say specifically journey books or like books of um you know a metaphorical and physical journey right because I feel like oftent times like they're telling that story but using it as a literary device to work through whatever um you know kind of caused them to go on this journey in the first place right um so if that's kind of your thing I think that you would really enjoy it i think this would be a great memoir for people looking to get into memoir because it's not very long and it's very engaging so you know if you're like I've never tried one before like I wonder what I would think about it i feel like this might be a good one yeah and started I'll also give credit to Miss Cheryl for doing flashbacks and jumping timelines without confusing me because I put that here too yeah i literally did that has been done wrong in a lot of memoirs that I've read this one is exactly what I want so she I think it's because she's following the timeline of her trail journey and doing the flashbacks of kind of what led her there but still in a way that makes sense you know yes I completely agree um I also rated it five stars mhm um you know when I read this the first time like I said previously just kind of touched on and I'll talk more about once we get in kind of to the details of the story um you know I really enjoyed it for the kind of more surface level physical journey of just wanting to read about a woman hiking this very long you know 1,200 mile or whatever hike by herself and how fascinating that was to me as a let's say 25year-old who had not done anything like that right yeah for sure um it's just it's interesting like people who do these amazing things you know um yeah now as a 36 soon to be 37year-old I definitely got a lot more out of the metaphorical journey um and I feel like I loved I rated it five stars because I feel like there's just a lot of different things that different people can get out of it yeah um whether it's surface level entertainment or whether you resonate with the subject matter on a very personal level um if you need something that's a little bit like you know I could say even like motivational or like quote unquote like self-helpy but that is not at all a self-help book i feel like I appreciated it for that aspect as well so yeah definitely five stars i would rate it technically for a memoir a one spice because there are some scenes in there um so just be aware of that but it was nothing that was like too in my opinion like over the top or explicit it was just real it was what happened definitely ag let's do it hey boo boo picnic basket i'm going to take your spoilers and share them let's go that's my spoiler sound so the first thing that I put on here was what Ashley had mentioned before what was the structure of the memoir so same it it was her hike in chronological order yeah okay so you're literally on this journey with her on you know from beginning to end start to finish of the trail um where she will be walking along and as you do when you've been alone and haven't seen another human being in three or four or five days or a week or whatever you have all these inner thoughts right mhm and so it would bring back memories or um you know something would trigger a thought and then she would go back in time and tell that story um and so yeah I felt like it was really organic and done in a way that wasn't confusing and that flowed well exactly exactly yeah so I really I definitely have read a lot of memoirs but when I'm just like confused about what's happening when and I it's hard to put two and two together yeah yeah so my one sentence of what this book is actually about so this book is about a young woman Cheryl devastated by her mother's sudden and untimely death from cancer processing her grief and allowing herself to heal through the experience of hiking 1,200 miles alone on the Pacific Crrest Trail from you know kind of around to Hatchape California to the border of California and Washington mhm over the course of what approximately three months Oregon and Washington but yeah oregon and Washington yeah yeah so yeah I think it took about three months or so but yeah so that's what this book is about um if you guys you know haven't seen the movie or weren't sucked into all the hype from 15 years ago or whatever 10 years ago just a little bit about Cheryl Strade so the author if you guys don't know um and I had to look up a couple things too because I was kind of curious um okay so she's written three books and I think she has kind of like a a fourth book that's more of like a kind of coffee table book or something like that um but so she wrote Wild that's obviously New York Times bestseller Oscar nominated movie came from it um it does get a 4.07 on Goodreads so it seems like it's fairly well-liked um her debut novel Torch which came out in 2012 gets a much lower rating on Goodreads it's a 3.6 63 um technically it's fiction but a lot of people say that it's very very very similar to her life and what she talks about in Wild so I don't know if maybe it's because it's repetitive or I'm not really sure i haven't read it um but she has that book as well then she has her most popular book which is called Tiny Beautiful Things which I am actually listening to right now on Libby nice um I was able to get it like immediately and I'm like 25% of the way in it it came highly recommended to me by a lot of different people but it's taken me this long to read it i actually have the physical copy right here as well oh nice um that was sitting in my bookshelf but I'm choosing to listen to it because Tiny Beautiful Things started off as a print advice column so most people who would write in to have her respond to their you know they would just ask her questions she would respond um anonymously didn't realize that it was Cheryl Strade who was doing it oh um so I thought that was kind of fascinating so Tiny Beautiful Thing started off as an advice column then it turned into a very popular podcast which I didn't realize yeah um and then they turned it into a TV show on Hulu which I actually have watched several episodes of but need to finish still um so I've been really enjoying Tiny Beautiful Things and that one gets a 4.15 average on Goodreads so yeah so that's just a little bit about her her works if you guys want to check out anything else um from her and like I said I've been thoroughly enjoying just kind of like the you know people just write in with their miscellaneous problems and then I feel like you know just as she kind of showed us in Wild she has that very like kind of more deep eloquent way of like looking at things and it comes through in her advice column as well which I appreciate and she does it without being pretentious too yeah 100% is I think what makes it so easy to digest and relatable as well mhm yeah had you ever heard of Cheryl Strait or like any of her stuff like before Wild came out nope yeah me neither i don't think so no okay so all in all how would you say that this memoir made you feel and did you connect with it on like a personal level at all so I do feel I mean I'm I'm a sucker for nostalgia if you can't tell so yeah just hearing about the different like stops and places she was walking through that I'm like "Oh I've literally been there was super cool." And I'm always super curious about people's experience on the Pacific Crust Trail cuz growing up as a full-on Californian you know it comes up like I know people that have done the Pacific Crest Trail and that is crazy it's wild to me if you will it's amazing so getting another glimpse into that I eat that up so I loved that it made me feel like connected like literally to the world as I've known it as far as nature goes and then um as far as Yeah like I was saying you know I might not connect