Alma salvaje

[last lines]

Cheryl: [voiceover] It took me years to be the woman my mother raised. It took me 4 years, 7 months and 3 days to do it, without her. After I lost myself in the wilderness of my grief, I found my own way out of the woods.

[pause]

Cheryl: And I didn't even know where I was going until I got there, on the last day of my hike. Thankyou, I thought over and over again, for everything the trail had taught me and everything I couldn't yet know.

[pause]

Cheryl: Now in 4 years, I'd cross this very bridge. I'll marry a man in a spot almost visible from where I was standing. Now in 9 years, that man and I would have a son named Carver and a year later, a daughter named after my mother, Bobbi. I knew only that I didn't need to eat with my bare hands anymore. That seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water would be enough, that it was everything. My life, like all lives, mysterious, irrevocable, sacred, so very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be?