For some time, New York Times bestselling author Cheryl Strayed felt her given name was not quite right.
“Nothing fit until one day when the word ‘strayed’ came to my mind. Immediately, I looked it up in the dictionary, and knew it was mine,” Strayed wrote in her memoir “Wild.”
Strayed came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Wednesday as part of UW-Madison’s Distinguished Lecture Series. She spoke about her book, “Wild,” which is being adapted into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon.
During the four years following her mother’s death, Strayed felt lost, she said. Then one day, while waiting in line to buy a foldable shovel at REI, she came across a travel book that inspired her to hike the Pacific Crest Trail.
Strayed said she imagined her trek would mainly be a spiritual journey.
“It was harder than I thought it was going to be, physically,” Strayed said. “I was so hungry and so madly fantasizing about food and cold beverages.”
The hike wasn’t the author’s first experience with nature, however. Strayed grew up in northern Minnesota in what she described as a “back to the land” lifestyle, with no plumbing or running water.
Despite this isolated upbringing, she loved books and wanted to be a writer.
“I didn’t really know that somebody like me could be a writer,” Strayed said. “I just thought, ‘I don’t know how that writer made that beauty, but I want to be somebody who makes that.’”
Allie Vitello, a UW-Madison sophomore who read “Wild” this past summer, said she usually hears her own voice when she reads and that she appreciated having the opportunity to listen to excerpts from the author.
“I liked hearing her read it … in her own voice,” Vitello said.
Vitello, an Oregon native, said she came to the lecture to hear more about Strayed’s experience hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.
In turn, Strayed said she spent time thinking about how her experience was relevant to her audience, not just to herself, in the 13 years between hiking and writing “Wild.”
“What does it mean to be human? That is the question of literature,” Strayed said.