with her on her personal experiences very much as you guys saw in the books that made us college i eat that up like I love finding out other people's plightes the goods the bads the uglies and the difficulties and the challenges that they've had because it just helps us to see humans as the multiaceted beings that they are so I connected with it in that way that I like hearing about other people's stories so what about you totally um I mean the fact that she starts hiking right around where my dad used to live it was really cool um and then yeah I mean especially growing up where we grew up it's like we may not have had like a very good understanding of what the Pacific Cra the trail the Pacific Crest Trail say that five times fast was when we were kids growing up but we were very very aware of you know hikers people passing through all the time like where a lot of the popular trails were you know we lived in an extremely rural area and you know it wouldn't be unusual to see people hiking through all the time so Oh yeah i I feel like Yeah it was very much like in our personal lives from a really young age so I did like connecting with that that was pretty cool yeah um and now living in the Pacific Northwest you know seeing her transition from that desert dry Southern California where we're from kind of situation and then end up where I am now in the rain and you know redwoods and furs and all that kind of stuff was pretty cool i was like look at that i've like lived in both places like it's pretty neat mhm um so I just put here when I was younger I connected more with her harrowing journey and the thought that maybe someday I'd do something like that so you know I am not a backpacker so not that but like you know just doing hard things right i feel like is a theme for sure and figuring out who you are she does this when she's in um you know her early to mid20s as well um and then I put "Now I connected much more with the metaphorical journey and had a much deeper understanding of what her relationship with her mom was like." I feel like that was a huge piece of this book for me this second time around because the first time I read this book I didn't really have much of a close relationship with my mom yeah um so I wasn't really able to relate to a lot of this stuff um the second time around I'm a lot closer with my mom i'm also a lot older so I feel like I can like understand her on a lot of different levels better and it just made me so grateful that like we were able to have like we're able to have that time you know what I mean i think that really just resonated with me because she does talk about like there's a quote here that I put that really resonated with me where um you know she's struggling with you know her mom died when she was what 45 I think super young that's so young um and when Cheryl herself was 22 and so she said quote "I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and [ __ ] about her with my friends and confront her about the things I wish she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again her death had obliterated that." Um and I feel like that is kind of a you know a lot of people are close with their mom their whole life like that wasn't the story for me and my mom it was very much like a journey to get there um you know very very tumultuous journey to get there and so reading quotes like that just really resonated with me this time around because I was just so grateful that like I was able to go through that period of time where you know we really didn't see eye to eye and didn't speak and didn't get each other and then I was able to get older and have more perspective and we were able to see each other a lot better and just having the opportunity to do that I feel like is such a gift yeah and feeling grateful for that yeah definitely so I feel like that's what I got more so out of this time around yeah that's beautiful so that's how it made me feel grateful um so let's see here do you think that Cheryl as an author so Cheryl Stray needed or that her life or this journey warranted that she write a whole memoir about it absolutely mhm listen men men write about their walks all the time right it's true how many of these stories do we have by women you know and what they've gone through so yes absolutely the more the marrier cuz like truly it's like Yeah we have How many outdoorsy stories do we have about Yeah men who run ultramarathons or men who do these crazy backpacking expeditions or go to Antarctica and like carry a sled you know what I mean it's like we have so many of those stories and I do think that as far as like in the outdoor adventure memoir space we could use a lot more women's stories i agree yeah and especially hers mid 90s pre- internet like we all only know what we can know but she even mentions like she doesn't have access to Google whatever she wants when it pops in her brain so she's really heavily relying on sales people you know at REI to prepare her and whatever men's journal she can find about this trail so yes we do need these women's voices and women's perspectives on different fronts i mean she didn't even have a cell phone on the trail guys like she had to hitchhike into town yeah to use a pay phone um I did really appreciate her examination of the differences and um I guess you could just call it lived experiences of women going through these things because it is a very different experience than a man going through these things yeah um or experiencing something like a 1200 mile hike you know by yourself it's just a completely different thing with a whole different set of expectations safety issues politics like it is very different yeah for sure so I like that she like talked about a lot of those things but didn't like that's not what the book was about because I don't feel like she wanted it to be about that she wanted it to be about her personal journey but she didn't ignore those things either and act like they weren't important right totally totally she Yeah and she didn't create fear with it either i don't know how to describe it yet i mean we'll talk about this when it comes to the movie but the movie bot vibes were totally different to me than the book so I agree the movie let's just say for now until we get more hashed out was more fearbased um and the book the book wasn't it's acknowledgement of things and it has a lot of symbolism throughout the book with that and moving on and and getting through it and getting through the motion moments for sure yeah i mean I feel like you know the best way to kind of talk about some of these points i put a lot of quotes down we'll have a specific quote section but I feel like it's just the best way to explain is you know she would rarely meet a woman on the trail right but she would meet tons of men all the time some of them hiking alone some of them hiking together in groups and there was one you know guy that she had met that she just says "He reminded me of all the golden boys I known in my life classically handsome and charmingly sure of his place at the very top of the heap confident that the world was his and that he was safe in it without ever having considered otherwise." Mhm and so I feel like is she sitting there and dwelling on the fact that she feels unsafe no but she's showing that there's just a different level of um shurnness in yourself in your place in the world in your safety in the world when you can exist freely like that as he did you know and I feel like that she just put it really beautifully i mean we think about all these interactions that she has and every one of them it's just a natural instinct so it doesn't feel pushy in any way like it doesn't feel like she's pushing any kind of agenda it's just a safety check that she has to do when