Her pack was too heavy, her boots too tight. She didn't know how to read a compass. But that didn't stop first-time backpacker Cheryl Strayed, then 26, from embarking on a soul-searching 1,100-mile solo hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995, from Southern California's Mojave Desert to the Bridge of the Gods in Oregon. Yet the physical feat of the hike is not the true star of Strayed's 2012 memoir about the journey, Wild.