Aspen Matis's GIRL IN THE WOODS (William Morrow), a new memoir about a young female hiking the PCT, appears at first glance to closely follow the parameters of Cheryl Strayed's chronicles of hiking that same route. Yet, in ways both good and bad, GIRL IN THE WOODS is a different animal; it's younger, rougher, less polished, at once more and less raw. It's less careful, more reckless, more boundless. It's more naive.
There are lots of reasons not to like GIRL IN THE WOODS. Skim reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, and you'll see. For this is the story of a white female who has everything: a ritzy Massachusetts upbringing, a life filled with books and clothes and trips, parents who are still together, a college acceptance at one of our nation's tops. The book is also the story of a novice who ventures into the woods unprepared and almost dies. And it's the story of a girl who didn't dress herself until she was sixteen, didn't wash dishes until she was 19, didn't cook, didn't clean, didn't know how to brush her hair. She's a pampered protagonist, and her writing is youthful, borderline sloppy, peppered with comma splices and phrases repeated.
Yet it's also a story of devastation, and of feeling insatiable, and of staying alive. It's about being alone, and not being alone, and being afraid to be alone, and ultimately wanting nothing more than to be alone. At the beginning of the book, I rolled my eyes at the comma splices, and by the end I was rolling my eyes at the love story, how easy it came, how perfect.
But in the middle, I was crying. I was gripping the book with both hands, reading fast, letting hours slip by, phone calls going unanswered, meals going uneaten. Matis did what all memoirists dream of: she took something horrible - her rape - and she made it into a gift. She made it into something true, and real, and, very frequently, solemnly beautiful.
I read the book in a day and a night, and then I went outside into the New Mexican night and inhaled deeply: pine, stars, a sprawling sky, the lights of Albuquerque in the distance.
I thought of the PCT: that rugged, storied trail. Matis wrote of the men there, the prevalence of men hungry for women, the hunger they all felt on the trail. I thought of the "trail angels," who provided food and booze and weed and clothes and baths. I thought of the days Matis ran the trail, wild with thirst, her heart pounding hard, her life on the line. I thought of the comfort she gave up, the suffering she took in exchange. All of those days on the trail.
GIRL IN THE WOODS, however flawed, remains worthwhile, rare, a fleck in a very dark night.
Yet it's also a story of devastation, and of feeling insatiable, and of staying alive. It's about being alone, and not being alone, and being afraid to be alone, and ultimately wanting nothing more than to be alone. At the beginning of the book, I rolled my eyes at the comma splices, and by the end I was rolling my eyes at the love story, how easy it came, how perfect.
But in the middle, I was crying. I was gripping the book with both hands, reading fast, letting hours slip by, phone calls going unanswered, meals going uneaten. Matis did what all memoirists dream of: she took something horrible - her rape - and she made it into a gift. She made it into something true, and real, and, very frequently, solemnly beautiful.
I read the book in a day and a night, and then I went outside into the New Mexican night and inhaled deeply: pine, stars, a sprawling sky, the lights of Albuquerque in the distance. I thought of the PCT: that rugged, storied trail. Matis wrote of the men there, the prevalence of men hungry for women, the hunger they all felt on the trail. I thought of the "trail angels," who provided food and booze and weed and clothes and baths. I thought of the days Matis ran the trail, wild with thirst, her heart pounding hard, her life on the line. I thought of the comfort she gave up, the suffering she took in exchange. All of those days on the trail.
GIRL IN THE WOODS, however flawed, remains worthwhile, rare, a fleck in a very dark night.
