Lauren Eggert-Crowe’s review of Wild appears in the Los Angeles Review of Books today. Here she shares her mix tape inspired by the book.
You’ll feel like you’ve bid farewell to a friend when you finish reading Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. You’ll catch yourself wondering where she’ll be on the trail when you pick up the book today, until you remember you finished it last night, rapt in her sparkling details, feeling as if you were standing with her on The Bridge of the Gods. Wild blooms with imagery and warmth; it invites you into its world, and when you’ve read the final word on the final page, you’ll miss that world.
Or at least, that’s how I felt when I closed the book. To prolong my stay in the world of the PCT, I curated the Wild mix tape. It started when I listened to “Deeper Well” by Emmylou Harris. When I heard the verse that goes, “Hey there, Mama, did you carry that load?/Did you tell your baby about the bend in the road?/About the rebel yell, about the one that fell/Lookin’ for the water from a deeper well,” I thought, “Whoa.”
The mix is a collection of 21 songs to complement the range of moods the reader journeys through as Strayed leads us along the Pacific Crest Trail from Mojave to Cascade Locks.
The mix includes songs mentioned in the book – played in pivotal scenes or sung by Strayed as she forged ahead on the trail – as well as songs that fit thematically with the narrative of Strayed’s bruising, blistering, skin-scorching, grieving, healing spirit walk. And of course, this mix isn’t meant to be burned onto a CD. It’s meant to be listened to on a dusty, slightly sun-melted cassette tape, the kind you might have played in your pickup truck on a cross-country road trip in 1995.
Side 1
- Crooked Still - “Orphan Girl”
- Emmylou Harris – “Deeper Well”
- Mirah - “Cold Cold Water”
- John Denver - “Take Me Home, Country Roads”
- Joni Mitchell - “California”
- Lucinda Williams - “Something About What Happens When We Talk”
- Johnny Cash and June Carter - “Ring of Fire”
- Stevie Ray Vaughan - “Love Struck Baby”
- Sleater-Kinney - “Leave You Behind”
- Jolie Holland - “Springtime Can Kill You”
- Cowboy Junkies - “A Horse In The Country”
Side 2
- Pete Seeger - “Red River Valley”
- The Kennedys - “When I Go”
- Fleet Foxes - “The Cascades”
- The Grateful Dead - “Box Of Rain”
- Loretta Lynn and Jack White - “Portland, Oregon”
- Po’ Girl – “’Til It’s Gone”
- Crooked Still - “Wading Deep Waters”
- Neko Case - “I’m An Animal”
- Peter, Paul And Mary - “This Land Is Your Land”
- Wilco - “What Light”
