Wild

by

Cheryl Strayed

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Wild: Chapter 19 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
The next morning, Cheryl packs Monster for the last stretch of her hike. The ranger brings Cheryl a package, addressed to her from her friend Gretchen—it is full of chocolate and wine. Cheryl scarfs the chocolates, but then begins walking the wine back over to the ranger station, unwilling to lug it. As she goes, she hears a voice call out her name—she turns around and finds herself face-to-face with Doug. They greet one another excitedly and catch up on how they’ve both fared along the trail. Doug says he’s just stopping for a moment and is going right back out—Cheryl agrees to wait so they can go together. Doug is charmed to see that Cheryl still has the feather he gave her attached to Monster, and offers to carry the wine on their hike.
Through friends like Doug, Cheryl has found people who can literally and metaphorically help her to share her physical and emotional loads. Cheryl was ready to give up the wine, sweet as it was, in order to lessen the exertion on herself—but with friends like Doug to help, she realizes she doesn’t have to sacrifice the good things in life to keep getting by. She can ask for help and receive it.
Themes
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
The Kindness of Strangers Theme Icon
That night, the two of them make camp and open the bottle of wine, enjoying it as they cook their dinners. They discuss their summers, and Cheryl gives Doug a novel called The Ten Thousand Things to read, but he says he doesn’t want to add it to his pack’s weight. After Doug turns in early, Cheryl sits by the fire and burns the novel as she thinks about Eddie—the person who taught her how to make her first campfire, paddle a canoe, and skip a rock. Eddie was the one to instill a love of the woods and camping in Cheryl. Cheryl pulls out The Dream of a Common Language next, and though she knows she should burn it too, she can’t bring herself to do so.
Cheryl always credited her mother with making her a nature-lover—but now, as she considers her life and her childhood more holistically, she allows herself to release some of the anger and resentment she’s long felt towards Eddie and acknowledge his significance in her life, as well. Cheryl is continuing to heal and grow even at this late stage of her journey.
Themes
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
A few days later, Cheryl and Doug—plus Tom and a lesbian ex-couple, who have joined up with them—arrive at the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood, which is Oregon’s highest mountain at 11,240 feet. Portland is only sixty miles away, and to Cheryl, the majestic Mount Hood feels like home. She still has fifty miles to go to reach the Bridge of the Gods, and the next morning, she sets out early without the rest of her crew in order to reach it alone. As she realizes how truly close she is to the end of her journey, she begins to feel melancholy—but also relieved as she realizes that she is no longer carrying the “staggering” weight of her mother’s loss.
As Cheryl bids goodbye to her friends and prepares to end her journey the same way she began it—alone—she reflects on all she’s learned over the course of her hike. She feels lighter both physically and emotionally—she has learned how to manage her grief, how to value herself, and how to connect with other people in spite of her cynicism about the world.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
The Kindness of Strangers Theme Icon
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
Over the next several days, Cheryl passes several landmarks, such as the imposing Mount St. Helen and Mount Rainier. On her last full day of hiking, she is on a downward tilt as she descends 4,000 feet in only six miles. As darkness falls, she decides to stop and make camp though she’s only six miles from Cascade Locks and the Bridge—she wants to see them both in the full light of day. That night, as she makes camp, she pulls off yet another toenail—the PCT officially has more of her toenails than she does.
Up until the very last stretch of her journey, Cheryl continues shedding pieces of her old self along the way to make room for the new, healed person she has made herself into along her trek.
Themes
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
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The next morning, Cheryl feels like she is floating as she hikes the remaining few miles to Cascade Locks. It is Friday morning, and she feels a unique energy in the air as she arrives in town and passes houses, businesses, and cars. The Bridge of the Gods comes into view, and Cheryl walks halfway across it on foot before stopping to look down at the Columbia River—the fourth-largest in the nation—rushing past below her. The feeling of having arrived at her destination is at once small and “tremendous,” and Cheryl lingers in the moment—before heading off to go get some ice cream in town at a spot her fellow hikers have been telling her to check out.
Cheryl has been waiting for months to arrive at the Bridge of the Gods. When she finally gets there, she is moved and happy—but also slightly amused by how small the moment seems in comparison to the way she’d been building it up in her head. In the end, the destination is not the point—the journey, the friendships, and the growth are.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
The Kindness of Strangers Theme Icon
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
As Cheryl eats her ice-cream, she thinks about how, by later today, she’ll be in Portland. She’ll be back to her regular life—she’ll be able to eat and drink what she wants, wear normal clothes, and drive anywhere her truck can take her. Cheryl makes some light, flirtatious conversation with a businessman who approaches her to ask her about hiking, and though they make a plan to meet up in Portland, the plan never comes to fruition.
Cheryl is nervous but a little excited about the prospect of getting back to real life. She has discovered along the trail who she wants to be and who she can be—now it’s time to put this version of herself to the test.
Themes
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
The Kindness of Strangers Theme Icon
Four years after that moment, Cheryl writes, she would cross the Bridge of the Gods all the way at last with another man—the man who would become her husband. In fifteen years, Cheryl writes, she would bring her daughter Bobbi and her son Carver to get ice cream at this very spot, and tell them about her journey along the PCT. Years after that, she’d begin writing the story of her hike, and in the process would discover that Doug had died in an accident in New Zealand—but as she mourned him, she would look up at the frayed feather he gave her so many years ago, suspended above her desk.
As Cheryl Strayed writes about the future, she demonstrates just how important her hike along the PCT will remain to her over the years. The Bridge of the Gods will continue to be a place of significance, and the friendships she made along the trail will remain major and meaningful to her long after they end.
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
The Kindness of Strangers Theme Icon
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
Cheryl writes about how sitting on the bench eating ice cream on the last day of her hike, she still didn’t fully understand its meaning—but was able to trust that what she’d done in hiking the PCT was something “true” and “sacred.” Though she didn’t yet grasp the enormity of what she’d done, she thought to herself: “How wild it was, to let it be.”
Cheryl has, over the course of her hike, gone from being someone paralyzed by grief, desperate to regain control of life through self-destructive acts, and numb to the beauty of the world around her. At the end of her trek, Cheryl still has a lot of growing to do-but she has learned to accept the “wildness” of life, and to let things “be.”
Themes
Loss and Grief Theme Icon
Healing vs. Redemption Theme Icon
Nature and Humanity Theme Icon
Quotes