I finished re-reading Cheryl Strayed's Wild last night, and it was as beautiful as I remember. Towards the end of her hike, Strayed's narrative shifted, as an author in a distant present looking back at her hike through the PCT, how her life continued since then - her meeting the handsome man who would be her husband, her children, bringing her family to the place she sat and ate an ice cream cone, and all four of them having an ice cream there.
What was it that hiking the PCT has given her? It gave her something to move forward in her life, yet like all mysteries, it is an elusive and wondrous thing.
It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That it was enough to trust that what I'd done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life--like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.
How wild it as, to let it be.
How beautiful. How so very true.
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