Wild Author Cheryl Strayed Is a Fitbit Fan

PHOTO OF CHERYL STAYED: JONI KABANA

If you’ve read the book, Wild, you know Cheryl Strayed’s journey along the Pacific Crest Trail was epic. But all that hiking didn’t turn her off to walking. She’s still a big fan of moving her feet, and, as it turns out, a big fan of Fitbit trackers, too.

Published in a recent Vulture article:

Cheryl Strayed touches a slate-gray band on her wrist. “My Fitbit,” she says. “We’re going to get our 10,000 steps.” Strayed and I are heading out for a stroll in Portland, Oregon, in the kind of weather for which that city is famous: not raining, but not not-raining, and certainly not ­certainly-not-going-to-rain. Strayed is undeterred, either because she’s lived here for nearly two decades, or because she once walked for 94 days in every conceivable meteorological condition, or because she really wants those 10,000 steps. She is wearing jeans and hiking boots—the lightweight kind that work for bumming around a city, or anyway around this city—and no coat, and the Fitbit.

“I’m obsessed with it,” she says of this last item. “I was so glad when you said you wanted to walk.” (I had proposed a hike, for obvious reasons, but even for Strayed, the weather forecast was a bit bleak for that.) “My favorite thing to do when I get together with my girlfriends is to go for a walk. I’m always like, ‘Can we go for a walk, can we go for a walk?’ and they’re like, ‘Let’s get a drink.’ I love to drink, don’t get me wrong, but I want to walk.”

Have you read Wild (or seen the movie)? Share your thoughts below!