she meets people and any of us women especially will be doing that when we meet people especially if you're out on the trail is like you know how safe do they look what can I do if they aren't safe i know you know looks are deceiving taking stock of who's walking up to her and that's something that these men on the trail don't need to do or at the gas station or anywhere that she meets them they're just "Oh hey lady what's up?" Doesn't thought doesn't even go in their head so I would it would be helpful for men to read this because it just gives a little bit of perspective on just the it's just a natural thing that we as women have been taught to do and just do without even thinking about it until we're sitting here dissecting it and thinking about it you know well and something that oftentimes you have to do to save your own life you know to not put not that it's your fault if something happens to you that's not what I'm trying to say but lots of times it's like you know yeah we're taught these things but also because lots of times it is very useful you know it's like when she gets in the car with one of the guys who gives her a ride and he ends up being nice and fine and everything's good or whatever but she tells him you know just so you know my husband's also hiking the trail and he's up just ahead of me so basically like someone's going to be looking for me if I go missing you know it's like the things like that that um you're just covering your bases but she works it in in such a way that exactly as you said doesn't feel like an agenda it's just a recounting of reality you know someone's experience definitely do you feel like this memoir like made you like Cheryl Strait as a person like did you feel like she is genuine would we want to be her friend after reading this like how did you feel about her yeah yeah i think she's genuine yeah i would say another thing the movie she's not friendly i don't find the book she seems very friendly so and just like a little bit like while she's dealing with all of this stuff she's still like I don't know just she's not carefree so that's not the right word in the book she seems very open to the possibilities of like who she might meet and what she might experience like a little bit more freespirited I think even though she's not like but she is you know yeah mhm i think what I appreciated about it was I don't necessarily think that she as a person was particularly likable mhm um and that's fine because to me that makes you a real well-rounded person as opposed to just someone who's writing the story trying to make themsel look good um and so I like that she really talked about you know I became addicted to heroin i cheated on my husband like I did all of these wrong things acknowledges that they were wrong things and they were you know destroying her life um but that at the end of the day she's not regretful because they did bring her there to those experiences which ultimately helped to heal her so I really appreciated the cander I guess you could say and um just it didn't feel like she was just pandering to us to try to get us to like her which I I really liked mhm yeah mhm so yeah I definitely felt like she was genuine yeah how was the writing and was it good quality or was this like a just a money grab i don't feel like it was a money grab i liked the quality of writing you know like I said the timeline that we talked about it was easy to follow i liked it this is what I like in memoirs well it's a memoir written by a writer and I think that that's a huge difference because I feel like most of the memoirs that we read now are not written by writers they're written by famous people with you know ghost writer or you know a coowwriter or something like that um I think the difference was that this definitely had a very obvious literary flare that a lot of memoirs do not have in my opinion yeah you have those like moments where she's quoting you know one of her favorite authors or books and it feels natural and not forced mhm and I enjoy that you know you have different tones that set throughout the book and kind of pacing depending on what she's discussing and it's very well done I think yeah I completely agree i felt like it just added another layer mhm it added another layer without me being like "Oh she's throwing in another Emily Dickinson quote this is so weird." You know what I mean it just all fit yeah 100% 100% so obviously it gained like an insane amount of popularity you know when Reese Witherspoon's playing you I think that you know you know that you've made it at that point um when Oprah's endorsing your book you know so it's very popular do you understand why and should it be as popular as it is yes yes and yes yeah you know yeah more women's stories about things we need to hear all the different perspectives of people and lives plight yep yep i completely agree i think that it deserves the hype it deserves the accolades i kind of almost wish she had more books because I'm like once I'm done with her three books or whatever that that's it that's all I got write some more for us um but I definitely understand why it's popular yeah so what was your favorite part um it the my favorite funny part um literally not physically preparing for the PCT as they call it and overloading her pack so much that it was comical as someone who I mean I haven't done the PCT but we used to backpack like I said and we would like as kids every weekend we'd be hiking with our packs and like slowly adding weight to get used to it just for these little family weekl long hikes we would do so I can't imagine how rough of shape she was really in you know and with this giant i can't even believe that she was able to stand up finally with it and then did it for like a week at least longer than that it took her like two weeks I think to get to the place where she started downsizing tearing it down yeah dude that's nuts so that was hilarious to me so that was my favorite part um but in all seriousness uh my favorite thing about the book which surprised me because me as someone who would be like I would be so nervous about anybody that I met on the trail I loved her trail camaraderie that was built because like for me I'd be like"Oh you know I'm going out there i want to be alone like everybody leave me alone." But like obviously you become you know deprived of that human contact and that bond so everybody's so joyous when they see each other and the way they like leapfrogged you know back and forth and it was very like not nostalgic but I my it was my brother-in-law's sister who just did the PCT just a couple years ago from Mexico to Canada and she you know did a blog where we could see her travels and stuff so and she would have that so it was kind of cool to see like reading about that and then like knowing somebody that did have that where it's like "Oh we're going into town." You know they're all like in the back of someone's van and going to the store and then "Okay we're parting ways and then they come back together again." So it was just very it wasn't I wasn't expecting it to be so sweet and I think it's also not just a literary tool but like a literally like tool in life that like you kind of these different relationships that she even just has for a day with people give her better perspective on herself and her own journey too we live in such an individualistic society right now that I think that it really challenges that idea um and I really liked that because you know it's like we're kind of taught to fear other people especially strangers right especially as women and so I think this idea that you know you have to be cautious you have to take care of yourself but then also like you know a lot of these people have their own stories to tell that are