Strayed said that with the vast silence surrounding her on the trail, her mind stepped up eagerly to fill the void. "I found my mind playing and replaying scraps of songs and jingles in an eternal, nonsensical loop, as if there were a mix-tape radio station in my head," she wrote. "Up against the silence, my brain answered back with fragmented lines from tunes I'd heard over the course of my life – bits from songs I loved and clear renditions of jingles from commercials that almost drove me mad. I spent hours trying to push ads for Doublemint Gum and Burger King out of my head... An entire day was spent trying to piece together all the words of Lucinda Williams's 'Something About What Happens When We Talk.'"
