Kristof: What ‘Wild’ has wrought in on the West Coast

ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL, CALIF.-

This is arguably America’s greatest hiking trail, a 2,650-mile serpentine path running through desert and wilderness from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. The Pacific Crest Trail meanders through cactus and redwoods, challenging humans with rivers and snowfields, rattlesnakes and bears.

It’s a trail of extremes. Hiking it with my daughter near the Mexican border this month, we sweltered on our first day in soaring temperatures and a 20-mile dry section through the desert. Six days and a bit more than 150 miles later, near the town of Idyllwild, we shivered in 30-degree temperatures as the heavens dumped snow on us.

The trail is a triumph of serenity and solitude. Except that, these days, the solitude is getting crowded.

Apparently, in part because of the book and movie versions of “Wild,” about Cheryl Strayed’s journey of discovery and self-repair on her hike, some areas of the trail feel as busy as a Scout Jamboree.

I’ve been backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail since I was a kid, inspired by the first person to complete a thru-hike from Canada to Mexico, Eric Ryback, who wrote a book published in 1971 about his feat. My 17-year-old daughter and I aim to eventually hike the full trail, section by section, in this narrow window in which she is strong enough, and I’m not yet decrepit. Last year, we completed Oregon and Washington, and this month’s section took us through the southernmost part of California desert.

Fewer people have hiked the full Pacific Crest Trail than have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Yet, this year, so many want to hike it that a limit has been placed on permits so that no more than 50 thru-hikers can begin at the Mexican border each day.

Another memoir may add to the mystique. In “Girl in the Woods,” scheduled for publication in September, with a possible television spinoff, Aspen Matis recounts how she was raped on the second day of college and then fled campus to seek healing on a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hike. She starved and suffered on the trail but also found redemption - and, yes, her future husband by the 2,000-mile mark.

(I wonder if women don’t have the edge in trail memoirs. Male hikers project toughness, female hikers vulnerability. Ask a man resting on a trailside log how he’s doing, and he’ll boast of how many miles he has walked. Ask a woman, and she’ll confide about her blisters, mosquito bites and insecurities. )

Most would-be thru-hikers will probably drop out - one woman gave up this year on the first day, after 13 miles - but hundreds are expected to walk every step of the way to Canada.

Old hands fret that these neophytes don’t know what they’re doing (The Wall Street Journal quoted one woman this month who had never spent a night outdoors until she began her “Wild”-inspired hike) and could endanger themselves. The trail begins at the Mexican border with a 20-mile dry stretch, and my daughter and I ran across five inexperienced men who had all separately run out of water on that stretch and become dehydrated.

Drought has also forced hikers to carry more water: The first eight creeks that we crossed were dry.

We encountered another hazard in the form of a rattlesnake that my daughter almost stepped on. Yet, in the end, most hikers do just fine, apart from blisters and a few lost toenails, and it’s hard to begrudge anyone the chance for a bit of nature therapy in the Cathedral of Wilderness.

It’s striking that hikers come to the trail for solitary reflection, yet often end up coalescing into groups - because we are social animals, and solitude is so much more fun when you have somebody to share it with.

There’s a hobo spirit on the trail, with no social distinctions and everybody helping everyone else. One example of this generosity is the work of “trail angels” who lug water, soda, hamburgers, cookies or other treats to places where a road intersects a trail, to delight exhausted backpackers.

This is controversial, partly because animals also dine on treats that are left out, and it’s also not exactly wilderness when you come across a cooler with soda.

Still, all this generosity and mutual assistance is truly heartwarming. At about the 140-mile mark, my daughter and I came across a trail angel “library”- a glass-protected bookshelf of paperbacks for any hikers needing to weather out a snowstorm.

Professor Robert Putnam of Harvard may be right that an unfortunate fragmentation of society has left us Americans “bowling alone.” But, on the brighter side, we’re “hiking together”!

Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for the New York Times.