Henry David Thoreau built a small cabin in the woods beside Walden Pond and lived there for two years, writing about his experience. Since his extended stay in the woods, many others have followed by going to the woods -- or going out into nature -- for extended periods of time to live, hike, and live deliberately.
At twenty-two, after losing her mother to cancer and going through a divorce, Cheryl Strayed decided to walk the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State. She walked 1100 miles in 94 days with a backpack that started out weighing 70 pounds (later reduced to 50). Later, she wrote a memoir called Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail which reached number 1 on the New York Times Bestseller's List and was selected for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. More recently, her memoir was made into a film starring Reese Witherspoon.
Today we're going to watch several clips about Cheryl Strayed, Wild, the PCT, and "Monster," the backpack she carried on her thru-hike. Also, we'll listen to her read an excerpt about "Monster" from her book and you'll write down some of the things she carried on her hike. You'll then be tasked with planning your own hike -- figuring out what you'd need, how much it would weigh, and using dumbbell weights in a backpack to test out what it would feel like to carry on your hike.
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