wild by cheryl strayed essay

The Book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed Essay

Introduction, personal journey, emphasis on transformation, personal healing, spiritual journey.

Self-transformation and self-reflection are critical parts of heroic journeys in literature. Often, heroes fail to succeed, but their experiences provide philosophical insights into the essence of personal reflection journeys. In this paper, I explore “Wild,” a hiking memoir of Cheryl Strayed, as she embarks on a 1,100-mile journey through the Pacific Crest trail “to save herself.”

This paper explores the underlying thoughts behind personal journeys because it undermines the idea that Cheryl Strayed pursues the attainment of goals in her narration, Wild. Instead, this paper shows that Cheryl Strayed focuses on the process that leads to the goal of her journey, even when she cannot attain the goal.

Essentially, this paper demonstrates that quest literature (“Wild”) mainly focuses on transformation, as opposed to evaluating how the hero meets or fails to meet her goal. Therefore, this paper suggests that the end of the road is not important in quest literature; instead, people should focus on how the subject transforms throughout the journey.

Cheryl’s adventure throughout her journey is gripping, not because of its adventurous nature, but because of Cheryl’s ability to relate its details with her journey. Through this journey, Cheryl strives to understand herself and the predicaments in her life.

Faced with the emotional torment of her mother’s death, her stepfather’s demise, her heroin addiction, and her failed marriage, it is difficult to ignore the emotional journey that Cheryl experiences. This journey could easily contrast with her physical experiences with rattlesnakes, black bears, and adverse weather conditions that symbolize the emotional turmoil that she experiences in her emotional journey.

Cheryl’s focus on the beauty and loneliness of her journey, through the desert and the mountains, overshadow her quest to reach her destination because the main message in her narration focuses on her experiences, as opposed to how she will reach her destination, or not.

Certainly, Cheryl aims to tell her experiences throughout the journey, as opposed to how she will reach her destination. Indeed, she focuses on describing how she suffered countless bruises, how she repeatedly affirmed to herself that she was fearless, how she overcame the harsh physical conditions of her journey, and how she would accept her grief. For example, she says that whenever she heard a branch break outside her tent, she had to shout that she was fearless.

Cheryl’s relationship with her mother (before her mother’s death) also symbolically shows the emphasis on transformation, as opposed to the end of the journey (her mother’s death). Cheryl does not hesitate to explain how her mother affirmed to her children that she would always be with them (she made most of these affirmations, as she grew sicker).

Cheryl’s thoughts regarding those moments made her stronger in her journey because she understood that her mother was always with her. In fact, throughout her lonely journey, Cheryl’s mother stood out as her only “companion.” Cheryl carefully narrates how her mother’s love proved to be a key mental pillar in her journey because, in her words, it was not the loss of her mother, but rather, the love she had for her mother that was the most important factor in her journey.

Also, concerning her experiences with her family and the disappearance of her stepfather, Cheryl says it was not the rebellion or the abandonment, she had suffered that mattered; instead, the loss of love bothered her.

Her narration clearly shows that the goal (demise of her stepfather and the death of her mother) did not matter in her self-transformative journey because the emotional journey and the loss of attachment she shared with her parents were more saddening for her. Somewhat, Cheryl tries to show that the end is not an important goal in her journey. Instead, the love (or the lack of it) was more important in her transformative journey.

Cheryl’s transformative journey also symbolizes that the end of the road is not important because it does not provide the healing that she desperately needed. Her admission that she lacked all the answers to her problems and questions is also an open acknowledgment that the end is not defined, or important, in her journey. Instead, she focuses on what makes her survive and how it is possible to “find” her inner strength when she has lost the will to live.

Through this analysis, Cheryl bears more emphasis on how she can cope with grief and how she will repair the “hole” in her heart. Here, it is crucial to mention that Cheryl considers these goals as the most important issues in her journey. Strategically, she fails to wonder if she is going to make it to her destination, or if she will live to see another day.

Lastly, in my view, Cheryl’s journey resembles many spiritual journeys that often involve people unplugging themselves from their ordinary lives to live in foreign lands or isolate themselves from modernity. Similar comparisons of personal journeys include the journey made in Elizabeth Gilbert’s film, “eat, pray, love.” Through this comparison, it is plausible to say that Cheryl’s memoir is a spiritual journey that does not aim to communicate with God, but the universe.

The mere fact that her journey is spiritual shows that the emphasis of her narration is on healing herself, as opposed to reaching a destination (as is common in physical journeys). Therefore, spiritual journeys differ from physical journeys because spiritual journeys do not emphasize on the destination (end of the road). Cheryl’s experience is, therefore, a powerful transformative journey that teaches us the value of “finding ourselves” so that we can continue the journey of life.

Self-transformation is at the center of this analysis. This paper shows that Cheryl’s focus throughout her whole journey centers on how she lives and accepts her circumstance, as opposed to if she will make it through the desert, or reach her destination altogether. Therefore, throughout this analysis, this paper shows that the ultimate focus of quest literature is in the journey and not at the end of the road.

