How closely does the movie stick to the Wild true story? Screenwriter Nick Hornby stuck fairly close to Cheryl Strayed's memoir. A noticeable difference is that Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) makes less stops on her journey and doesn't encounter as many people as she does in the book.
Wild the film is true to the spirit of Cheryl Strayed's memoir, which chronicles her hike across the Pacific Crest Trail following the death of her mother. It's also, save for some smaller changes, accurate. Strayed is a producer on the film, and Nick Hornby consolidated Strayed's book elegantly.
Strayed subsequently married filmmaker Brian Lindstrom in August 1999. They have two children and live in east Portland, Oregon, where Strayed has lived since the mid-1990s. Her daughter, Bobbi Strayed Lindstrom, played the younger version of Strayed in the film adaptation of Wild.
The horse grew weak after Eddie neglected it following the death of Cheryl's mother. Cheryl asks Eddie to mercy-kill the horse, but he doesn't. Cheryl then says Leif must shoot the animal.
A similar thing happened after she sold “Wild” to Knopf for $400,000, Strayed tells Martin: “Again, the great, funny irony about that was that I got my first check, and we spent it all on credit card bills. We went out and had sushi. But our life didn't change. We only got out of credit card debt.”
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Did Cheryl do the whole PCT?
In the movie, she keeps saying she's “hiking the PCT,” so someone unfamiliar with the trail landmarks might misunderstand (most people probably don't know that Mojave is not near the Mexican border and the trail doesn't end at the Bridge of the Gods). But yeah, she did not hike the whole PCT, and that's fine.
How far did Cheryl Strayed hike? In June 1995, the real Cheryl Strayed hiked 1,100 miles of the 2,663 mile long Pacific Crest Trail. The Wild movie true story reveals that Cheryl began her journey in Mojave, California and finished her 94-day trek at the Bridge of the Gods on the Oregon-Washington border.
Aimee forces her to go to a store to buy a pregnancy test, and as they wait in line to purchase it, Cheryl sees a book about the Pacific Crest Trail. She takes the test, which confirms she is pregnant. She breaks down and tells Aimee that she can't be somebody's mother and decides to get an abortion right away.
The team, along with Buck, is eventually sold to a mail carrier who forces the dogs to carry arduously heavy loads. This work results in the death of one of the dogs.
(In the book, we get to know these hikers very well, while the movie treats them as very minor characters.) However, the biggest difference in the movie version of Wild is the exclusion of both Cheryl's sister and her stepfather.
Into the Wild tells the true story of the journey of 24-year-old Christopher McCandless into Alaska's Denali National Park and Preserve, where he starved to death in an abandoned bus after spending four months foraging and hunting game.
Despite being a newbie, Strayed didn't go into the hike blindly. She ensured she knew where fresh water would be available and packed smartly, including food, a tent for shelter, a water filter, warm clothing, emergency supplies, and a loud whistle to scare off bears.
Her books have been translated into 26 languages around the world. Cheryl Strayed holds an MFA in fiction writing from Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota.
The trail is 2,650 miles and it generally takes the entire snow-free season to walk. That's about 5 months. Elite athletes who are experienced on the PCT have finished the trail in as little as two months. The few who achieve sub-100 day hikes average well over 30 miles per day.
Sabbe, 33, from Belgium, ran the length of the continental United States, from Mexico to Canada, in an unofficial fastest known time (FKT) of 46 days, 12 hours, and 50 minutes—which was five days and four hours ahead of Timothy Olson's mark of 51 days, 16 hours, and 55 minutes.
Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight. If you've read Cheryl Strayed's bestselling memoir Wild, you know that the author embarked on a herculean endeavor—hiking 1,1000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone, with zero hiking experience, and an unwieldy 40+ pound backpack strapped to her backside.
Mary E. Davison – trail name “Medicare Pastor” – is the Old Lady on the Trail, and proud of it. A retired pastor and grandmother of ten, she began long distance backpacking at age 60 and completed her Triple Crown (walking the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail and Continental Divide Trail) 16 years later.
Nine days after she finished her hike on the PCT, Strayed met Brian Lindstrom at a Tex-Mex restaurant called Esparza's, just down the street from where they now live.
Despite being slightly longer than the Appalachian Trail, the PCT has a similar completion rate. The Pacific Crest Trail Association estimates that 700 to 800 people attempt to thru-hike it each year, and about 15% to 35% (versus the AT's 25%) actually succeed.
1. Pacific Crest Trail, the Mojave Desert, California. Screenshot from a scene in Wild where Cheryl (Reese Witherspoon) is on the Pacific Crest Trail section near the highway in the Mojave Desert at the beginning of her journey. Filmed on location on the PCT in the Mojave Desert, California.
