Let Reese's Golden Globe-Nominated Performance Inspire Your Next Hike

For Reese Witherspoon, shooting the movie Wild (for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe award) may not have been as arduous as hiking thousands of miles on the Pacific Crest Trail (which her character, author Cheryl Strayed, did in real life), but playing a down-and-dirty solo hiker wasn't a walk in the park either. "By far, this is the hardest movie I've ever made in my life," Reese recently told Vulture. "I didn't hike a thousand miles, of course, but it was a different kind of physical rigor. I'd run up a hill with a 45-pound backpack on, and they'd say, 'Wait, that backpack doesn't look heavy enough. Put this 65-pound backpack on and run up the hill nine or ten times.' We literally didn't stop shooting in those remote locations — we wouldn't break for lunch, we'd just eat snacks. No bathroom breaks. It was crazy, but it was so wonderful."

The Pacific Crest Trail spans the entire US West Coast from the Mexican border to past the top of Washington. For hikers like Cheryl Strayed, traversing part of or the entire 2,650-mile trail offers a time to reflect, challenge themselves, and step away from it all. Sound good to you? Before you pack up your backpack, let these real-life Pacific Crest Trail photos fuel your deskbound wanderlust. Source: Fox Searchlight