Preface: From Annoyed to Angry about Wild

I've been debating for awhile whether or not I should participate in a more formal fashion in the growing criticism over Cheryl Strayed's "memoir" Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. With some reluctance and hesitation, I now feel like I must speak up.

Why the hesitation? Put simply, I don't like the idea of putting a lot of negative energy out into the atmosphere. I feel it has a way of coming back upon a person. 

Comedian and UFC announcer Joe Rogan felt perfectly justified in publicly attacking Carlos Mencia on his website in 2005, because of the truly despicable things Mencia had done to his fellow comedians. However, Joe expressed regret for his actions in an interview with Marc Maron on his podcast WTF some years later, feeling that because he had put so much "negative energy" into attacking Carlos, it came back upon him in ways he hadn't foreseen. He still thinks something needed to be done, but maybe he would handled it in a different way. 

To some extent, that is why I've hesitated to speak out publicly. All one has to do is read through a few responses from Strayed's followers to get a sense of what you would face in daring to question her. Just check out a few of these gems from Facebook: 

"I read Bill Bryson's "A Walk In The Woods" and there you will find two immensely unprepared dudes. I've never heard Bryson criticized for his under preparedness in the way Cheryl has been. It's just b/c your a woman, and we all know it."

"I wonder if it is because you are a woman, and/or you achieved fame that causes this reaction in people? I think it is jealousy pure and simple. Most of your critics never hiked when you did."

"I was appalled at the PCT FB page. I had recently joined and then left after a few weeks. It was just as the movie was premiering and idiot after idiot had something crappy to say about the book. Sadly, they thought we all should hear it. However, there were defenders of WILD, some men, mostly women. I do think there is an element of fear, jealousy, sexism and cabin fever that have infected your attackers. Lets hope the spring will clear the cobwebs if idiocy... less hopeful about the sexism."

Yeah, and those were just a few of the hundreds I saw right away and picked out random. One day I might go back and cherry-pick some of the worst. The point is, I'm opening myself up for a lot of blow-back. Be that as it may, I've decided to move forward.Why? Well, Carlos Mencia never did anything that put people in harm's way.

What finally drove me over the edge was this Facebook post by Ms. Strayed.
(If that link doesn't, it means she's deleted it. I assume that will happen at some point)

Ms. Strayed appears to be upset that people are starting to call her out and draw attention to her irresponsibility in promoting the idea of people going out and hiking in the wilderness without proper preparation. She starts: 

"Might I say, for the record, that while I made comic (and truthful) hay in WILD about all I needed to learn about backpacking (which was MUCH), the extent to which I was unprepared has been wildly overstated?"

Okay, first I have to point out that I've never once seen an author post a massive block of words in one mega-paragraph like this. Just take a look at the screenshot above. To add insult to injury, the sentences are horribly constructed and she meanders from point to point with little connection between the thoughts. It's virtually unreadable. 

Second, what does she mean my "make comic...hay in Wild"? The term "making hay" generally means "turning something into one's advantage" or "throw into confusion". Neither one applies here. Make truthful hay? That makes even less sense. This is supposedly a professional writer who doesn't appear to understand the idioms she uses. She needed to learn "much" about backpacking? Who talks like that? The rest of her jungly word-garden is more of the same. 

Third, "...the extent to which I was unprepared has been wildly overstated?" Is she making a statement or asking a question? Better: "I want to state for the record the extent to which I was unprepared has been wildly overstated." Setting aside her complete lack of style, who is she talking about anyway? This seems to be a general attack against a straw-man she thinks she can defeat rather than a refutation of any specific criticism. Who has wildly overstated your unpreparedness Cheryl? YOU HAVE. 

After some Sugar-esque word salad comes this illuminating little gem: 
"People like to write that I knew nothing about hiking before I set foot on the PCT, but as I wrote in my book, I was an avid day hiker before my PCT trek--a fact that often gets overlooked for reasons I do not understand."

