Cheryl Strayed is a courageous, gritty, and deceptively elegant writer.

It would have been so perfectly ironic if I had been killed by the dog, because I was petting a dog who was not used to being pet, because I think I'm some kind of dog whisperer, and I think I can make any dog love me.

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare, no matter how conservative your decision making, no matter how few Y chromosomes are along on your trip, you can still find yourself in a mud slide or a hurricane without a dry piece of clothing to your name. But those of us who have given our time and usually our hearts to outdoorsmen over the years know that, for many of them, it's not really a wilderness trip unless, MacGyver-like, they have to make a fire out of a pair of shorts, a glow stick, and a ketchup bottle; it's not really an adventure until someone gets airlifted out.

I always think, when I'm in motion, writing seems like the most natural thing.

When I was a little kid, I used to walk miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of railroad tracks.

Movement helps keep me centered. I am a disaster, for instance, at sitting meditation, but I'm pretty decent at walking meditation.

Traveling is my priority, because it drives the writing, so I teach around the travel, and sometimes the travel is the teaching.