Going "Wild"

Since I am currently over 36 weeks pregnant, my recent adventures are fairly limited.  I can barely tie my own shoes, let alone set out on any outdoor nature excursions.  I'm aching to take the dogs hiking up in the hills behind our neighborhood, or to trek down to San Diego for a swim in the Pacific Ocean.  For now though, until my body becomes my own again, I live vicariously through the adventures of characters in books.  Most recently, I followed the harrowing and uplifting journey of Cheryl Strayed in her memoir "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail."

When I heard there was a popular book out about a twenty-something woman who had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail by herself, I was fascinated. Promptly I hit "buy" on my Nook (those e-readers make it way too easy to spend money).  I had never heard of the Pacific Crest Trail (or PCT) until I moved out here to the California desert.  For those who don't know, it is a hiking trail that runs from the Mexican border in southern California, to the Canadian border in Washington.  My husband and I have hiked a portion of it where it crosses through the Angeles National Forest near Wrightwood.  It features such challenges as water supply issues, fallen trees, hungry bears, and poisonous snakes.  For those willing to brave it, the PCT also offers such stunning visual rewards as Mount Hood, Crater Lake, and the Bridge of the Gods, just to name a few.  To hike a substantial portion of the PCT is a major accomplishment for even a seasoned outdoorsman, and most would say to attempt it by yourself is just plain crazy. Just plain crazy is always a promising premise for a good read.  One quiet afternoon, I curled up with my Nook and began to read.  Very early on in Strayed's story, I soon realized that our familiarity with the PCT was only one of many things we had in common.

Strayed also hails from the great state of Minnesota.  She grew up mere miles from the country town where my parents lived when they first got married.  She attended two Minnesotan universities, the University of St. Thomas (my alma mater), and the University of Minnesota (where my little sister recently graduated from).  Her journey on the PCT began outside of the small desert town of Mojave, California, about twenty miles from where I currently live.  Our similarities end with these odd coincidences, but they helped me to establish an initial sense of personal connection with Strayed.

After suffering multiple traumas, most notably the death of her mother and the breakup of her young marriage, Strayed grew enamored with the PCT after reading about it in a hiking guide she happened upon randomly in a Minneapolis store.  She became convinced that hiking the PCT was her destiny, and set off haphazardly to conquer it.  As you may imagine, it didn't start out well.  Strayed lacked the proper preparation, planning, and skills necessary to successfully traverse the rough trail, especially where she began in the unforgiving Mojave desert.  Luckily though, she was taken in by many colorful characters, random strangers who showed her kindness and shared their knowledge.  Notable among them was Ed, a lonely middle-aged man who parked his pop-up camper near the trail and served as a guardian angel for any hikers who passed through.  He occupied his days by feeding his grateful flock feasts of hot dogs and baked beans, and seemed more than fulfilled by it.  The quirky folks described by Strayed as she encountered them along the way really added humor and heart to the story.

When I read reviews of this book, there were many negative comments about how Strayed's telling of the story glorified her irresponsible behavior.  I imagine this is in the same vein as Jon Krakauer's biography  "Into the Wild."  Krakauer received similar criticism as he painted an almost romanticized tale of a young man's attraction to transcendentalism.  This free-spirited (and misguided) man, Christopher McCandless, abandoned his life and possessions to hike alone in Alaska's Denali Park, and eventually died from eating poisonous berries.  While I see the parallels, and Strayed certainly made poor decisions, I don't think she shied away from that at all.  She openly admitted her stupidity, sharing candidly about the time when she nearly fainted from dehydration due to poor planning, or when she was left with only one boot after accidentally dropping one off a cliff.  Strayed told of a specific incident when she was nearly sexually assaulted by a fellow hiker.  This certainly doesn't fall into the "stupidity" category, but does address the fact that she didn't think through the risks of being a female hiking alone, or take any precautions to protect herself from such an occurrence.

Strayed's focus was not on exalting her poor decision-making.  Instead it was an honest and unflinching reflection on her personal journey to achieving emotional independence.  She spent most of her life relying on and reacting to other's actions, especially those of the men in her life.  Spending weeks in solitude on the PCT allowed her to finally establish her own voice.  Strayed found emotions she had been suppressing for years flooding to the surface, and she found healing in the mountains, streams, and trees that surrounded her. Her story is moving, meaningful, and full of wit. I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read on a hot summer day (we've had a lot of those lately around here).

