Wild

by

Cheryl Strayed

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Wild: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Cheryl tracks the origin of her desire to hike the PCT to her mother’s hospital room at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Her mother, a “forty-five-year-old vegetarian-ish […] natural-remedy-using nonsmoker” was diagnosed suddenly with late-stage lung cancer, and doctors advised Cheryl and her mother that she had less than a year to live. Cheryl was only twenty-two at the time—the same age her mother had been when she’d given birth to Cheryl. After the doctor broke the news, Cheryl and her mother wept in separate stalls in the women’s bathroom, then went to the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions that would ease Cheryl’s mother’s pain. They waited along with Cheryl’s stepfather, Eddie, shell-shocked and disbelieving. 
Cheryl’s memoir is not just a record of her trip along the PCT—it’s a roadmap, of sorts, of all of the things that brought her there in the first place. From her vantage point in the future, Cheryl can see that, through many different factors pushed her to hike the PCT, the main, driving force behind the adventure was the devastating loss of her mother and the ways in which that loss ripped Cheryl’s life apart.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Growing up, Cheryl’s mother always told Cheryl and her siblings Karen and Leif that she loved them so much the amount couldn’t be “quantified or contained,” and she compared the ineffable amount to the “ten thousand things” from the Tao Te Ching—a verbal representation of all the things in the world that cannot be named. Cheryl writes that her mother got pregnant with her first child—Cheryl’s older sister Karen—when she was just nineteen, and quickly married. Cheryl’s mother stuck with her father through years of intense physical abuse—abuses which Cheryl and her siblings witnessed often until their father walked out of their lives nearly ten years later.
Cheryl introduces her childhood as a volatile mixture of violent abuse and peaceful, loving joy. Cheryl’s mother attempted to impress upon her children the vastness of her love for them so often, perhaps, to make up for the dearth of love they got from their abusive father.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Though Cheryl and her family were poor, Cheryl’s mother always insisted they were “rich in love.” Cheryl’s mother eventually married Eddie, a kindhearted carpenter eight years her junior. Together with Eddie—using the funds from a work compensation settlement he received following an accident—Cheryl’s mother purchased a plot of land in rural Minnesota. The entire family pitched in to tame the wild land and build a small house upon it, and eventually, Cheryl’s mother, Cheryl, Karen, and Leif moved onto the property full-time while Eddie stayed behind in the city to work.
Cheryl charts her past, showing how nature has always been a part of her life in one way or another. Though the PCT is brand-new territory for her, she believes she can trek it in part because of the example her mother set: that nature could be tamed, and that to live in harmony with the natural world is one of life’s greatest gifts.
Themes
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
Even as Cheryl and her siblings complained about roughing it in the wilderness—in a house with no electricity or plumbing—their mother urged them to realize one day they’d be thankful for their rugged, rural upbringing. Cheryl writes that she now realizes her mother’s love of nature grew inside of her over the years, and was ultimately the thing that made her believe that “hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was [her] way back” to the person she’d once been.
Not only does Cheryl enjoy being in nature, but she equates it with purity, wholeness, and redemption because of her fond childhood memories. Cheryl wonders if returning to nature might return her to the person she was in childhood.
Themes
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
Quotes
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Wild PDF
When it was time for Cheryl to go off to college, her mother went with her. At forty, her mother was determined to get the college degree she was never able to get as a younger woman, and Cheryl’s acceptance letter informed her that parents of students at her small college could take classes for free. The two of them were both in their final year of school when Cheryl’s mother got her cancer diagnosis—Cheryl was married to a man named Paul and close to graduating, but after the diagnosis, she “folded [her] life down” and put both school and her marriage on the backburner in order to care for her ailing mother while Eddie continued working to pay the bills.
As Cheryl talks about her early life, it becomes clear that she and her mother were intensely close—they even went to college together. Cheryl is hammering home just how serious and unimaginable losing her mother was—and how unable she was to simply go on with life as usual in the wake of her loss. 
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Though Cheryl’s mother was diagnosed on the 12th of February and given a year to live, by the 3rd of March, she was in too much pain to continue living at home. Cheryl helped her mother get dressed and go to the hospital, and as they left the house, Cheryl’s mother bid goodbye to all her things, seemingly aware of the fact that she wouldn’t return home to see them again. At the hospital, Cheryl’s mother was admitted, and Cheryl was stunned to realize that her indominable mother was in fact dying. Cheryl stayed with her mother night and day, though her siblings all but refused to visit, claiming they were unable to see their mother in such a state. In the end, Cheryl writes, her mother lived for only thirty-four days after her visit to Mayo Clinic.
Losing her mother hit Cheryl even harder because of how quickly she deteriorated. Cheryl had just gotten accustomed to the idea of only having a year left with her mother—but within a month, she had to reckon anew with the idea that her mother would soon be gone.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Though Cheryl’s husband Paul tried to provide emotional support and make her feel “less alone,” Cheryl began to realize, as she cared for her dying mother, that “something inside of [her] was dead to Paul.” Cheryl only managed to get Karen to visit once, and could not get Leif to come to the hospital at all. In the last few days of Cheryl’s mother’s life, her mother was sunk “down under” beneath a steady drip of morphine. Cheryl wanted her mother to tell her that she “had been the best daughter in the world,” but when her mother remained mostly asleep and unresponsive, Cheryl asked the question herself. Her mother replied that she had been—but Cheryl remained “ravenous” for her mother’s love.
As Cheryl’s mother slipped further and further away, Cheryl’s “ravenous” desire for her mother’s love intensified, blotting out all other desires and relationships—even the one with her husband Paul.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
On the night of Saint Patrick’s Day, Cheryl realized her mother had taken a turn for the worse and became determined to bring her brother Leif to the hospital to say goodbye. Cheryl left the hospital, went home, and began calling friends and acquaintances. She at last managed to track Leif down, and the next morning, the two of them drove to the hospital, though Leif kept insisting it would be too hard for him to see their mother in such a state. When they arrived at the hospital, however, their mother had already died. A hysterical Cheryl “howled” at her mother’s side, clutching at her corpse and crying.
In one final twist of cruelty, Cheryl is devastated to find that her mother has died alone, without any of her children by her side. Cheryl was attempting to do something good and right by bringing Leif to her mother’s bedside—but as a result, Cheryl has lost her final precious moments in her mother’s presence.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
In the wake of her mother’s death, Cheryl began suffering from night terrors in which she was always killing her mother in increasingly violent ways. Paul tried to comfort her when she awoke from the dreams sweating and screaming, but nothing brought Cheryl comfort. Cheryl writes now that it would take years for her to make peace with her mother’s death, and that she would have to suffer intensely on the road to healing. The place Cheryl finally found peace was called the Bridge of the Gods—a landmark along the Pacific Crest Trail. 
Cheryl begins to demonstrate how no one, no matter how loving or attentive, could help her through her mother’s loss. Though she didn’t know it at the time, she would have to find healing on her own, from within.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
Quotes