really valuable and interesting and are just there on their own journey and coming together and being able to share a day or two can have such a meaningful like domino effect on your life so stepping out of that like comfort zone to try to get to know people that maybe in your like you know quote unquote real everyday life you would never go up and talk to mhm i do actually I do love that even though we see her having to like think about the safety all you know naturally all the time it wasn't until the end of her trail that she came up to like an actual possibly serious situation you know so it kind of it gives perspective too is that like yes there's a lot of dangers in the world and we do need to be careful especially as women unfortunately that's the world that we live in most people are a good people mhm so it's a good reminder for that totally you know like you said a lot of people are on their own journeys and just trying to live their life most people have good intentions so it's definitely a good reminder for that yeah I agree yeah um okay so my favorite part was the quote unquote a bull in both directions um so you know she encounters like this big like scary bull on the trail and it freaks her out and then it runs off and she doesn't realize which way it went so she doesn't know which way she should go and so um I highlighted a quote because this is definitely my favorite part so she's trying to figure out which direction she's going to go in there were only two and they were essentially the same i could go back in the direction I had come from or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go the bull I acknowledged grimly could be in either direction since I hadn't seen where he'd run once I closed my eyes I could only choose between the bull that would take me back and the bull that would take me forward and so I walked on and I'm like what an excellent use of metaphor in that moment for the whole book itself i was like and just for and just for life in general right it's like guys on a daily basis there's a bull in both directions right so it's like which what like which way are you going to choose to go and I just loved that so much yeah yeah that was beautifully said so what about your least favorite part i'm going to go with horse death on this one horse death sorry that's not funny but it was super sad but it was just so specific horse death yeah it was brutal it was brutal it was It was super sad i was glad that in the movie they toned that down a little bit cuz I was like I mean you don't really know what's happening in the movie yeah yeah yeah very visual yeah like the mom's death that was obviously horrible but I knew that was coming so it took like the steam out for me just cuz I already knew so as horrible as it was the horse death really that that was I was crying in the club with that one yeah i mean it's sad it was sad um my least favorite part I just put was the gross dudes it was so much worse in the book too yeah like it was bad vibes in the movie but like you don't go into like as creepy as it really was and how they freaking [ __ ] up her filter oh my gosh i'd be screaming at them like dude and they don't even apologize oh yeah it's just you know I did appreciate as you said before that you know this only happened once the whole time she was out there so for 3 months hiking miles and miles and miles every day hitchhiking into random towns hiking on the side of the road sometimes right like this was the only crepo encounter that she had during the whole journey so that is good but I think the point is it was the only creo experience she had on the journey however there still was one and I think that's uh you know it's important to remember that because it can't be like brushed under the rug yeah um and so yeah and it doesn't even matter that she helped him out like they literally would have passed out without her help doesn't matter you know it doesn't matter how nice she was and polite it doesn't matter that they she left he followed her mhm so yeah that was definitely my least favorite part i just put gross dudes because can't you just let us live our lives i do yeah oh my gosh so if you could then ask Cheryl one more thing that she didn't discuss in the book what would it be oh I'm so superficial when it comes to something like a trip i'd be like "Oh what was your favorite spot like what was the prettiest place?" You know cuz otherwise I felt like everything was answered for me that I would have so what about you anything specific you know I feel like the symbolism of her like you know walking up and touching the bridge of the gods you know at the end of her trip was so like It felt very like she had reached something it was final it was like the completion of this super harrowing journey my question to her would be okay yeah I'm sure that was a really healing 3 months and obviously you dug down into parts of yourself you didn't know existed in order to you know excavate a lot of that trauma and try to process it but what happened after that yeah um I feel like while I don't want to detract from the importance of that trip you know it's like grief and addiction and things like that are very like long-term you know issues that people typically will grapple with for a very long time and so I would just be curious to find out like did she relapse with drugs like did like what ended up happening like you know did she still maybe get into therapy after this was over to deal with her mom's death did she have a better understanding of maybe other things she needed to do to work through it you know I I think that would be a really helpful book if she ever wanted to write it because yeah that does that is a very important point that we can have this journey and go on this selfhealing discovery but what do you do next mhm what was the next steps that got her from that bridge to fast forward she says you know a few years later she got married to somebody and had her kids decided to have kids you know and felt like she could do all of that so what happened then in those however many years like what happened when she left the bridge how did Because it's there's I don't know it's like was it really just okay everything's fine in life it no there's just no way you know like what was the next steps where did you move to what chose you in those directions like how did your healing continue yeah that is a good question yeah cuz I feel like you know I'm sure that if you spend that much time with yourself like that much solitary time with yourself you're probably going to expedite a lot of the processes and grieving processes that a lot of people drag out for years and years and years and years because of you know avoiding solitude and things like that so I feel like it could definitely expedite the healing process but there's still a lot that you'd have to deal with once you are once you've extricated yourself from this like very isolated place right it's almost like being on the trail alone is like not really your quote unquote real life so it's like you know it's like taking a 3-month vacation and then coming back not that it was a vacation for her but you know what I mean taking like a 3-month vacation from your dayto-day and then coming back and being like "Well okay now I have to like assimilate back into society but these things are still my reality." So like how would she deal with that you know how do you rebuild because you can't just you because you can't just go back to exactly how it was or else you're going to fall into those same habits that's just human nature so yeah what did she do next i would be very curious to hear that as well so come on Cheryl let's go rebuild time let's hear it so we already talked about how the author helped us to reflect