Sounds Like WILD

I finally finally read/listened to WILD by Cheryl Strayed.

Teri gave me the book back in April and I saved it, putting off reading it until I'd have real time to read and focus. This was going to be my inspiration for finally finally writing that creative non-fiction piece I've been dinking around with for a few years.

Waiting was ridiculous because I can neither focus nor pull free time out of my ass. You wanna do something? Do it.

Our library has the audio version. So perfect, I thought, because I could listen to it during my commute. I took along my hardback edition to read during my down time at the office (aka answering phones), in the car while I waited for Sophie to get out of swim team practice and whenever the spirit moved me. Which was often.

At first I was worried I wouldn't relate to the story. Stories involving the pain of losing a parent make me feel like a selfish asshole because my parents are still alive and well enough that I take them for granted even though I should know better. They're my mom and dad. They'll live forever.

We weren't what you'd call close-knit, but we get along fine. My brother and sister and me - our parents raised us with the fundamental idea that the purpose was for us to become productive, independent adults. And so we are.

The more I listened to Strayed's story, the less I fretted that we wouldn't connect. I wanted to hear how Cheryl made it from one end of the Pacific Coast Trail to the other alone. Alone! And she did all this without an iPod, an iPhone or an iPad. The 2012 mind reels.

What stayed with me was the fact that Cheryl Strayed didn't even know what she didn't know about taking on such a monumental hike and still she didn't let that stop her. During a few close scrapes, you see how ignorance may be dangerous, but it's also a great antidote to holding oneself back.

The overarching story of Cheryl's trek was one in which she got lost to found herself. I get that. I've been running from things, especially myself, for way too long.  Get me some boots that fit, a compass for morons and a tent that even a one-year-old could set up and I'd be willing to make a go of it.

When I finished the book, I wanted to email Cheryl (yes, I think of her by her first name) and beg her to turn around and hike back down the trail and to take me with her. With my life feeling rather frayed around the edges, I could use some direction. Maybe some hiking and electronic deprivation would do me some good.

I don't even care that I know jack about camping and I've never been on a proper hike. I've been training for this my whole life. My kids think I'm a pack-mule. While I was unemployed, it was nothing for me to go a few days without a shower. It was a smelly cake walk. Go weeks without shaving my legs, my pits, my toes? Bring it.  I could totally go for simplifying down to the essentials, packing it into something I can carry and disappearing into the wild like a short, bi-pedal hermit crab.

For now I'm roughing it at the Grand Hyatt Buckhead. The opposite of alone, I spent the day surrounded by excitable boys. Dinner was a Krispy Kreme milkshake at Flip Burger followed by a jaunt through the hospitality suite to grab an old fashioned. I haven't climbed a single stair because I'm wearing pumps and the elevator is so very close to the meeting rooms where I'm sitting all day taking minutes and having obnoxious IM chats with my boss. And as if that isn't grueling enough, I'm feeling a little put out that my amenities didn't get replenished.What? No fresh shampoo or lotion? No new shower cap? If I had The World's Loudest Whistle, you can bet I would have blown it this afternoon when I discovered the horror of no new toiletries.

This, my friends, is the kind of adversity that builds character. Okay, so maybe I'll have to title my memoir MILD.

I can live with that.

My Dinner with Teri

Let's say you make friends with someone online.

She's part of a circle of friends you met on a well-known literary agent's blog. Now let's say that friend emails you that she's going to be in your town and would love to get together. The day finally arrives. What is the first thing you do when you see this friend?

Well, if you're me, you scream. With lots of volume.

She knocked on the window while I primped trying to yank my hair into some semblance of order.

I screamed because I'm a bit jumpy, I guess.

After I screamed, we hugged and then headed out to dinner where we talked for hours. We could have kept talking, too, but it was getting late and we'd taken up the booth of the super nice waitress at Applebees for far too long.  We discussed topics ranging from family to politics to mutual friends and, of course, writing. Funnily enough, writing is the thing we talked least about. Even though this was our first meeting in person, I felt like I'd known Teri for a long time. Trite, but true. Midwesterners of the same age, we could have gone to high school together.

Teri, in case you don't know, is an avid reader. No, scratch that. Is there a stronger word for avid because that's what Teri is. She is, without a doubt, the pace setter for what this crowd of writers/readers have their noses buried in. Recently she read and raved about Wild - From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, a memoir by Cheryl Strayed (aka Sugar).

You have to read this book, she said.

And then she saw to it that I would.

Thank you for the gift of your time, your friendship and the book, Teri. I hope I'll see you again very soon.

When is the last time you had an evening you wished could last longer?