By Jim Tune
The Pacific Crest Trail is a 2,650-mile hiking trail that reaches from Mexico to Canada. Starting in desert chaparral near the Mexican border, the trail climbs along the backbone of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. It winds through Oregon forests and skirts along the shoulders of volcanoes like Mount Rainier in Washington.
In the spring of 1995, a disillusioned 25-year-old Cheryl Strayed hit the trail to lose her problems. Strayed shared her story in her best-selling memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. She had never been backpacking before setting out on this challenging trek. Ravaged by the loss of her mother and freshly divorced, she bounced from drug use to serial one-night stands with strangers. She was waitressing, working to service a student debt for a degree she failed to complete.
After months of research, Strayed purchased everything she could think of for her journey. In a rookie mistake, she brought along too many items, so much she could hardly lift her pack. Her new hiking boots were small and ill-fitting.
On her epic trek, this novice hiker faced temperatures of 100 degrees in the shade in the Modoc Plateau and record snowfalls in the High Sierras. Her boots died (she had already lost most of her toenails), and she improvised duct tape boots out of a pair of sandals. Walking solo for hundreds of miles, she had entire afternoons to consider a single incident from childhood, entire days to consider other, weightier memories.
You will need to read the book to decide whether this experience enabled Strayed to “find herself.” I found the book”s conclusions unsatisfying. When she finally reaches her destination, she”s completed her hike, but her mother is still dead, her marriage is still over, her family and home still lost forever. She spends $1.80 of her last $2 on an ice cream cone. After months of deprivation, the ice cream tastes wonderful, but it”s not the answer to anything, and she knows it.
I wonder if we do people a disservice when we present Jesus as the “answer” to everything. Christians still face loss, addiction, disappointments, and doubt. We still get lost and disillusioned and bruised.
We offer more than Jesus promised when we present the gospel as the solution for all that troubles and bewilders. Rather than treating faith as a thing that will provide answers to all our confusion, we would do better to simply enjoy the journey, and rejoice in God”s goodness wherever we see it. Maybe Jesus is more concerned with leading us through this trail than delivering us from its hardships.
Rather than expecting our faith to explain every mystery while we overstuff our backpacks with answers that weigh us down, we might feel immensely unburdened if we let Jesus lighten our load. Jesus is the trailblazer””the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. To know him means to follow him even when we feel a little lost.
Hi Jim,
I enjoyed your article on “Wild.” I am currently reading this book. I am not quite to the halfway point of the book but I will now pay better attention to the ending of the book now that you’ve highlighted how the ending felt to you. I am reading it because I wanted to get the feel for a memoir. My story has to do with the challenges of growing up with a mentally ill mother and my experience of going through my adult years without the presence of a mother in my life, and how that played out in life’s milestones (marriage, divorce, remarriage, having children, decisions, a child with cancer, etc.) My first book is “Faith Steps for Military Families – Spiritual Readiness Through the Psalms of Ascent.” As a retired military wife, I always felt that spiritual readiness was a key factor in living out a difficult lifestyle (military).
Contrary to Cheryl Strayed’s book, for my own memoir, I plan to show how God’s presence was with me during my own “wilderness” experience based on Isaiah 43:19. And how His love and protection carried me, even when I couldn’t “feel” God close. It will also show, with grace, all aspects and consequences of my mother’s illness.
Thanks for the above article. Enjoyed it very much,
Lisa N. Phillips
http://www.LisaNixonPhillips.com
http://www.Facebook.com/FaithStepsForMilitaryFamilies
http://www.Twitter.com/lisanixonphilli
Lisa – I visited your site. Great story. Hope I didn’t spoil the ending for you. I appreciate your faith, testimony, transparency, and courage!