Wild: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Cheryl is disappointed when the couple let her out at the nearby Packer Lake Lodge—it is a restaurant and campground, but Cheryl has no money for food. Cheryl goes inside and asks a woman at the register about the snow levels north of the lodge and whether Greg has come through. Getting inconclusive answers to both questions—and knowing she can’t afford anything on the menu—Cheryl goes back outside to sit and read her guidebook. A woman named Christine approaches Cheryl and tells her how cool she is for hiking the PCT, then invites Cheryl to come take a shower and have some food in the cabin she, her husband Jeff, and their two teenaged daughters are staying in.

Cheryl ravenously eats the sandwich, cheese, and chips Christine and Jeff prepare for her. The couple’s daughters are out on the porch reading magazines, and Christine says she hopes they’ll one day grow up to be as fearless as Cheryl. Christine and Jeff are avid readers, too, and they trade books. Cheryl selects a James Michener book from their shelf. After lunch, Christine drives Cheryl to a nearby ranger station and drops her. Cheryl finds a couple of girls who are driving in the direction of a nearby PCT trailhead and hitches a ride with them. She reads the James Michener novel as she does, and recalls that years ago, she made fun of her mother for liking the man’s work. Now, she can’t remember why she did such a thing, and she berates herself for all the “small things” she did to hurt her mother over the years.

When the girls ask Cheryl about her life and her family, she tells them that her father left and her mother is dead. She doesn’t tell them about Eddie—but feels bad for not mentioning him, and begins reflecting on all the ways in which he was indeed like a father to her and her siblings. Cheryl was shocked and hurt, she recalls, when after her mother died, Eddie quickly “pulled away” from Cheryl and her siblings, falling in love with another woman and moving her into his house within a year.

At the trailhead, Cheryl decides to spend the night on the edge of an established campground. Though there is a sign that says campers must pay to stay, Cheryl has no money, and she decides to pitch her tent at the very edge of the camping ground. After she has set up and crawled into her tent for the night, a flashlight’s beams penetrate its walls. Cheryl unzips her tent and steps outside. An elderly couple who run the campground are standing there, demanding 12 dollars from Cheryl. Cheryl tells them that she’s hiking the PCT and has had to get off the trail due to snow, but the couple has no sympathy for her and they threaten to call the police.

A stunned Cheryl returns to her tent and begins packing up while the couple watches her every move in the beam of their light. Cheryl hikes up the road in the dark, walking for twenty minutes until she finds a clearing where she feels comfortable making camp. As Cheryl lies down in her tent for the second time that night, she uses her fingers to trace the outline of a horse tattoo on her arm—a matching tattoo she and Paul got to commemorate their divorce.

Cheryl begins reflecting on the origins of the tattoo: her mother once had a horse named Lady. Cheryl was only six when her mother bought Lady—Cheryl’s mother had just left her father, and though Cheryl was young, she understood that Lady was, in a way, saving Cheryl’s mother’s life and giving her the hope and strength to move forward. Three years after Cheryl’s mother died, when Cheryl went to visit Eddie one day, she was shocked by how thin and wan Lady had become. It was clear to Cheryl that Eddie was not caring for Lady as lovingly as her mother had for so many years.

Cheryl told Eddie that Lady needed to be put down, but Eddie refused to pay for a vet to come out and administer an injection. He told Cheryl he’d put Lady down the old-fashioned way, by shooting her himself, before she and Paul came out for Christmas to have the house to themselves while Eddie stayed with his new girlfriend and her children. On Christmas Eve, however, when Paul and Cheryl arrived, they found Lady in her stall, looking even worse. Cheryl called her mother’s father for advice, and he urged Cheryl to put the horse down as soon as possible. He gave her specific instructions for how to put Lady down and told Cheryl not to worry about burying the horse’s body—coyotes, he said, would “drag her away.” 

Paul and Cheryl decided to put Lady down on Christmas Day, with Leif’s help. What should have been a sad but simple act, however, soon became a harrowing ordeal as Leif’s shots missed, filling Lady’s face with “a constellation of bloodless holes.” Cheryl, Paul, and Leif watched as Lady died and bled out slowly and horribly over the course of an hour. Leif tried to comfort Cheryl by telling her about an old Indian belief that when a “great warrior” dies, their horse must die too and be the one to take them to the next world.

Cheryl falls asleep and has uneasy dreams of snow. In the morning, she wakes unrested but determined to make it to her next stop—and her next care package. She sets off along the trail and finds that some of the snow has melted. She encounters a man and his friends in a pickup truck who encourage her to stop by a lake up ahead later for some drinks later that evening. Cheryl hikes the rest of the day, stopping at a pond just before the men’s camp to freshen up—in the process of washing her feet and legs, she pulls off another toenail.

Cheryl arrives at the men’s camp, and they welcome her warmly and hand her a “Hawaiian screwdriver”—vodka and pineapple juice. The drink tastes like heaven to Cheryl, who settles in with the men for an evening of talking and telling stories. The men are deeply impressed by Cheryl’s solo hike and commend her on her “cojones” in taking on such an intense “spirit hike.” The men share some marijuana with Cheryl and give her a Bob Marley t-shirt to wear on the rest of her hike, calling it a “sacred shirt.”

Cheryl parts from the men and camps alone that night, but wears the Bob Marley t-shirt to sleep. After donning it, she lies awake in her tent wondering if she really is on a “spirit hike”—and whether the spirit of her mother, and Lady, and all the others she’s lost are walking with her.

On her last day in the Sierra Nevada, Cheryl faces a downhill trail spanning 4,000 feet. By the time she gets to the bottom—where her next stop awaits—she has injured her feet “in an entirely new way,” completely bruising and wrecking her toes as they nudge again and again against the tops of her boots. At Belden Town, her next stop, Cheryl collects her care package and buys herself a treat—Snapple lemonade—before sitting down for a rest. A woman named Trina sits with Cheryl and talks to her, warning her that the snow northwards on the trail is dense and difficult to traverse. Cheryl is nervous about the dangerous road still ahead, but Trina invites Cheryl to camp and make a plan with her and her friend Stacy.

Cheryl sits with Stacy and Trina as she unpacks her care package, delighting in all the treats inside. A hiker named Brent—whom Cheryl has heard about from the other hikers she’s met on the trail—soon joins them. Cheryl has changed into sandals, and as Brent looks at her feet, he tells her that her boots are too small. Cheryl privately laments that there’s nothing she can do—she has chosen the wrong boots, and doesn’t have enough money to buy new ones (or a place to find them, even if she did). She asks Brent about Greg, and he tells her that he’s heard Greg quit the trail due to too much snow. Cheryl feels “sick at the news”—Greg had been a source of inspiration for her. 

After a shower and some laundry, Cheryl, Trina, Stacy, and Brent eat dinner together in a nearby restaurant. They discuss the challenges of the trail up ahead, and a kind waiter brings Cheryl a glass of wine on the house. After dinner, the group returns to their camp. Cheryl sits in her chair and writes a letter to Joe. She struggles to find the words to tell him about all that’s happened to her since the last time they saw each other. On her way to mail the letter, Cheryl runs into the waiter from the restaurant, who invites her back to his cabin. Cheryl politely declines his invitation in spite of the “bald desire” she feels.

Back at camp, Cheryl sits with Brent for a while. Neither of them can sleep, and they stare up at the stars together. Brent suggests they make a wish—Cheryl says she wants to wish for new boots. Brent suggests she wish, instead, for a horse to carry her along the trail. Cheryl says she used to have one when she was younger, and Brent tells her that she’s lucky—“Not everyone,” he says, “gets a horse.”