Help me out people. I cant find anywhere in her book where she states she's an avid day hiker. She uses "avid" six times and never about her hiking. (although there is this little eye-roller: "She knew I was intellectually avid," Ugh). In fact, this is what she says, in her own words, about her hiking background: 

• "It was my hiking outfit and in it I felt a bit foreign, like someone I hadn't become"
• "But now, having only these clothes at hand, I felt suddenly like a fraud."
• Paul: "It's only that you've never gone backpacking as far as I know." (Interestingly Cheryl then lies to him and tells him she has.) 
• "I've never gone backpacking."
•  "I walked all the time. I walked for hours on end as a waitress." Note, this is her FIRST justification for being able to hike the PCT. Next she states she walked around in cities and walked for pleasure. 
• She was referred to in the book as the "hapless hiker" a name she calls a "fairly apt description" 
• SHE NEVER ONCE MENTIONS HIKING in the two years (or whatever) she was writing as "Sugar." Think that odd? Me too, particularly since there were several times it would have been pertinent to the question she was answering. BTW, before you send me scowly emails about the one time she talks about walking up a hill and met people and feathers fell from the sky and whatever nonsense she was making up that day, I'll tell you I believe that story as much as I believe George Zimmerman's fanciful tales of self defense. 

 Do those sound like descriptors for an "avid dayhiker?" I think not. My favorite quote? "What is hiking but walking after all." This shows a profound (a word Cheryl uses 19 times in book) lack of understanding of what hiking entails. If hiking was walking, they'd call it walking. 

The point of this is: Cheryl HERSELF has actively promoted the idea she wasn't prepared for her undertaking and it was beyond, far beyond, what she was logically and sensibly capable of doing. This set-up was purposeful. It shows how "strong" she was. It sets up what she had to "overcome". Steel is forged with fire, not flowers and bunnies. If she was prepared, if hiking were easy, if she knew what she was doing, then where's the drama? 

This is how she closes the manifesto: "If you read WILD carefully, you know that when I went to the PCT I was going home."
What?? Was there another version that contains passages I don't have in my copy? She states repeatedly how foreign the terrain is for her. She had no concept what a desert was, no idea what the difference between a mountain and hill was, and actually thought she was going to get attacked by Bigfoot.

Now why does this matter? Go read comments from people who have read the book. You can find them on Goodreads, Amazon, and her Facebook page. You can find dozens, maybe hundreds by now, of coach potatoes who have been "inspired" to go out wander around in the wilderness without any more preparation than Cheryl had. Do you know what happens out there? The California desert isn't like Jackrabbit, Indiana or Corntown, Ohio, you dehydrate FAST. You dehydrate just by breathing in the dry air. Going on day-hikes at the local park is as far from wilderness backpacking as bumper cars are from a NASCAR race. 

That was quite a bit longer than I wanted. My plan is to go back through the book and create an entry for each discrepancy I find and anything that seems fishy. Ultimately I'm working through three different hypotheses, and I quite honestly don't know which one will prove true:
1. Most of the book , about 70% from what I can tell, varies between exaggeration and outright fiction
2. Cheryl Strayed is suffering from one or more mental disorders (I do not say this to be funny; I'm serious)
3. She's such a poor writer, one has difficulty in discerning what she really means, and thus, there's a lot of confusion. 

The third hypothesis is the newest. I just came up with it today when a group of us were trying to figure out when her first "zero day" was. I got confused because she didn't write what she really meant in one part and threw me off. 

Number one is the one I find most likely. As you'll see in future posts, her hike seems to be an abridged and slightly modified version of the Barefoot Sisters' hike on the Appalachian Trail with a couple of splashes from Bill Bryson thrown in for spice.

The second hypothesis cannot be completely discounted even if #1 and #3 hold true. She ate her mother's bones? She stabbed her husband with a toothbrush and threatened to fuck another man's brains out? She took drugs from a stranger in the back of his van? Yeah, there's a diagnosis there somewhere. 

We'll explore all these together in detail. So long for now. 

-Mercer