on our own life experiences to a degree what about like world issues were there like any greater things that you felt like she was kind of discussing that you want to bring up i mean like we've kind of talked about at this point you know women's experiences with safety anywhere but especially when she's on her own you know in the wilderness in the wilderness or at the gas station or wherever that was a huge one for me for sure uh the feminist undertones i mean someone even asked her at one point "Are you a feminist?" And she says "Yes." Um the other one that I found really fascinating was when that journalist guy from the Hobo Times um you know pulls over and is inquiring because he doesn't see a whole lot of quote unquote lady hobos and she says"Well that's because women can't just walk out on their lives and become hobos they have kids to take care of they have parents to take care of they have things that they can't just leave." And I was like "That's a really good point too." So I feel like she had a really great way but she doesn't dwell on that right that's just something she says and then you move on so I feel like she just has a really great way of interweaving those very feminist themes into um her story without making it just only about that you know yeah i mean and how tragic it was that she quotes her mom once she got this cancer diagnosis and being upset you know she's just now starting to make decisions for her own life she was married and pregnant at 19 and from then on you know she's doing the best she can for her kids she's never done anything for herself so she's going back to school and taking advantage of that college program that she that Cheryl gets accepted into and she can take those free classes it's amazing and it's like it's that unfairness that life can hand sometimes of like you know you waited you felt like you did the right thing and then you're still getting the rug swept out from under you yeah yeah because she says something to the degree of like I've never just been me yeah for sure i I felt like that was a good scene in the movie i felt like they did that scene in the movie well one of the good ones so did you know before you read this book did you know much about the PCT and do you have any specific uh experiences with it that you would like to share other than the ones that you've already mentioned i mean yeah just the ones that I've already mentioned yeah I did know about it obviously knew people that went on it um I'm sure we've done cuz you can do partial hikes on it where it's like you know it's just a trail i'm sure we've done it so that's cool um yeah did you notice the Kennedy Meadows was the Kern River yeah i was like "Oh freezing current." Described it exactly as I would burning ice cold crazy torrent get out real quick not good yeah she's like the the current was so strong it was only a foot deep and I still couldn't walk through it or whatever we're like "Yeah I mean that's where we grew up right on that." Yep yeah what about you um I feel like Yeah just everything that we've already covered just the fact that we you know already we just ex we grew up and existed around that kind of lifestyle all the time so it's just it was fun to read about it you know yeah do you have any quotes you want to share that we haven't shared already yeah um I loved this one cuz I can definitely relate to this so this is a personal fave i'm a free spirit who never had the balls to be free so yeah that definitely resonated with me as well um I was a terrible believer in things but I was also a terrible non-believer in things which is me to a tea yeah that's good okay this is a long one what if I forgave myself i thought what if I forgave myself even though I done something I shouldn't have what if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than that because it was what I wanted and needed to do what if I was sorry but I but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done what if I actually wanted to f every one of those men what if heroin taught me something what if yes was the right answer instead of no what if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also got me here what if I never redeemed what if I already was so kind of like what you talked about earlier just understanding that even though her path so far hadn't been an ideal one it led her to her led her to a new version of herself while also bringing her back to the self that she was before her mom died and I think that that's important because she does talk about that um a world I thought would both make me into the woman I knew I could become and turn me back into the girl that I'd once been so that's one of the quotes that I had written down um and I think that that's what it's about is um yeah you know we've all done things that you know we could end up regretting or things that we wish we would have done differently or things that you know other society at large or other people that we know think are quote unquote bad but that doesn't necessarily mean that in the grand scheme of your life it makes you bad yes like it's like that like she knows she's done bad things but she's not bad yeah mhm grief is a crazy thing you know and it's not to excuse what people do and she's even saying it's no excuse what she's done but it definitely has an effect on your brain that until you go through it and each time you have to go through a grief you're going to react differently you can think you know exactly how you would handle the situation that she's in until you're in it and you don't handle it that way you know there's been people in my life that you know we that we've lost and how I handled it was completely different than what I thought I would do you know so I think that's another reason why this memoir can be so important and so helpful is to show you like this is what grief could look like you know like full on avoidance and go ahead well and also just like uh it's very like empathy created like it helps you have empathy for other people's plight because it's like you know all day long we can preach that someone's doing something wrong or right or this is what we would have done in that situation it's like unless you've gone through that like you have no idea how you would respond and we really like it i think books like this can really help us to yeah have empathy for other people's situations yeah definitely yeah um my next one was "In my perception the world wasn't a graph or a formula or an equation it was a story." Which is exactly how I see things too and I was like I love that yeah yeah all right the last one that I have is I knew that if I allowed fear to take over me my journey was doomed fear to a great extent is born of a story we tell ourselves and so I choose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told i decided I was safe i was strong i was brave nothing could vanquish me mhm yeah and that felt like something that you definitely would need to tell yourself if you're going to take on a trek such as this you know cuz you're in it you're doing it you're going to power through most cuz a lot of the things you know going back to us sitting in the tent and listening to the bear eat all of our food you know is a moment that we all had to kind of like you know we're huddle we're all cozy together cuz it's cold anyways and it's like the bear doesn't want us he wants the food we can sit here and be scared that he's going to come into our nylon tent but he's going to be happy as a clam and full and satisfied so as long as you don't poke the bear you're good so you know hey and that was the worst that happened so with her you know she was always on the lookout for nature cuz that's just smart but you know it takes her a long time to come across a bear a