“Wild” and an Almond-Pear Galette

In this post I mentioned one of my latest reads—Cheryl Strayed’s Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. I hadn’t seen any of the previews or heard about the movie until after I started reading. I know, I know. I don’t have cable or a smart phone. My Luddite tendencies aside, heading into the book with no preconceptions or knowledge of what was coming was a benefit. No prejudgments, no expectations.

Wild begins by painting the picture of the events that led Cheryl Strayed to contemplate a thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave desert to the Columbia River. The book travels in two parallel narratives—one that details the hike itself, and the other which describes her childhood and the events following the death of her mother.

It took decades for Strayed to decide to write about her journey, and that time and maturity is reflected in the way she tells the story. In many of the adventure memoirs I’ve read of mountaineers or hikers, there is often more adrenaline and pride than there is reflection and honesty.

Strayed does not skip embarrassing details or thoughts and actions that might make her look bad—it is all there. No ego, no apologies, no agenda. Strayed’s authorial tone doesn’t seem to care if you empathize or condemn her for her actions; “This is what I went through, and I am neither ashamed nor proud of it,” she seems to say. I think it is this tone that makes the difference in whether or not people like the book—we as readers want to see the lesson learned, and Strayed isn’t willing to give us that.

“What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I’d done something I shouldn’t have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I’d done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do anything differently than I had done? […] What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn’t have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?”

In reading I found myself on a bit of an emotional journey as well. The description of the months leading up to her mother’s death from lung cancer at 45 was heart-wrenching. I don’t typically cry when reading books, so Mr. A was a bit worried when he saw me sitting on the couch sobbing uncontrollably. Strayed describes the weeks following her mother’s passing where she dreams of being asked to kill her mother in the most gruesome ways. In her nightmares, Strayed finds herself unable to control what’s happening to her mind, body, and emotions; I found myself standing beside her, subject to the same PTSD symptoms, shaking with the same terror.

As the book continued, and Strayed described cheating on her husband and experimenting with heroin I began to look at her with a total lack of respect, too familiar with the self-destructive penchants and brazen personality I’ve seen in past friends. Yet when the narrative returned to the trail I would regain my empathy, remembering my own experiences on a particular section of trail and what it feels like to backpack that dry expanse of pine and granite. Halfway through the book I got past all of these emotions, admiring the way that she kept my attention, and the straightforward way she recounted her journey and its redemptive qualities without turning into something it wasn’t, or justifying her actions with a gooey moral.

The book received positive reviews from The New York Times, Slate, and the SF Gate. However, I read a scathing review in the British newspaper, the Guardian, by a woman who clearly found the book clunky and inelegant. Is it the idea of through-hikes that doesn’t translate, or is it a lack of fondness for the American self-discovery narrative? I found it hard to tell.

Reading Wild directly after Grandma Gatewood’s Walk, I couldn’t help but notice how abuse figured so prominently in both their stories. Heather “Anish” Anderson completed the fastest thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail in 2013. In an article with Backpacker magazine she seemed to nail it; “Trails and the wilderness have this amazing capacity to heal. They are for you whatever you need them to be.”

While I was reading Wild, I baked an Almond-Pear Galette. I was feeling inspired by the tasty galettes my friend Gwynne has featured on her blog Crafty Cook Nook. It provided some tasty goodness for all these arm-chair adventures!

Almond-Pear Galette

an epicurious recipe

Ingredients

Pastry:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling and dusting

2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

5 tablespoons butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes and frozen

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoon cultured buttermilk

1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract

Cream:

1 large egg white

3 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

3 tablespoons finely ground almonds

2 teaspoons melted butter

1/4 teaspoon pure almond extract

Filling:

3 firm, ripe pears, such as Anjou or Bartlett

2 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 1/2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

3 sheets parchment paper

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons butter, cut into small bits

Confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Preparation

Pastry: Pulse flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a food processor 30 seconds to combine. Add butter. Pulse until butter pieces are the size of peas. Add buttermilk and almond extract; pulse until dough just comes together. Form dough into a disk, dusting lightly with flour. Cover in plastic wrap or wax paper and refrigerate 1 hour.

Cream: Whisk egg white and confectioners’ sugar in a bowl until frothy, about 1 minute. Add almonds, butter and almond extract. Whisk. Refrigerate.

Filling: Peel and core pears, then cut into slices about 1/4 inch thick; toss in a bowl with lemon juice and zest.

