calherewecome

Well, I finally started reading the book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed. As always, there is usually more to the book than what you find in the film. Here are a few thoughts.

Cheryl Strayed hiked the PCT in 1995. This is mentioned in passing in the film. The book was published on 2012 and the movie released in 2014. For you in my audience that are challenged at math, that’s a long time. In the summer of 1995, the big story was OJ, the murder and trial. It was probably a good time to be off the grid for the summer.

In the middle of the book, Ms. Strayed tells of running out of money. Part of her travel on the trail way by way of Greyhound. She skipped part of the trail due heavy snow in parts of the Sierras. So she says she was down to her last $0,65. No ATM’s in the wilderness. No ATM’s in some of the small towns in the Sierras. It also meant no cell phones. There were cell phones in 1995, but they were clunky affairs that didn’t work real well and were expensive to use.

I had a cell phone back then. I think it was a Motorola  flip phone. Back in the day, they had something called roaming charges. It could get real expensive to make a phone call.

So it took Ms Strayed 17 years to get her book published. It reminds me what my brother Rich has told me. “Writing for a living is hard work.” Here’s a link to her wiki entry.

There’s a section toward the end of the book on Crater Lake in Oregon, Crater lake is one of the deepest lakes in North America. It is about 1900′ deep at its deepest point. Read here for more info on Crater Lake.

If you saw the film, go read the book. It’s worth it.

This entry was posted on January 1, 2015 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Books. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Cheryl Strayed, Wild, Writing