It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.
Cheryl StrayedThere isn't a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart.
Cheryl StrayedSmall things such as this have saved me: how much I love my mother โ even after all these years. How powerfully I carry her within me. My grief is tremendous but my love is bigger. So is yours. You are not grieving your sonโs death because his death was ugly and unfair. Youโre grieving it because you loved him truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of his death.
Cheryl StrayedBlood is thicker than water, my mother had always said when I was growing up, a sentiment Iโd often disputed. But it turned out that it didnโt matter whether she was right or wrong. They both flowed out of my cupped palms.
Cheryl StrayedI walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.
Cheryl StrayedI made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me? The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one.
Cheryl Strayed