cheryl strayed – the writer who lost her mother, her marriage and her map at once — and walked 1,100 miles with no experience because moving was the only plan left.

role

memoirist and advice columnist

known for

wild (2012)

in one line

you don't need to know the way. you need to start walking.

save

the short version

american writer, born 1968. still with us.

in march 1991 her mother died of cancer at 45. strayed was 22, a college senior. she calls it her 'genesis story' — the event that split her life into before and after.

the years after: the family scattered, her marriage ended in 1995, and — her own published account — there was heroin in there too. by 26 she had no mother, no marriage, no plan.

summer 1995: with no long-distance hiking experience, she walked roughly 1,100 miles of the pacific crest trail alone, mojave desert to the oregon–washington border, under a pack she named 'monster'. no phone. no partner. no way to see the end from the start.

at her divorce she chose herself a new surname: strayed. then she wrote it all down — wild (2012), an oprah pick, a film — and answered strangers' letters for years as 'dear sugar' (collected in tiny beautiful things).

for when the map is gone and every direction looks the same — she's the one who says the walking itself can stand in for the clarity you don't have yet.

go deeper — their stories on the site

one foot in front of the other

no mother, no marriage, no plan, no experience — and 1,100 miles of trail. the hike didn't give her answers. it gave her motion, and motion turned out to be enough to start with.

5 min read · opens right here ›

the full story

strayed is on the fog shelf because her answer to being utterly lost was almost insultingly literal: she walked. not toward anything she could name. just forward, for months, until forward became a direction again.

the collapse came in stages. her mother bobbi died of cancer in march 1991, at 45 — strayed was 22 and has called it her genesis story. after that the household that had held everyone together stopped existing; her stepfather and siblings drifted apart. her young marriage ended in 1995. and in between, by her own published account in wild, there was a stretch of heroin use. stated plainly, once, in her words, because she chose to publish it herself.

so: 26 years old, no mother, no marriage, no family unit, no plan. what she did next had no qualification behind it. in summer 1995 she set out alone on the pacific crest trail — roughly 1,100 miles from the mojave desert to the bridge of the gods on the oregon–washington border — with no long-distance hiking experience, boots that took her toenails, and an overloaded pack she named monster. it was 1995: no phone. resupply came in boxes she'd mailed ahead to towns along the route.

she has been careful, ever since, not to sell the hike as a fix. it wasn't a straight line from broken to whole, and it didn't end with an answer — wild closes at the bridge with her still not knowing what came next. what the hike was, was motion: the physical act of putting one foot in front of the other when the end couldn't be seen from the start. her line from the book: 'i knew that if i allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed.'

everything people know her for came after, unplanned. the anonymous 'dear sugar' advice column at the rumpus from 2010 — answering strangers' letters about grief, divorce, addiction, the exact terrain she'd walked — collected in tiny beautiful things (2012). wild itself, published 2012, seventeen years after the hike, an oprah pick and then a film. even her name is part of it: at her divorce she chose 'strayed' for herself, deliberately, for what it means. honest notes: she's living, and the hard parts here are only what she's published about herself. and her advice-line worth keeping: 'you don't have a career. you have a life.'