Hiking The Pct Quotes

#1. Hiking the PCT was the maddening effort of knitting that sweater and unraveling it over and over again.

Cheryl Strayed

#2. Aside from marrying my husband and having my children, hiking the PCT was the best thing I ever did. The hike very literally forced me to put one foot in front of the other at a time when emotionally I didn't think I could do that.

Cheryl Strayed

#3. The freedom of the woods lingered in me here; I felt lighter. I hoped to be changed by it, allow this seeding independence to root in my childhood Eden's soil and grow until at last it was undeniable.

Aspen Matis

#4. Happy people have everything to give.

Aspen Matis

#5. I was going to mean what I said, to be direct and firm.
I found my moleskin notebook and on the page behind the pages addressed to Never-Never and my family - two unsent letters - I wrote: I am the director of my life.

Aspen Matis

#6. She taught me only how to need to be taken care of.

I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions - to earn my own trust.

Aspen Matis

#7. I began to lust after our conjoining life.

Aspen Matis

#8. My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.

Aspen Matis

#9. Already, this little-walked gigantic trail through my country's Western wilderness held in my mind the promise of escape from myself, the liberation only a huge transformation could grant me. This walk would be my salvation. It had to be.

Aspen Matis

#10. The way to self-love and admiration is to behave like someone whom you love and admire.

Aspen Matis

#11. I wrote through darkness, vividly seeing: my passivity was not a crime; my desire to trust was not a flaw.

Aspen Matis

#12. I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen.

Aspen Matis

#13. I knew with certainty now - I could say no, and he would stop. Above all, I felt the fierce beauty of the choice. I knew now what it was that had held me from falling into my desire to be with him fully: I first needed to make sure he was a man who would respect my 'No.

Aspen Matis

#14. I realized that no, no one would actually come to save or even stop me, I had absolutely no choice. The scale tipped: the moment not doing it became more difficult and unbearable than just doing it.

Aspen Matis

#15. And now it was official: I loved REI more than I loved the people behind Snapple lemonade.

Cheryl Strayed

#16. It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction.

Aspen Matis

#17. I walked, floated, lighter - forty miles, my biggest day yet. I'd lifted the burden of guilt and shame off my body. I held my new hard-won wisdom, the gift three months of walking in the wilderness had carried me to: compassion for my younger self - forgiveness for my innocence.

Aspen Matis

#18. I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love.

Aspen Matis

#19. He hadn't treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn't found it yet, but I would find it soon.

Aspen Matis

#20. I'd begun at the soundless place where California touches Mexico with five Gatorade bottles full of water and eleven pounds of gear and lots of candy. My backpack was tiny, no bigger than a schoolgirl's knapsack. Everything I carried was everything I had.

Aspen Matis

#21. I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.

Aspen Matis

#22. My mom used to tell me, "I don't like my mother, but I love her.

Aspen Matis

#23. She was my mirror image, slightly distorted, flipped, older, larger, more able to coexist with a pack of men. I'd be their pawn. She was their queen.

Aspen Matis

#24. I felt like I belonged to an ancient tradition of all young people given this same task of finding their own ways through to the futures they wanted for themselves.

Aspen Matis

#25. But I couldn't say any of this yet. No one answer felt it could contain anything close to the truth about her. My thoughts of my mother were wild chaos, I didn't know how to tell him we'd been enmeshed for as long as I could remember.

Aspen Matis

#26. I walked home holding Tom's hand, not letting it go even as he tottered across a soccer field where there was nothing that could hurt him.

Aspen Matis

#27. When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.

Aspen Matis

#28. After all this time questioning whether I could trust myself, my instinct had proven right - I'd found a path in pathless woods.

Aspen Matis

#29. Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation.

Aspen Matis

#30. In fact, because I liked him so badly, I needed to continue on my course. I was finally becoming the woman I wanted to be, and she was whom I needed to show Dash - and myself.

Aspen Matis

#31. Fire is not essential. Fire is warm comfort. From fire, cultures are born.

Aspen Matis

#32. It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.

The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.

Aspen Matis

#33. death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End.

Aspen Matis

#34. I didn't know what I would do. There was no way I could survive. I stared at my damp tent ceiling, feeling the frigid air against me, the frozen ground against my bottom, so cold my bare skin burned. I needed to get to the next trail-town, Mammoth Lakes. There was no one here to save me now.

Aspen Matis

#35. Though I was starved for contact, I didn't stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other.

Aspen Matis

#36. My path, beyond doubt or denial. I just hadn't looked toward it. I wasn't lost. I'd always known the way. If I'd only allowed myself to look. I had never been lost, only scared.

Aspen Matis

#37. The entire time, he'd only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn't the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn't have heard me. He'd never responded, not by stopping, not with his words.

Aspen Matis