Wild

This pilgrimage has her encounter a community of hikers, often seekers like herself, as well as some ministerial figures that serve them, such as a man at a hostel who gives her advice on shrinking her pack. There are various metaphors for putting the past behind you and leaving your psychic burdens behind. Hikers reduce their baggage, even burning the portions of their guidebooks covering the parts of the trail that they have passed. As an attractive, if eventually bad smelling, woman on the trail, she often seems in danger from the men she encounters, although most of them turn out to be less scary than we first fear.

The mix of animals, including one or more foxes that strategically, if not mystically, reappear at various times, brings her to confront the memories of the horse that meant so much to her mother.

In addition to the camaraderie of the hikers, who manage to be together while sometimes getting on each other’s last nerves, there is also sixties-like camaraderie in an Oregon town with a Summer of Love styled music festival and a more positive, if non-marital, sexual encounter with a man she meets there. And eventually an encounter with a troubled child, his grandmother and a llama reduces her to tears.

She continues on in the face of pain, heat, snow and thirst, but, as the trip approaches its end, wonders what she is going to do next. The pilgrimage ends up at the gorgeously filmed “Bridge to the Gods” over the Columbia River. She tells us that she has become the woman her mother wanted her to be, with reconciliation with her brother, and it is not clear who else. There is also talk about how she would still have done all the bad stuff and needed to do so to get to her ultimate state.

As this is an autobiographical book and film, this is probably true, and good for her. Whether the film convincingly conveys exactly how and why this happens is another question. Do the many short and subliminal flashbacks work with the scenic grandeur, the internal monologues, the encounters and the soundtrack to leave us with some understanding of Cheryl’s spiritual journey? Is the journey convincing? I am not totally convinced, despite the quality acting and compelling travel.

And given that this film depicts a secular world where religion does not have a serious presence, what would a church have done different for Cheryl?