Hold on, hold on, the stars are bound to change.

I've never been the biggest reader. I read, but my collection doesn't tend to grow very fast. It is filled with books from many of same authors, like Michael Crichton (Because the only thing more awesome than the Jurassic Park movie is the book.) and Douglas Adams. I also somehow own every Jillian Michaels book and remember vividly how much I cried when I read the last Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book (one of the only books I've cried at, true story. And not even just cried, I BAWLED for a good 15 minutes when I finished that book). If you throw in some of the really popular stuff like Harry Potter, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Sherlock Holmes, and the Hunger Games  and some of the super nerdy things like Dune and you pretty much have my library. It's small, but every book a place.

I thought of nothing of the Wild by Cheryl Strayed, as I read the back cover of all the books on a book tower in my university’s book tower, waiting for my friend to be done helping a customer so I could go over our Biochemistry homework. I hadn’t even heard of it, despite the author having visited my campus just a few weeks ago. It sounded interesting enough; a woman loses her mother and her life sucks so she decides to hike this trail. I left that day without even thinking about reading it. Long story short, I did eventually pick it for whatever reason. I was in Target, having ditched my Calculus class like a good student, and didn’t even think about it when I bought it.

I think I was meant to read that book. I don’t mean that in a “That was the best book EVER” way, even though it was good, but I think it was something I needed to read at this point in my life.

There is such a brutal honesty to it. You hear about all the mistakes she makes, not just on the trail, but all the mistakes that brought her to that point. That despite all that went wrong, she was exactly where she needed to be and she kept moving. Part of me is envious of that journey, as I wonder what I would find out about myself out there in the wilderness for months.

In one part of the book she talks about having seen the mountains she was hiking on in the distance years before, and what it felt like then to actually be on those mountains, up close and personal. I can hardly imagine that myself.

That honesty made her so relatable. There were a number of instances I could have seen myself thinking something similar. There was one line in particular.

“I would walk its entire length if I made it all the way to the Bridge of the Gods. Who could I be if I did? Who would I be if didn’t?”

I asked myself the same thing about my trip days before reading it, because the fear has started to creep in. Who will I be if I go? Who will I be if I stay here? Reading that reminded me of why I need to go though. It made the fear go away for a time.

I have finals to go study for, so I don't have time to say more right now so I leave you guys with another one of my favorite quotes from the book.

“There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go.”