Of all the things I’d been skeptical about, I didn’t feel skeptical about this: the wilderness had a clarity that included me.
Cheryl StrayedDon't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.
Cheryl StrayedIt was my life — like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.
Cheryl StrayedObviously memoir is subjective truth: It is my memory, my perspective, that's the beauty. But I still wanted to be as factual as I could.
Cheryl StrayedGoing down (descending), I realized, was like taking hold of the loose strand of yard on a sweater you'd just spent hours knitting and pulling it until the entire sweater unraveled into a pile of string. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again. As if everything gained was inevitably lost.
Cheryl Strayed