Summer TV: The Good, The Bad, and The Olympic

Summer is, on the whole, a dark period for television programming.  Networks don't exert much effort into getting us to loyally tune in.  They present us such vapid and nausea inducing offerings as Love In The Wild (ABC) and America's Got Talent (FOX).  Finding a show with anything resembling intellectual stimulation seems a futile task. T and I have had to settle for sub-par reality offerings like American Ninja Warrior (NBC) and The Great Escape (TNT) to pass the time.  They provide only limited tidbits of entertainment, but at least I don't feel like I've lost yet another piece of my soul after watching a farce of a rose ceremony (this means you The Bachelorette (ABC)).  Luckily there are a few escapes from the monotony of summer media, two shows in particular along with a certain famous sporting event.

The summer shows I DVR for myself to watch (that T has very little interest in) are NY Med (ABC) and Covert Affairs (USA).  NY Med documents real doctors and nurses at New York area hospitals.  I have always had a morbid curiosity for everything medical, so this is right up my alley.  Usually I cry at least once every episode, like when a dad and son hug before a heart transplant, etc.  The most recent installment fed into my pregnancy-induced paranoia a little too much though.  The first story was about a young girl who required surgery for a tumor on her heart.  Watching her parents struggle through their fear over possibly losing her made me think about how much I already care and worry for the baby I'm carrying in my belly right now.  And it won't ever stop, because there will always be something to be afraid of.  It's just a part of loving someone.  I can't imagine watching my child go through something so painful and harrowing.  The other featured story was about a woman whose aorta dissected at 27 weeks pregnant, and she required a dangerous surgical repair after the baby was born.   That got me googling symptoms of aortic dissection, because of course if something happens to one pregnant woman, it must happen to ALL pregnant women.  Luckily both the little girl and new mom came through fine and made full recoveries.  Most of the time when NY Med is on (and I'm wound up in a nervous ball with a box of Kleenex and red eyes) I am asking myself, why am I watching this?  But then I go ahead and do it again next week anyway.

My second guilty summer pleasure is Covert Affairs (USA).  This is probably my all-time favorite show, period.  It follows CIA operative Annie Walker (Piper Perabo), as she journeys around the globe solving mysteries, stopping evildoers, and wearing really great shoes.  I love that the majority of the main cast is female, yet it doesn't come off like a soap opera.  It's smart, inventive, and action packed (with yes, some handsome men and romantic subplots as well).  In past seasons, Oded Fehr (the royal bodyguard guy/narrator from the film The Mummy) pops up in several episodes as a Mossad (Israeli secret service) operative who aids and hinders Annie in various missions.  Perabo and Fehr have undeniable chemistry and their scenes together really stand out with lively banter and humor.  The next new episode airs in two weeks, and according to this week's teaser, Oded Fehr will be back. I. Am. Ridiculously.  Excited.

Lastly, there are the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, which shine like a bright two week light amid the darkness of the summer TV trash brigade.  Every night we park ourselves on the couch at 8, and stay up til midnight, way later than we should be awake.  Each morning I wake up drowsy, cursing NBC for airing their primetime coverage so late in the Pacific time zone.  But I proceed to repeat this pattern again the next night, without question.  We love swimming, gymnastics, and track and field in our house.  My husband is a former collegiate swimmer (and I his loyal then-girlfriend lived and breathed swim meets for two years), so we have a great love for the sport.  It's also fascinating to watching swimming events with someone who can tell you what's going on from a technical standpoint, because when I watch I usually see a hog pile of Speedo-clad men streaming into a wall at seemingly the same time.  I can't make heads or tails of who excelled and who screwed up until T explains it to me.  Gymnastics is a favorite (mostly of mine), because I avidly watched the 1996 gold medal team as a young girl, and thought they were all amazing acrobatic princesses.  I wanted to be just like them, and would practice vaulting over the couch in our basement (not recommended).  I am troubled as an adult by the stunted growth/abnormal body development and bitchy personas (was it just me, or did they all seem like divas this year?) of the US athletes, but I still retain an interest in the outcomes of the events. The track and field portions haven't aired yet, but we are really looking forward to it, because the races for the fastest man and woman alive never fail to provide drama and excitement.  I'll be sad to see the Olympics end, but it's probably for the best, because I'll soon have a newborn and not be able to handle these late nights anymore!  I'll have to settle for Sham-Wow infomercials at 3am feedings instead.

Have you found something great to watch on TV this summer?  If so, let me know about it.  It's hard to find the quality shows, but they are out there.  Happy viewing!