long time to come across a rattlesnake and she deals with it and moves on you know well yeah the second life yeah well that's why I think it's a metaphor for life like the second part of that quote that I wrote down was "I simply did not let myself become afraid fear begets fear power begets b power begets power i willed myself to beget power and it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid i was working too hard to be afraid." Mhm and so yeah I mean that's just something that you could apply obviously if you're going through a crazy journey like this but you could also just apply to your everyday life and its challenges depending on where you're at you know I have a few more quotes we've already like said a few so but I had a lot from this book so I really paired it I paired it down i had to pair it down yeah alone had always felt like an actual place to me as if it weren't a state of being but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was m that resonated with me cuz I feel like like that's exactly how I feel yeah that was like and no one had said it before in like such an eloquent way exactly that's exactly what I was going to say about them saying it yep as I stood there gazing at Elk Lake it occurred to me for the first time that growing up poor had come in handy i probably wouldn't have been fearless enough to go on such a trip with so little money if I hadn't grown up without it i wouldn't have been here 80ome days out on the PCT broke but okay getting to do what I wanted to do even though a reasonable person would have said I couldn't afford to do it so I love that because I'm like it's kind of true it's almost like it reminded me a lot of like when I started my business like I didn't know this was like nine years ago now and I was just like very naive to a lot of stuff so I just did it not realizing that like I probably didn't have like the knowledge or financial means or anything really to do it but I just did it anyways you know what I mean and so I loved that perspective and then let's see oh I liked this one because this kind of ties back around to you know obviously the theme the theme of our podcast um I loved books in my regular prec prect life but on the trail they taken on even greater meaning they were the world I could lose myself in when the one I was actually in became too lonely or harsh or difficult to bear mhm yeah so here we all are probably for very similar reasons right yep okay so let's talk about the audio book did you listen to any of the audiobook or did you read it all with your eyes yeah I bounced back and forth between both versions ebook and audiobook same so what did you think i did not like the narrator i didn't like I didn't like it either something about the narrator's voice i didn't She sounded really like not to be ages but she sounded old like literally okay and I don't have an issue with the narrator sounding old except for she was supposed to be like 25 yes I think that's what it was it was a disconnect for sure but I didn't look at when this audio book was you know narrated um we've come a long way with audio books we can all agree with that you know well it's like I'm even listening to like as I was talking to you guys about Tiny Beautiful Things which is her other book and she narrates it herself so I think maybe this was like before the times of like when we really cared about that kind of stuff or so they thought you know so the early days yeah like they talked about at Romanty Book Con the audio book panel of narrators were talking about what a shift it's been between the monotone voices and it wasn't that she was monotone it just it didn't match it just didn't match her tone with reading it it just sounded much older than the actual person is experiencing and it's like a certain twang that she had that didn't like make sense either so I agree yeah maybe like too phonetic you know less casual which is how it reads more casual even though it's eloquent i don't know so yeah it just I think what you said makes sense it just didn't m like the voice didn't match the the tone or the character at all in my opinion so was it so bad that I turned it off no it was fine but it was like it could have been a lot better what did you think of the movie well so I definitely saw it when it first came out in theaters whatever that year was and I remember seeing with my husband and we loved it it was great you know and that was that uh I should have read the book watching it after finishing the book I was like "Oh they've messed everything up." um as they do right and like I mentioned briefly the tone just felt so different to me it was just more not that there wasn't context in here that was depressing like she went through a lot of horrible things and the death of her mother was really horrible but it just felt like even her PCT trail life she was just a different person than how I read it and how I perceived her and so it made it less enjoyable as a movie for me i was constantly you know I told my husband I was like "Tell me if I'm being annoying." Cuz he was watching it with me you know I was saying all the things wrong like that didn't happen in that or that wasn't there's like three people that she met not just the one you know so it just kind of took out a lot of the things that I enjoyed about the movie so the camaraderie you didn't really feel that in the movie at least I didn't and I don't know it just it it villainized her life a little bit more for my perception even though you know she has reason to be villainized in a way but I it just Yeah I didn't like it yeah yeah i feel like you know I watched it also years ago i didn't really remember a whole lot about it so I watched it you know my notes on it were basically like as much as I love Reese Witherspoon I don't feel like she was the right person for that role and I feel like that was kind of part of the problem like cuz I feel like when we think of like Reese Witherspoon we think of more of a bubbly personality even if she's playing a serious role you know what I mean um and I feel like it just didn't translate well cuz I feel like she was almost like overcompensating for that by being too dark too serious and too dark too serious yeah and so then it kind of like overdid it a little bit yeah i think that's what it was mhm yeah like aesthetically I feel like she looked the part like she she did a good job i just feel like they could have found someone maybe different to do it um that would have been a little bit more aligned with Cheryl's in real life personality maybe um so I had issues with that well that's that's what's hard I think as a casting director cuz on paper she does fit it you know like as a as a in between like make it a little bit more serious like still you're bubbly cuz she seemed bubbly with the people that she met in the book you know Cheryl she seems to be an outgoing personality i mean to put herself out there in all these situations that she does she seems outgoing other than this part of her this dark time that she had that she pulled back a little bit but she was still going out and meeting people constantly you know and hooking up with people and putting herself out there so Reese Witherspoon kind of made her more reserved I think than we've read you know does that make sense yeah yeah totally so I almost I try so hard now that we're doing so many of these reads and watches to think of it as an extension of the book but it's hard for me like I wouldn't re-watch the movie now again even though I was like so pumped to watch it again i don't feel like I would need to either it wasn't that profound uh it breezed over everything in the movie version i agree i think that was the other part that I had an issue with with the movie was like obviously