It's to the best of our knowledge.

I'm Anne Strange Champs.

Today, walking.

In today's car culture, it can be a radical thing to see the world on foot,

to step out of your comfort zone, so to speak.

In fact, if you walk long enough and far enough, it can change your life.

Oh, my God.

What have I done?

I'm sorry you have to walk a thousand miles just to...

Finish that sentence.

Why do I have to walk a thousand miles?

Happy trails, Cheryl.

I'd started walking in the Mojave Desert, and I didn't plan to stop until I touched the Oregon-Washington border. You get lonely.

I'm lonelier in my real life than I am out here.

I looked south to the wild land that had schooled and scorched me and considered my options.

There was only one. Keep walking.

Cheryl Stade's memoir, Wild, is the story of an epic walk she took as a young woman across a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone. Her mother had just died. Her marriage had failed and she was floundering,

but that walk saved her life. And if you're wondering why this story has struck such a chord,

especially with women, well maybe because it taps into something

archetypal. Cheryl, at its most elemental, Wild is the story of a young woman who sets out on a

walk that transforms her, and in that sense, it's the same mythic story structure as, I don't know,

the Odyssey. Do you see it that way? Absolutely, I see it that way. Those ancient stories are in my bones. The hero's journey,

...