The Ups and Downs of Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail
By: Elysha Charyk
The hero’s journey, is a concept that was developed by Joseph Campbell. The hero’s journey is where a man or woman decide to set out on an epic quest to find one’s self or prove their worth. Like any journey the hero, must pass through these steps just like anyone would, when we meet the hero and then the call to adventure. In the stage the call to adventure, this is when the hero decides to embark on the adventure.
Cheryl Strayed meets the characteristics
necessary for it to be considered a hero’s journey. Her mother passes away, her father is absent
in her life, she is getting divorced, and now she is becoming a drug
addict. She knows that in order to save
herself, and become the person that she once was, she needs to hike the Pacific
Crest Trail in order to find herself once again.
The hero’s journey starts with the ordinary
world, where we meet our hero, and the problems that are going on. The author knows that her life is going south
ever since her mom died. Her family is
very distant, and busy with their own lives. She cheats on her husband, which leads her to do drugs with him, which ultimately
leads to her divorce. Strayed knew that
she only had one choice and that was to answer the call to adventure, and to
hike the PCT trail. At the very
beginning of her hike, before she even starts, she reaches the refusal of the
call, she has doubts about actually being able to hike the PCT trail for three
months without much training and is thinking that it’s not the best idea, but
then she decides to push through her doubts and to start hiking. Along her journey she meets many allies and
enemies. One enemy that she faces is
backpack that she calls “monster", I believe this to be one of her enemies,
because during her hike it causes her many problems due to the fact that she’s hiking
alone and has to carry everything on her own. Albert one if the hikers that she met, had
commented on her pack. “Jiminy Cricket,” Albert drawled when he saw Monster. “What
you got in there, girly-o? Looks like everything but the kitchen sink.”(Strayed,
93) Strayed was on her own so it looked like her had more stuff then the rest
of them. Later on she met up with
Albert, and some other people that she had met on the trail, and he helped her remove
some of the unnecessary weight that she had. “Looks to me like you could stand
to lose a few things,” he said. “Want some help?” “actually,” I said, smiling
ruefully at him, “yes”.”(Strayed, 106)
The next stage that the author came across is
the ordeal, this stage happens near the middle of the story, when the hero
confronts death, or faces his or her greatest fear. At this point in the story the author is
walking through a desert “I spent the morning weaving my way through dry creek
beds and bine-hard gullies, pausing to sip water as seldom as I could.”(Strayed, 191) Strayed was hiking a desert in a very hot and dry part of California
where the temperature was already in the triple digits. There was a water halfway through her hike
and she already running out of water, not even close to the water. Trying to
preserve her water until she reaches the next water source. “I forced myself
not to drink the last two until I had the water tank in sight and by 4:30 there
it was: the stilted legs of the burned fire lookout on a rise in the distance.”(Strayed, 193) “It wasn’t until I got up close that I saw they were tiny scraps
of water… They said in various ways, but they all bore the same message: NO
WATER.”(Strayed, 194) Now Cheryl Strayed only half way though her hike left
with only two ounces of water, walking in desert, where the temperature is in
the triple digits, she continued to hike.
She later found a dirty pond that had some water, and pumped it so that
later on she could filter the water, and put an iodine pill in so that the
water was safe enough to drink. I believe
that his was a turning point for her in her hike, because if she could get
through this obstacle, then she would be able to get through any other obstacle
that came her way in order to fish the hike.
At one point during her hike she comes
across a fox “This was his world. He was certain as the sky. “Fox,” I whispered…
He raised his fine-boned red head, but remained standing… “Come back,” I called
lightly and then suddenly shouted, “MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!” I didn’t know the word
was going to come out of my mouth until it did. And then, just as suddenly, I went
silent, spent.”(Strayed, 144) I believe that at this
point, because a fox is a spirit animal, that maybe she felt a connection with
the fox and that the fox could possibly be her mother watching over her. I believe
that this is very symbolic to the story because it means that she is not entirely
alone.