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Girl in the Woods

A Memoir

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis's exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada—a coming of age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from telling of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses around the country, she stumbled through her first semester—a challenging time made even harder by the coldness of her college's "conflict mediation" process. Her desperation growing, she made a bold decision: She would seek healing in the freedom of the wild, on the 2,650-mile Pacific Crest Trail leading from Mexico to Canada.

In this inspiring memoir, Aspen chronicles her journey, a five-month trek that was ambitious, dangerous, and transformative. A nineteen-year-old girl alone and lost, she conquered desolate mountain passes and met rattlesnakes, bears, and fellow desert pilgrims. Exhausted after each thirty-mile day, at times on the verge of starvation, Aspen was forced to confront her numbness, coming to terms with the sexual assault and her parents' disappointing reaction. On the trail and on her own, she found that survival is predicated on persistent self-reliance. She found her strength. After a thousand miles of solitude, she found a man who helped her learn to love and trust again—and heal.

Told with elegance and suspense, Girl in the Woods is a beautifully rendered story of eroding emotional and physical boundaries to reveal the truths that lie beyond the edges of the map.

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    • Booklist

      September 1, 2015
      Matis' world was turned on its head on her second night at Colorado College, when she was raped by a fellow student. When the college did nothing about the assault, save for moving her assailant out of her dorm, Matis toughed it out for a year before deciding to drop out in favor of hiking the famous Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada. When Matis starts out in 2008, she's full of grief and anger over the assault and steeped in resentment toward her family for their failure to support her after the rape. Matis immediately joins up with two male hikers, and the party of three becomes a party of two when Matis and one of the hikers, nicknamed Icecap, become romantically involved. But the relationship sours, and Matis finds herself hiking alone on the trail, creating time for introspection but also leaving her vulnerable to danger. Comparisons to Wild (2012) are unavoidable, but readers who decide to accompany Matis on the PCT will find themselves in for an engrossing, often suspenseful journey with a rewarding outcome.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

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  • English

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