A Bull in Both Directions
I’m reading the memoir, Wild by Cheryl Strayed. You know how sometimes you watch a movie and identify with a character in deep ways but don’t exactly know why. Maybe the character puts language to things that you’ve thought, or does things that you wish to be true about you, or has some kind of trait that is so apparent in them that you feel lying dormant in you. I feel that way about this book. There is something about how Cheryl tells the story of finding herself through a 100 day hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. She’s stubborn but has a resilient spirit despite her brokenness. She’s honest. She’s thoughtful. And she’s underprepared for her trip.
“The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer—and yet also, like most things, so very simple—was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.” –Wild, Cheryl Strayed