The book “Wild” written by Cheryl Strayed in 2012 evokes strong emotion and resolution facilitated by her hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. Her journey does resemble a road trip by displaying the urge to go someplace else, to use the trail to find something that was missing inside of her. Strayed is often lost throughout her journey, physically and metaphorically, which also aligns with the road trip narrative. Lastly, by choosing to endure solitude throughout the hike, she finds healing and acceptance, which parallels the trope of the open road. The story of her hike first breaks the reader’s heart and then repairs it, just as the walk did for her. After losing her mom, ending her marriage, and engaging in narcotics to cope with her pain, …show more content…
Many road trip narratives include becoming physically lost and finding the way again and being emotionally lost prompts adventurists to go on their journey to connect with and find the self again. Strayed loses sight of the trail due to the snow and asks a group of skiers where they were. They asked her if she was lost, and she wrote, “I thought about it for a moment. If I said yes, they’d rescue me and I’d be done with this godforsaken trail” (pg. 139). Strayed knew that becoming physically lost and finding her way back would also facilitate the process of repairing her emotionally lost …show more content…
Being alone is a recurring motif regarding the road trip, which has been shown to result in self-transformation. After two of her PCT companions offer to include Cheryl on their hike through Sierra City during the snow, she wrote, “I’d come, I realized, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really- all that I’d done to myself and all that had been done to me. I couldn’t do that while tagging along with someone else” (pg. 122). She notes how she must experience this trip alone to heal from her past. After finishing her hike, she ended the book with, “It was my life-like all the lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be” (pg. 311). She remarks on how her journey of solitude brought her to a place of acceptance, which led to