they're going to have to condense things they're going to have to change some stuff but I feel like it almost like it made it too It was like too short it was like almost like too short and too wrapped up like I feel like they could have made it a little bit more indepth and like really spent more time on some of the things that were important in the book i feel like they didn't spend enough time like I would have been fine with a movie that was an hour longer if they would have been able to like honor her journey a little bit better this would be one of those good books that would be better as a miniseries yeah absolutely like a close and complete you know six to eight episode miniseries that does you broke it up in se sent uh sections because then you can get all the point across you know yeah i just felt like a lot was lost and it was just kind of turned into a very overly simplistic like it's supposed to be this really complex like examination of grief and I feel like it was really like reduced down to a my mom died so I'm going to hike and then I'll be better at the end yeah and then you can see like you don't have the context of what's going on because as my husband who didn't read the book is like whoa like why is heroin happening right now you don't know cuz she's not narrating obviously as these things are happening these little flashbacks so it's very it was very artsy so sometimes you watch a movie and you're like oh they're just trying to win an award you know so that's kind of what it felt like so yeah I also like another just little side note that I had about it too i didn't like her relationship that she had with her ex-husband husband in the movie it was completely different it was him yelling at her it was so and I'm like that literally was reversed the friend called her out at uh the home and then she called for help to like intervene with her later on when she wasn't cleaning up and that's was like a last ro and he was like super like I know you're like it painted him in a bad light on purpose deliberately they were like fighting and screaming in the car and unless like she added more context and they got approval from her and that's how things happened she left out of the book that wasn't in the book he was like super understanding and like helpful and that was what was so difficult about reading that relationship because she knew he was like such a good person and so forgiving and like her knowing as amazing as a person is I know I can't be with them cuz I'm just going to hurt them like that's a huge growth thing to happen that they took away from the movie completely yeah they kind of just made it seem like they were just unhappy and getting divorced when in reality in the book it's like they were still best friends even after the divorce because they got married so young they just loved each other and he was a very very like kind understanding person despite everything that happened and so I I also didn't like that i felt like that was kind of weird yeah yeah so yeah a lot of the subjects matters that they the flashbacks you have no context like the the little bit about the horse like you don't know what's going on like really you don't know how you know crazy it is you don't know it was her mom's favorite horse like so it's more of a highlight reel for people that read the book but you're But if you read the book you're also going to find all these things wrong with it that we did so who's it who's it for i don't know but I liked it not reading the book so hey yeah there you go maybe that's who it's for like people who didn't read the book yeah exactly inspired by this book as opposed to like a true representation cuz it doesn't go into all the heavy themes truly it doesn't no yeah i'd be curious like I'm sure maybe there's some articles and stuff but like if you could have a candid conversation with uh Cheryl Strait I'd be curious to hear her thoughts on how the movie turned out once all was said and done yeah like if she felt like it was a accurate representation of her book or you know if the artistic license that the people who made it went with was not exactly like her vision yeah yeah i'd be curious to find that out for sure so obviously we both like the book a lot better book versus movie book wins okay so let's just get into some reviews real quick so first of all on good readads it gets an average of a 4.07 and there are about 844,000 ratings i did include one funny low review cuz you guys know that I'm a sucker for a good one sentence one star okay so Julie gives it one star she says"Does she ever find the lost hiking boot sadly I don't care." I was like "Okay." Yep okay so and the more serious on a more serious note uh Christine gives it one star i didn't even bother finishing this book so we know how I feel about that it started out with a lot of detail about her mother dying of cancer which was upsetting then to help herself get over the sadness of the death of her mom she cheats on her husband several times and becomes pretty seriously involved with a man who introduces her to heroin all the time this is going on she talks about what a great man her husband is and how much they love each other huh she even legally changed her last name to stray after her divorce because she's strayed like she's proud of it you hiking up what the reason was i know you hiking up the Pacific Seabboard without learning how to hike properly is not a struggle it's you being stupid so the reason why I picked this review is because I feel like it missed the point it missed all the points that's all I'll say about that it's just kind of like the reason why she gives that realistic depiction of her downward spiraling and then talks so highly about her husband and then ex-husband is because that's what makes it complex that's what makes us human and interesting you know it's like it's not black and white and that's what makes it hard yeah i think it's easy to pass judgment on those those critiques because yeah of course those things she did were bad but it yeah it waters down and it dilutes it instead of realizing that like these are all products of a young person uh especially who doesn't have full world experience and is grieving and like she talks about like those were formative years where she's still I'm no psychologist clearly but she has a bit of like an imshment I think it's called relationship with her mother that is ripped off i mean to have like I was talking to Jeff about this like you have a fairly hippie- dippy mom who's all natural and like doing all those things that she thinks is good for her health and her family and you're diagnosed with cancer and you're told you have a year live and you die within a month like what does that do to somebody who is inshed a young person who has like she said yet to fully uh release herself from her mom and form herself as a person yet and it's not again to excuse those things that she did but we just we can learn to have some empathy so to water it down in those ways and a judgmental way is harsh i agree so on that note I'm going to read off a couple five stars uh Broken Tune on Goodreads five stars i love this book not because it was an uber inspirational amazing story if it had been like that I would not have much time uh spent much time on this book at all what I loved about the story was that it was honest in its bluntness and that it did not glorify grief reading Cheryl's story was very easy to relate to even though I did not walk the PCT but then everyone deals with stuff differently so she goes on but I thought that that was kind of a good summation yeah cuz there wasn't these like big giant profound almost comical moments you know that we see cliche I should say cliche moments it's a progression of kind of shedding