Lost and ‘wild’

Let me thank here the anonymous tourist who stayed in a resort in Coron, Palawan, and left behind a copy of “Wild,” a memoir by Cheryl Strayed. That paperback copy was picked up by this visitor, looking for something to occupy her mind in between sessions for a seminar on domestic violence for women beneficiaries of the DSWD’s Pantawid program. And in the week we met with the women and went around the burgeoning tourist destination of Coron, it was “Wild,” and the images and words of Strayed, that served almost like a running commentary during those sweltering days.

I’ll write more about Pantawid and a project that the women’s group Pilipina undertook with the DSWD with funding from the Asian Development Bank in later columns.

Let me focus for now on “Wild,” a serendipitous discovery among the books left behind by tourists seeking to lighten their luggage. The book tells of Strayed’s arduous (which is putting it mildly) journey following the Pacific Crest Trail that leads from the Mexican border to California, Washington and Oregon. Eh? some might comment, what’s so special about a hike? Well, for one thing, there is the distance, since the Philippines’ total area fits neatly inside the territory of California alone. So you can imagine the distance this lone hiker had to traverse, in physical terms but even more crucially, in emotional development, coming to terms with her mother’s death and the wild turns her life had taken in the aftermath.

Reading “Wild,” I felt almost as if I had accompanied Cheryl on those mountain passes and snow-filled meadows myself, so powerful is her writing. And in recalling the emptiness she felt at her mother’s sudden departure and her family’s distancing, I confess to reliving the emotions that swirled through me at the deaths of family members, the sense of being unmoored from the familiar, the sudden attacks of anxiety, of unbearable grief.

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So when I heard that “Wild” had been turned into a movie, starring Reese Witherspoon who had optioned the book even before its release, watching it definitely became a priority.

And a good thing I made time for the film. Reserving our seats at the theater, we noted that there were only about six other moviegoers watching with us, even if we bought our tickets a minute or two after show time.

“Wild” is as much about Cheryl’s backstory as it is about the actual trek through the PCT. Her mother Bonnie was what is now called a “free spirit,” taking her three children (reduced to two in the movie) as she fled a violent marriage and setting up a pastoral existence in a farm with a new partner in a cabin with no electricity or indoor plumbing. By the time Cheryl went to college, she found Bonnie likewise pursuing her dream of higher education, but a short while later Bonnie would fall ill of cancer, succumbing just about a month after a doctor diagnosed her illness and gave her “just” a year to live.

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Such developments would throw anybody for a loop, but for Cheryl it coincided with another personal crisis, a divorce resulting from her own sexual misadventures (“with anyone who asks,” as her psychologist puts it) and then a disastrous fall into hard drugs.

So by the time we “meet” Cheryl as she embarks on a walking adventure through the PCT, we confront a creature weakened by her need, her longing, her anger and her grief. But it is also her very loss that keeps her strong, that stiffens her spine and keeps her eyes open to every moment of beauty and kindness that she encounters as she walks through desert and sage brush, mountain passes filled with snow, streams and river beds, and farms and towns where people are welcoming but also threatening.

It’s a very different Reese Witherspoon we see in “Wild.” Making her mark as a perky comedienne in the “Legally Blonde” movies, she would later win an Oscar for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in the Johnny Cash bio-pic. But like Cheryl, Reese would herself find the triumph shadowed by personal loss, the end of her marriage to fellow actor Ryan Phillippe.

Maybe that’s why Witherspoon grabbed at the chance of personifying the woman left bereft by the death of her mother and who finds herself reborn to herself by conquering the rigors of one of the world’s most difficult climbs. Might we read this as a metaphor of what Reese went through postdivorce and even postscandal after her drunken confrontation with a traffic cop?

That may explain why she throws herself wholly into the role and persona of Cheryl, leaving behind the lingering images of her comedic self.

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Whatever. I would recommend the film for everyone searching and questing, looking for answers, and finding them in the most unexpected places.

A scene toward the end shows Cheryl encountering an old woman and her grandson, cute as a button and proudly announcing his gift for singing. When she asks him for a song as a favor, he performs “Red River Valley,” achingly simple and spare and, sung in the boy’s clear, innocent vocals, heartbreaking, too.

The grandmother and boy walk away, but Cheryl breaks down, finally admitting how much she misses her mother, and reconciling her loss and her journey toward finding herself.

Every experience teaches us a lesson, she notes in a voice-over, and the woman who stands on the “Bridge of the Gods,” which she set as the end of her journey, is a far, far different person from the one who set out to traverse the PCT weighed down by the burdens of, among other things, the “beast,” as she calls her enormous backpack. But it is her emotional baggage, jettisoned at the end of the journey, that gives Cheryl direction and thrust, “wild” no more.