Essay on Keep Pushing On: Cheryl Strade

After three hours of of hiking what felt like a vertical slope, the top of Mount Haystack was right in front of me. I knew that I could keep pushing through because I had suffered so much worse before. I wasn’t about to let this mere incline prevent me from reaching the top. I powered through the aching muscles and throbbing knees, while ignoring the sharp radiating pain in my calves. After what felt like forever, I was standing 5260 ft above the sea and taking in a spectacular view. When I glanced to my left, I realized I wasn’t quite at the top, I still had two more peaks to go before I’d reach the top of Lafayette. So after a few minutes of rest I got started on the rest of the hike.

The Union Pacific had the twin advantages of comparatively flat land and a continuous supply line back to the factories of the East coast. The Central Pacific, however, had to fetch most of its materials, except timber, by sea, twelve thousand miles around the tip of South America. The conclusion of the seven-year race for railroad supremacy resulted in a meeting point at Promontory Point, Utah. The Central Pacific had laid 690 miles (1110 km) of track, starting in Sacramento, California, and continuing through California (Newcastle and Truckee), Nevada (Reno, Wadsworth, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Elko, Humboldt-Wells), and connecting with the Union Pacific line at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory (Gordon 302). The Union Pacific had laid 1,087 miles (1,749 km) of track, starting in Omaha, Nebraska, and continuing through Nebraska (Elkhorn, Grand Island, North Platte, Ogallala), Julesburg in the Colorado Territory, Sidney, Nebraska, the Wyoming Territory (Cheyenne, Laramie, Green River, Evanston), the Utah Territory (Ogden, Brigham City, Corinne), and

Following the death of her mother and divorce of her husband, Cheryl Strayed, seeking redemption, decided to hike over a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest trail by herself with absolutely no backpacking experience. One could argue that this was not a trip of redemption but of escape from a reality that had become too much to bear for Cheryl. However, upon reflecting over the whole process of her trek, the trip was indeed a time of redemption and she does not come back from the trail as the same woman who started the trek. This movie is very intriguing, not only because it of its redemptive values, but because it blends the story, setting, and overall philosophy together in such a way that one without the other would be quite dull.

One of the obstacles Cathy O’Dowd came across was devastating, as her choice would affect her, her team, or an innocent climber. Whatever choice she makes, someone will die. Through the use of metaphors and similes, O’Dowd describes the traumatising of her experience, making the story feel more realistic and powerful. This relates to the theme of trauma and how one event or experience can affect you for the rest of your life. The event affected Cathy in a emotional and physical level, regardless, she managed to “become the first women to reach the summit from both south and north.”

Straying away from life as a whole only to be alone, some may say is the strong way to heal themselves when dealing with extreme grief or a major crisis . In the book Wild, twenty-two year old Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost it all. Dealing with the loss of her mother, her family torn to pieces, and her very own marriage was being destroyed right before her very eyes. Living life with nothing more to lose, lifeless, she made the most life changing decision of her life. Strayed never seems remorseful on her decisions to up and leave everything behind while deciding to flee from it all. This being her way of dealing with life, it shows her as being strong; a woman of great strength and character. She shows personal strength, which is

In Cheryl Strayed's Wild, she gives readers vivid exposure to her turbulent and harsh past. She tells her journey from the beginning of what was the turning page in her life- her mother's death. Strayed goes through a roller coaster with unfortunate events both in her control and out of her control. She makes several poor choices, and she shares all her triumphs with pure honesty. Strayed speaks of her past with a distant remorse, as if she is looking at her past in a movie. She doesn't come across as ashamed of her past, but why should she? As all humans do, Cheryl Strayed makes mistakes and suffers their consequences as well. Everyone handles situations differently, and the best anyone can do is learn from the mistakes and apply it to

The land route is across the Great Plains along the Oregon Trail or across the continental United States, mainly along the California trail.

Strayed had gone through quite a bit before deciding on taking a hiking trip on the Pacific Crest Trail. Strayed thought the Pacific Crest Trail would help her find who she was before her mother’s death. To illustrate, “I’d set out to hike the trail so I could reflect upon my life, to think about everything that had broken me and make myself whole again” (84). This hiking trip was her way to find the person she was before her mother died. After hiking for three weeks she noticed, “I am not afraid… I realized…I’d done to myself and all that had been done to me” (122). Having spent three week hiking up Strayed become aware of a change in herself, she began showing confidence in herself (122). Her confidence is practically oozing out of her by the end of her journey (310). She tries to pass her confidence on to another person who was considering going on a similar journey on the Pacific Crest Trail. She emphasized, ‘“You could. You should. Believe me, if I can do this, anybody can”’ (310). Strayed has truly understood who she is after hiking eleven hundred miles through gruesome and extreme environments. Now, she is an inspiration to those who have hit rock bottom and need to find

Not only was her education affected, because she was unable to attend full days of class, but she also developed a need for drugs and sex. She began doing heroin and constantly cheating on her husband as a way to cope with her mother’s death. Cheryl did not know how to go about her mother’s illness since that was her favorite person in the world. She remembered the thousand things her mother used to compare her love to and all the times they shared together. Cheryl knew she needed to move forward so she made a life changing decision of taking her mother’s ashes into her own body in order for Cheryl to carry her mother with her wherever she was going to go. She later expresses, “Of all the things that convinced me that I should not be afraid while I was on this journey, of all the thing I’d made myself believe so I could hike the PCT, the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety…” (Strayed, 59). Cheryl’s mother continues to play a huge role in her life even after she had passed away which shows how important she really

Lean In: Women, Work and The Will To Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg, addresses how women can achieve professional achievement and overcome the lack of leadership progress that has been absent over the past few years. Sandberg uses personal experience, research and humor to examine the choices that working women make everyday. She argues that women can achieve professional goals while still being happy within their personal lives. She argues this by going into detail about what risks to take, how to pursue certain professional goals and how to overcome struggles such as balancing a family and a career. All through Lean In, Sandberg uses the fourth dimension of interpersonal effects through a Narrative to show her indicated stance on gender

A moment caught my attention when Carolyn was making her own individual progress through her depression and role in the

On November 21, 1990, the day before Thanksgiving, Bill Irwin became the last person that year to complete the entire length of the world’s longest continuously marked footpath – the Appalachian Trail. This trail spans 2,174 miles, from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, and winds through fourteen states, eight national forests, and about sixty state parks.

Taking on a journey stretching well over 2,100 miles, covering fourteen states (from Maine to Georgia) by foot is no simple stroll where at the end of the day a comfortable bed and hot meal would await you. Instead, hiking the Appalachian Trail can be an endless battle with all the elements of mother nature: whereas in one state spring would have sprung already with wildflowers dressing the forest floors and insects buzzing through crisp air, on other parts of the trail it [the weather conditions] would be smothering heat, but meanwhile a few states north the rain would fall endlessly with gusts of cold wind, and snow would blanket the pathways of the trail and more than likely blizzards

Comparatively, as Cheryl Strayed gets more immersed in the Pacific Crest Trail and spends more time in the wild, she is able to face her issues head on and find peace. Strayed decided to hike this intense wilderness trail in response to the inability to

her extended, labored journey reveals how she is determined to disrupt the troubled lives at 124.