WILD: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dustbowl by Timothy Egan
I read these books simultaneously and found an extreme juxtaposition of individual angst vs tragedy of epic proportion. In both instances, people started out for a new life with as much baggage as they could carry. One was a voluntary personal journey of self-fulfillment, the other a necessary migration for survival.
Wild is the story of a woman who had a bad home life while young, then in her early 20's, lost her mother to cancer. Failing to keep her family and marriage together, she embarks on a whirlwind of casual sex and drug use, ultimately deciding to hike the daunting Pacific Crest Trail solo as a purging experience. With no hiking experience, she buys gear and books from REI and starts out on her trek. Cheryl makes irresponsible life choices, taps into the luck gene, and survives relatively unscathed. This book has been viewed alternately as: 1. a self-indulgent me-fest; 2. a poignant homage to her mother; or 3. a serious coming-of-age journey. What it assuredly is NOT - - is a guide to hiking the PCT.
The Worst Hard Time is a history of people who weathered the Great American Dustbowl of the 1930s. Taken from diaries, oral history, and interviews with survivors, it's a gripping story of optimistic, hardy westward-bound homesteaders. The "Sod-Busters" or "Nesters" came to the Prairie lured by free land and a promise of better life life. It's also the story of speculators, lawmen, and desperados who killed then displaced entire nations of Indians while slaughtering millions of bison; both of whom had roamed the land in harmony for centuries. The magnitude of inexperience, hopefulness, stupidity, greed, and bad weather made for a perfect storm of desperation, poverty, and death. The lessons in responsible land stewardship were learned the hard way.
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