Galette: Heat oven to 400°F. Lightly dust a sheet of parchment paper with flour; place dough on top and lightly dust with flour; top with another sheet of parchment and roll out dough into a circle about 12 inches in diameter. Peel off top layer of parchment. Invert dough onto a baking sheet lined with third sheet of parchment. Trim around edges of dough. Spread cream over dough, leaving a 1-inch border. Arrange pear slices in concentric circles over cream. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Fold edges of dough over pears, crimping dough to enclose ends of pears. Evenly scatter bits of butter over top of filling. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until pears are tender and crust is golden. (Cover top with a sheet of foil if it begins to overbrown.) Remove; cover edges of tart with foil. Heat broiler. Glaze top of pears under broiler, about 6 inches from heat, 1 minute or until pears are golden brown. Cool on baking sheet 5 minutes. Transfer (on parchment) to rack to cool completely. Dust with confectioners’ sugar.

 

 

 

 

 

A review of “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk” while I wish for snow

I mentioned awhile ago in this post that I was planning on reading a copy of Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery. I finished it back in December, and it did the trick of inspiring me to get outdoors. This could be why I’ve spent more time hiking and skiing than I have blogging these past few weeks. Now, since we have no snow, only what Spokane Public Radio this morning called “frizzle,” something between fog and drizzle, I figured it was as good a time as any to revisit my reading list. On it is one book I thoroughly enjoyed, and that I will not soon forget.

Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman who Saved the Appalachian Trail is a story that inspires you to get outside, to push the limits of your comfort zone, and realize that there is so much more to life than the everyday struggles that dominate our attention. More than anything I found myself reevaluating the need for material objects, and basking in the determination and lack of ego of a woman who hiked more than 8,000 miles between the ages of 67 and 76.

Montgomery’s book is very straightforward in style. It would be easy to dramatize the tragedies and triumphs of this woman’s life but Montgomery refrains, giving a factual account that very much fits with his background as a newspaper reporter. This historical and almost understated approach makes the book more powerful at points, allowing the reader to insert the empathy and emotion instead.

From all accounts, Emma Gatewood was a straightforward type of woman. At age 67, she told her adult children that she was going for a walk. She did not tell them she planned to hike over 2,000 miles on her own. Even she did not know that by the end of her trip she would walk through two back-to-back hurricanes that would devastate the East Coast and kill hundreds in New England, or spend the night in a hut with several New York gang leaders.

After raising 11 kids, helping run a farm, and fighting back against an abusive husband who repeatedly bloodied her face for 30 years, Grandma Gatewood was the first woman to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, and the first person (male or female) to do it twice, and then a third time in sections. She carried a homemade knapsack filled with all the things she thought she needed to survive alone in the woods, which totaled a little over 20 pounds. Nope, there wasn’t a map, a sleeping bag, or a tent. It’s easy to think her decision to hike light was the result of naivety, or lack of experience. Yet according to her children, Emma spent time testing herself on overnight excursions into the woods near her house in Ohio, refining the list of what gear would be essential and what was just extra weight. The National Geographic article that inspired her hike assured readers that the trail was well-maintained with good signage; the reality was far from this, and Grandma Gatewood’s accounts to newspapers went a long way toward improving the trail and popularizing it.

Her amazing story is common knowledge for anyone who has ever thru-hiked the AT, but this is the first time it has been written down in book form. Grandma Gatewood’s Walk was published last April, and by September it has made it #15 on the New York Times Travel Bestseller List. Though it was featured in a review by the Washington Post earlier this month, you won’t find too many book reviews out there yet outside Amazon and Goodreads. However, the Utne Reader has posted an excerpt from Chapter 1 if you’re interested in reading a portion of it.

Ironically, when I returned Montgomery’s book to the library, I picked up Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail thinking another thru-hike book sounded good. I had no idea about the movie hubbub or that it was #1 on the NYT’s bestseller list during that same time period. I have some thoughts about that book as well, but I’ll save them for another post.

In the meantime, here are a few pictures of our adventures before all the snow disappeared. Oh, how I wish for snow! (I’m looking at my garden and happily thinking of what I want to plant, the new beds to be made, the rock that still needs to be moved . . . I feel a bit torn, but I would still rather be kicking and gliding across a bright expanse of snow!)

LuLuBean’s class went snowshoeing this last week and hiked 3 miles round trip. Man were those kids tired! In and effort to get Lil’Moose more comfortable on skis we’ve enrolled in a cross-country ski program (Nordic Kids) that runs every Saturday for 6 weeks. We’ve been up on the mountain every weekend this month and though we’ve gotten somewhat used to the routine it still has us running. It feels like a familiar tale at this point: “We’re learning so much,” “This is fun,” “Oh my goodness, when did life get so busy!”