Let’s Get WILD! Literary Salon Writing Workshop and Wildflower Walk April 9
Channel Islands NP VC wildflowers April 5, 2025
“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me,” writes Cheryl Strayed in Wild (page 51).
Strayed Wild
During this April’s Earth Month, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail provides the perfect motivation to keep pushing as Strayed’s struggles offer readers hope– and I’m the perfect leader for such a journey! Did you know that on April 21, 1985, my former husband Ken Alley and began backpacking the 1400 mile long California section of the Pacific Crest Trail? That’s 10 years before Cheryl Strayed embarked on her 1000 mile journey. There were no resources, no trail angels. And of course no internet or GPS!
PCT Section A in 2015
Then in 1987, we backpacked the Oregon and Washington sections to complete the Pacific Crest Trail. That means I am one of the first 20 women to do finish it, and one of the first 200 or so overall.
Swtichbacks — a novel about hiking the PCT by Gwendolyn Alley
After hiking 1400 miles of the California section, I landed at UC Santa Cruz where walking in the redwoods was a much better fit for me than UC Berkeley where I was oringally planning to go. For my first few weeks at UCSC, I lived in various state parks in my grandparents’ trailer until I found a place to park it that I could afford and where I could take the bus into school. Then I learned that UCSC had a trailer park! It took me many months to move from the waiting list into the park, but it was a lifesaver in so many ways, and it allowed me to save money to finish the PCT.
1985-1987 PCT boots plus 1987 internal frame pack
PCT 1985: photo 1 after our first night on the trail!
I also learned early on at UCSC that I’d need to do a senior thesis to graduate. With a double major in environmental studies and literature/creative writing, writing about the PCT was a no-brainer, so I decided to write a novel. Which I wanted to conclude with the main character making it to Canada so in 1987, that’s what we did.
1985 shot by Larry Budd of me journaling at the Canebrake Inn — near Lake Isabella
PCT Section A 2015
PCT sign posts haven’t changed— section A 2015
Channel Islands NP VC
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed was a #1 New York Times Bestseller, a Best Nonfiction Book of 2012: The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, A Best Book of the Year: NPR, St. Louis Dispatch, and Vogue. The winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Award, Strayed’s best selling memoir about her 1100 mile Pacific Crest Trail hike was made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon. But if you don’t have a chance to read the book, listen to the audio book, or watch the movie before we meet you’ll be fine! Spoiler alert: the movie and the book aren’t the same.
poppies with sculpture by Eric Richards
California peonies in bloom
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