The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you… - Cheryl Strayed

I was amazed that what I needed to survive could be carried on my back.

I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I didn't embrace the word as my new name because it defined negative aspects of my circumstances or life, but because even in my darkest days — those very days in which I was naming myself — I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn't have known before.

Do you believe in reincarnation?” I asked as we looked together at the intricate drawings, reading bits about them in the paragraph of text on each page. “I don’t,” he said. “I believe we’re here once and what we do matters.