those things from her from herself and forgiveness and all of those things instead of like and I looked at the tree and everything was better you know it's none of the you can kind of think that that's what's going to happen when you're going into it but that doesn't happen so I appreciated Yeah that rawness yeah me too it wasn't just like a book of weird like newagy and I was like meditating a lot on the trail and then came out a new person you know it's like it wasn't like that thankfully okay okay so I think you say it's zooing but I'm not sure if that's right pronunciation so five stars this is going on my favorite shelf i don't have much in common with Cheryl Stray to make her story quote unquote relatable by definition to me but nevertheless it moved me tremendously i'm amazed at how she can write struggles like her feet hurting the intense heat without water being broke on a hike setting up camp weather problems her detours and her long attempts to hitch rides without sounding repetitive or self-indulgent judging by some reviews I read some people found her repetitive and self-indulgent but I did not for me she kept things exciting and real in the moment and she made me care for her as though her struggles on the trail were happening to her present tense um to happening to her present tense as I read them i love the way she smoothly goes into flashbacks because that was what she was thinking at the time she was thinking back she felt like a friend in that way and then she kind of goes on some more i liked all those things as well mhm okay so any final thoughts on Wild by Cheryl Stra or do you feel like we've covered it we did it we did it we did it that's all I got what about you yeah I feel good about it so cool you know is there a memoir that you guys loved that you feel like we need to read for the podcast let us know yeah let us know any life changing memoirs yeah maybe we'll post a little box and see what you guys have to say yeah for sure so should we sign off with a smasher pass let's do it guys smasher pass go time mine's a choose your own adventure oo for an adventure memoir great let's go i didn't do that on purpose this is completely unrelated i was trying to think of like outdoorsy stuff but I was like I don't know i got nothing um so but I did see something with him in it the other day so it made me think of you okay so as we've done this with Will Frell in the past you must now do this with Matthew McConna choose a Matthew McConna h they're all so good i know that's why I was like not all of them but most i mean do you really lose driving driving the Lincoln wait okay you have to choose that's now your pick matthew yeah okay the look not the rolling what could be a booger not that one not that part but like the rest of them that's the one right there so much no I I never saw that coming like that's what I love about that is like of all the Matthew McConnA roles I never expected you to be like you know those licking commercials those that was once Matthew McConnA we love it though you know we love it that was a great memoir by the way guys green Light so good so good green Light excellent yeah you want to listen to Matthew McConnA's voice yeah out of all the Matthew McConna's how about just his voice yeah i'll just listen to that all day long i have to give it to the gentleman because he plays a mafia man i haven't seen that one yet he not only plays a mafia man but gives the best my wife speech I think I've ever heard in a movie before all right what do you got for me okay so I'm going to say hey smash or pass backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail uh pass i don't even want to backpack any trail yeah fair literally okay there was a time in my life when I thought that it sounded like a good idea like I dated a guy who that was like one of his life's goals was to like hike the PCT from Mexico all the way to Canada and like my 21-year-old idealic self that didn't yet know myself was like maybe I'll graduate college and then we could just take 6 months off and just do it you know I am so glad that that did not occur now that I am 36 and I know myself so much better I'm like that is the last thing I would if I took 6 months off of work that is the last thing that I would do so many other places you could go no yeah so many like to your house for example literally anywhere else um so that's a no for that's a pass hard pass for me what about you you know I don't know it's not anywhere on my list of buckets or life goals whatsoever but I'm like it'd be pretty cool like a good accomplishment mhm yeah but then I realized oh yeah you can't really have campfires and guys that's the best part of camping so I'm out i'm out no but like I do love backpacking but I'm good at like a week and then it's been a long time since I did so who knows if I can hack it but it is like definitely something that I do like pushing myself in that way not when it comes to marathons and running but I could do a good hike with a backpack but uh am I the type realistically I'm not the type of person who'd be able to do it but I would if I started does that make sense if I if I made if I I would make myself do it but I wouldn't make myself do it to begin with yeah i mean I feel like you know if you were me put our mind to something we could absolutely complete it like I have a very I have faith in our capabilities and and tenacity for sure would we want to willingly put ourselves in that position is the real question i feel like if I had 6 months off of work to do whatever I wanted to do like adventure-wise I would rather live out of a backpack and go like travel Europe for 6 months yeah like instead you know what I mean or like do road trip you know like that's fun you know but just to straight up hike for 3 months and for me it's really like it I think it's back in the mid '9s i think she had said the trail as it was is was fairly not new but like it just been fully established like in the recent decade so now I know it's very busy and I don't want that yeah you know like I don't want because like what if you don't what if the person you meet is a super weirdo and now you're going to see them for the next 3 months it's like when you're driving on the I5 and you keep passing the same freaking weird person every like 10 minutes yeah it's so annoying it seems like at that in this book everybody like had a mutual kind of you know unspoken rule it's like we just split up when we want to split up but there's still like the social obligation that if I was doing that I wouldn't want hovering over me and I don't like that that's like you don't know when you're going to stumble across another person and you don't know like all those things like the danger are they weird like what's are they going to linger and follow me now like in a donkey and Shrek kind of situation cuz I'm definitely the Shrek in that you know so yeah I think I'd rather load up my car and travel around you know for the 3 months and then and do some day hikes day hikes yeah i just like had a full circle moment like in my mind of like hitchhiking and Matthew McConnA comes and picks you up in his Lincoln oh there we go there we go it was all worth it it was all worth it all right all right all right he says as he pulls up let's go make sure to like follow and subscribe anywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcasts including YouTube if you haven't yet and then follow us over on Instagram and Tik Tok we're at Besties and the Books podcast everywhere everywhere so there you go i guess we'll see you next Tuesday yeah we'll see you next Tuesday guys bye

People on this episode

Ashley Ellix

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Liz Wilson

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