Nature and Humanity Theme Analysis

When Cheryl sets off on an 1,100-mile hike through the wilderness, she is an amateur camper and an inexperienced hiker. Along the Pacific Crest Trail, she encounters fallen trees, snowfall, bears, deer, foxes, armies of frogs and black ants, and inhospitable weather. Cheryl is full of uncertainty at the beginning of her journey, but by the end, she feels strong and empowered. Wild uses one woman’s journey of taming—or at least existing within—nature and wilderness as a metaphor for the laborious, uncharted journey that is learning to tame and inhabit one’s own personal, inner wilderness. Ultimately, Strayed suggests that while conquering one’s “wild” soul is a daunting task, it can be done.

At the start of her hike, Cheryl is overwhelmed by the arid, hostile terrain of the Mojave desert. Plunged onto the PCT at one of the most unforgiving points on the entire trail, Cheryl must start her journey at maximum difficulty with a decided dearth of experience. This harsh entry into the physical landscape of her hike mirrors her sudden, swift entry into the psychological landscape of grief—and Cheryl has been unprepared for both. Just as Cheryl powers through the Mojave too tired to do much reading or thinking and too focused on the task of staying in motion to feel hungry, she is too close to her experiences to reckon with them yet. The unforgiving desert landscape mirrors Cheryl’s raw, desolate emotional state. In terms of the physical and psychological, there’s nowhere for Cheryl to go but up.

Another significant point in the book where the physical challenge before Cheryl reflects the deeper challenge within herself is when she decides to bypass the Sierra Nevada due to heavy snowfall. Cheryl is loath to go around a part of the PCT—especially such a beautiful section—but once she decides to bypass the treacherous mountain range, she feels more capable of conquering what lies ahead. This physical decision reflects an emotional decision that is going on below the surface within Cheryl’s healing process. She hasn’t yet had any of the “cathartic” emotional experiences she thought would define her trip—no cleansing tears, no deep soul-searching, no penitent regret over her checkered recent past. To delve into these moments of catharsis at this point in the trip would be to sideline not just her physical progress, but her emotional progress as well. Cheryl is learning, growing, and healing in other ways—and indeed, when she gets to the other side of the Sierras, she has an emotional moment with an elusive fox which allows her to begin to delve into the feelings of loss and loneliness created by her mother’s death. Cheryl “bypasses” a reckoning she isn’t ready with, and slowly starts to get to the emotional part of her journey in other ways that are less emotionally violent and demanding. 

When Cheryl stops at Crater Lake in Oregon, she uses the history of the landmark to turn the place into a potent metaphor for the process of healing one’s own inner turmoil and wildness. Crater Lake is a gorgeous and brilliant blue lake situated in a basin formed out of a large, bowl-shaped crater—the result of a cataclysmic volcanic eruption some 7,000 years ago. Cheryl writes that, in the wake of the eruption, there was only devastation and barrenness—but as the site of the eruption cooled and the scars of the earth healed, the basin filled with rainwater and became the stunning landmark it is today. Crater Lake is a metaphor for the ways in which people heal—not always in the ways they expect to, and often in ways that make evident the cratering losses they’ve suffered. Nevertheless, as the metaphor of Crater Lake teaches, beauty, bounty, and healing can come of great suffering. Cheryl’s encounter with this particular natural wonder reflects her inner emotional state and suggests that, just as Crater Lake formed out of devastation, so too will something wonderful within Cheryl come of all the pain she’s suffered.

By weaving a metaphor in which the unpredictability and hostility of nature gives way to beauty and peace—just as a journey into the interior of the human spirit can—Strayed illustrates how within each individual there is a vast wilderness waiting to be explored. Cheryl sets out on her hike determined to become the master of both the Pacific Crest Trail and the woman within. By the end of her physically and emotionally intense journey along the PCT, Cheryl is stronger in both body and soul—she has a new sense of understanding and trust when it comes to the once-unfamiliar terrain within herself. She has confronted the “wild” parts of both the world around her and her inner nature, and has found freedom and beauty along the way. Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail doesn’t ever really become easy, Cheryl notes at one point—but it does get easier, and the same can be said of her reckoning with the mountains within.