Wild

Thank you to my agent, Janet Silver, and also to her colleagues at the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Agency. Janet, you are my friend, champion, and literary kindred spirit. I will always be grateful to you for your support, smarts, and love.

I’m indebted to the many people at Knopf who believed in Wild back in the early stages and have worked to bring it into the world. I’m especially grateful to my editor, Robin Desser, who never stopped pushing me to make this the best book it could be. Thank you, Robin, for your intelligence and your kindness, for your generous spirit and your incredibly long, single-spaced letters. Without you, this book wouldn’t be what it is. Thanks also: Gabrielle Brooks, Erinn Hartman, Sarah Rothbard, Susanna Sturgis, and LuAnn Walther.

A deep bow to my children, Carver and Bobbi Lindstrom, who endured with grace and good humor all those times I had to go off alone to write. They never let me forget that life and love matter most.

Thanks also to my stellar writers’ group: Chelsea Cain, Monica Drake, Diana Page Jordan, Erin Leonard, Chuck Palahniuk, Suzy Vitello Soulé, Mary Wysong-Haeri, and Lidia Yuknavitch. I’m indebted to each of you for your wise counsel, honest feedback, and killer pinot noir.

I’m deeply grateful to the friends who have nurtured and loved me. There are too many to name. I can only say you know who you are and I’m so fortunate you’re in my life. There are some people I’d like to thank in particular, however—those who helped me in specific and numerous ways as I wrote this book: Sarah Berry, Ellen Urbani, Margaret Malone, Brian Padian, Laurie Fox, Bridgette Walsh, Chris Lowenstein, Sarah Hart, Garth Stein, Aimee Hurt, Tyler Roadie, and Hope Edelman. I’m humbled by your friendship and kindness. Thanks also to Arthur Rickydoc Flowers, George Saunders, Mary Caponegro, and Paulette Bates Alden, whose early mentorship and endless goodwill has meant the world to me.

Thank you to Wilderness Press for publishing the guidebooks that were and still are the definitive texts for those hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Without the guidebooks’ authors Jeffrey P. Schaffer, Ben Schifrin, Thomas Winnett, Ruby Jenkins, and Andy Selters, I’d have been utterly lost.

Most of the people I met on the PCT passed only briefly through my life, but I was enriched by each of them. They made me laugh, they made me think, they made me go on another day, and most of all, they made me trust entirely in the kindness of strangers. I am particularly indebted to my fellow 1995 PCT alumni CJ McClellan, Rick Topinka, Catherine Guthrie, and Joshua O’Brien, who responded to my inquiries with thoughtful care.

Lastly, I would like to remember my friend Doug Wisor, whom I wrote about in this book. He died on October 16, 2004, at the age of thirty-one. He was a good man who crossed the river too soon.

Miigwech.

BOOKS BURNED ON THE PCT

The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California, Jeffrey P. Schaffer,

Thomas Winnett, Ben Schifrin, and Ruby Jenkins. Fourth edition,

Wilderness Press, January 1989.

Staying Found: The Complete Map and Compass Handbook, June Fleming.

^*The Dream of a Common Language, Adrienne Rich.

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner.

^**The Complete Stories, Flannery O’Connor.

The Novel, James Michener.

A Summer Bird-Cage, Margaret Drabble.

Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.

Dubliners, James Joyce.

Waiting for the Barbarians, J. M. Coetzee.

The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 2: Oregon and Washington, Jeffrey P. Schaffer and Andy Selters. Fifth edition, Wilderness Press, May 1992.

The Best American Essays 1991, edited by Robert Atwan and

Joyce Carol Oates.

The Ten Thousand Things, Maria Dermoût.

*Not burned. Carried all the way.

**Not burned. Traded for The Novel.

Wild By Cheryl Strayed Reading Group Guide

ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.

ABOUT THE BOOK

“Cheryl Strayed reminds us, in her lyrical and courageous memoir Wild, of what it means to be fully alive, even in the face of catastrophe, physical and psychic hardship, and loss.” —Mira Bartók, author of The Memory Palace

“Stunning … An incredible journey, both inward and outward.” —Garth Stein, author of The Art of Racing in the Rain