Wild: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

As Cheryl makes her way towards Crater Lake—which, before a “cataclysmic eruption” 7,700 years ago, was known as Mount Mazama—she is excited to see the huge, beautiful landmark. She is using a new guidebook—The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 2: Oregon and Washington, and slowly adjusting to the differences between the Oregonian landscape and the Californian one. Oregon is much more forested, and some PCT hikers refer to it as the “green tunnel.” Though it’s only mid-August, most of Cheryl’s days, weather-wise, feel closer to October, and she must constantly stay on the move in order to keep warm.

One morning, as Cheryl wakes, she realizes with a heavy heart what day it is: August 18th, her mother’s birthday. If she had lived, Cheryl thinks, her mother would be fifty years old. Cheryl is filled with a deep rage as she wishes her mother had lived to turn fifty. As she hikes onwards, Cheryl tries to think of all the mistakes her mother made while parenting Cheryl and her siblings—smoking marijuana in front of them, hitting them with a wooden spoon, and failing to help Cheryl explore different options for college. Cheryl begins telling herself that her mother failed her—but her anger turns to sadness, and soon she is weeping for how “awful” things have turned out. 

After Cheryl’s mother died, Cheryl and her siblings had her cremated. The ashes were not what Cheryl expected—they were not fine like sand but instead gravely, with chunks of bone mixed in. Cheryl recalls placing some of the pieces of bone in her mouth and swallowing them whole during the process of spreading her mother’s ashes.

That night, as Cheryl makes camp, she has released her anger. She realizes that her mother was a “spectacular” mom, and for the first time in years, she allows herself to think of her mother’s name: Barbara, or Bobbi for short. As Cheryl thinks of her mother as Bobbi, she begins to understand that she was more than just a mother—she was a woman unto herself, and now, Cheryl mourns that loss as well.

Cheryl hikes onwards for several more days, and at last she arrives at the large campground at the base of Crater Lake. Cheryl is taken aback by the deep, pure blue of the water and stunned by the “sacred” power the lake seems to radiate. After her visit to the lake, Cheryl returns to the campground for the night—it is Sunday, and she needs to wait until tomorrow to collect her package from the post office. That night, she spends time thinking about her mother—and how much of her life she has spent trying not to become like her.

The next day, Cheryl eats lunch and then sits on a long porch at the Crater Lake Lodge, overlooking the vast blue lake. Though she has 334 miles left to go until she reaches the Bridge of the Gods, she feels as if she has “arrived.” As she looks out at the lake, which was once Mazama—a mountain that had its “heart removed” and turned into a “wasteland”—Cheryl can’t picture any of the emptiness or barrenness that was once here, and can instead see only the “stillness and silence” of the beautiful water.