THE foundation for Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée’s odyssey of a woman’s thousand-mile hike alone is Cheryl Strayed’s memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail”.

Cheryl’s life held little joy. Her beloved mother had died from cancer. Her husband was abusive. The hike offered an epiphany to rescue her from the destructive influences of alcohol, drugs and promiscuity.

Reese Witherspoon is better than impressive as Cheryl, developing from a total outdoors novice to a confident trail walker crossing a variety of terrains carrying a backpack nearly as big as herself. Laura Dern is impressive as Cheryl’s mother Bobbi. The pair carry most of the film, Cheryl learning to deal with the wild, Bobbi and Cheryl together coping with domestic adversities and delighting in friendship. Husbands, siblings, friends, casual sexual partners, college associates, folk whom Cheryl meets on the trail, provide a random population for the film to meet briefly then pass by.

The arid bleakness of the Mojave Desert, the crests of the western slopes of the Rockies and the forests on the slopes and valleys, provide vistas that are charming, frightening, bleak, dangerous, testing. The folk whom Cheryl encounters are real people rather than contrived stereotypes of fictional film plots.

“Wild” reminded me of another monosyllabically-titled film about a young woman trekking alone across challenging terrain to prove herself. The environmental contrast between “Wild” and “Tracks” is enormous. But both women share rugged determination.

At Palace Electric, Dendy, Capitol 6, Hoyts Belconnen and Limelight