Indeed, through this lens of analysis, we can see how Cheryl, a young woman, transforms herself through solitude and physical difficulties to become a force to reckon with in the world of literature (even as she fails to provide all the answers needed in her journey). Even when she reaches her poetic destination, “Bridge of the Gods,” Cheryl still reminds us that her most important concern is not her arrival at this destination, but her trust that whatever she had done throughout her journey is true (emphasis on the process).

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IvyPanda. (2020, March 19). The Book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-wild-by-cheryl-strayed/

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IvyPanda . "The Book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed." March 19, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-book-wild-by-cheryl-strayed/.

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Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found by Cheryl Strayed – review

I n this hugely entertaining book, Cheryl Strayed takes the redemptive nature of travel – a theme as old as literature itself – and makes it her own. For three months she hiked 1,100 miles alone along the Pacific Crest Trail, a continuous wilderness undulating from Mexico to Canada over nine mountain ranges – the Laguna to the Cascades. She did it, she says, "in order to save myself".

An American raised in rural Minnesota, Strayed lost her beloved mother when she was 22. An abusive father had long ago vanished, and in the wake of their bereavement, Strayed's siblings and stepfather scattered and her marriage to a rather wonderful man collapsed as a result of her serial infidelities ("I'd smashed up my marriage over sex"). She was waitressing, servicing a student debt for a degree she failed to complete (she reckoned she would pay off the debt when she was 43), and then came Planet Heroin. In the wake of her divorce, she invented a new name for herself: Strayed. Because she had strayed. Four years after her mother's death, still "unmoored by sorrow", she packed a rucksack and flew to California. "Hiking the PCT," she writes, "was my way back to the person I used to be."

On her epic trek, this novice hiker faced temperatures of 100 degrees in the shade on the Modoc plateau and record snowfalls in the high sierras, not to mention bears, rattlesnakes and failed waterholes. The terrain was rarely easy: "Sometimes," writes Strayed, "it seemed that the Pacific Crest Trail was one long mountain I was ascending." Her boots died (she had already lost most of her toenails) and she made "duct-tape bootees" out of a pair of sandals while waiting for fresh boots to arrive in the middle of nowhere in a courier's box. When a branch snapped in the night outside her lonely tent, she made herself say out loud, "I am not afraid." For weeks she does not wash or wear knickers and, as a result, a shower at a lonely campsite turns into "an almost holy experience". The seasons change, and so does the landscape, but these pages contain little in the way of topographical description. It is the inner landscape that captures this unusual author.

The story of her past, and in particular her mother's harrowing death, unspools as a counter-narrative alongside the blisters and the bulky backpack she calls Monster. (The mother, clearly an extraordinary and inspiring figure, looms over this book like a ghost.) Wild follows Strayed's painful first steps as she averaged nine miles a day and learned how to use her gear (or didn't), to the happy weeks when her muscles were like ropes and she was lean, bronzed and hairy-legged. At staging posts on the trail – not towns but straggly outposts of civilisation – she picked up resupply boxes she had mailed to herself. Each contained $20, along with books, freeze-dried food and a clean T-shirt (she packed lacy underwear in the last box). At one point she describes herself as "hot, angry, sick of myself". I recognised that. How very sick of oneself one gets on the road.

Mostly, Strayed saw no one, but she is good on the peculiar intimacy one strikes up on chance encounters in strange parts, and the camaraderie on the trail, when freeze-dried noodles, Elastoplast and news of fresh snowfalls are exchanged in long nights around the camp fire. I enjoyed those passages immensely. Similarly, she writes well about the relationship one has with books when alone and travelling, though I was inevitably influenced in her favour by the fact that her writers are mine, notably Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. The latter would have admired Cheryl Strayed. In the evenings, after making camp, she sat with a pot of noodles gripped between her knees, spooning food in one hand and holding a book in the other, reading by the light of her miner's headlamp as the sky darkened. "I grew stronger," she writes as the weeks unfold. In short, she read herself out of a hole. And what are books for, if not that?

Wild tracks the physical changes as a body gets turned inside out in three months, and more interestingly, the prose reveals Strayed's return to sanity. Body image is a component of this last transformation. The author refers at several points to issues with weight that dogged her past, and to her confused attitude to her own physical appearance. At one point, at a PCT campsite, she sees herself in a cracked mirror for the first time in many weeks, and ends up "wondering whether I was a babe or a gargoyle". Many women will recognise that particular experience, and might take heart from the resolution Strayed finds in the course of her trip.

Sex is a leitmotif: Strayed likes it, and had packed condoms. Men are sized up as soon as they walk into the campsite and on to the page. About two-thirds of the way through the book, congress finally occurs, spreadeagled against a boulder on a beach, with honey and sand involved. Sex is one of the last taboos in women's travel writing, and I have noticed that male reviewers tend not to like it. They know, I hope, where they can stick their dislike, and well done Cheryl Strayed.

Despite the Wagnerian tempests that led to the journey, a quiet dignity inhabits the heart of this book, as Strayed takes on the Mojave desert and the wind-twisted foxtail pines at the foot of Mount Washington. There are longueurs in the story and stylistic infelicities in the prose. But she lobs in lots of yeasty direct speech to keep the book, like the journey, on the road. I can't wait for the film.

Strayed is 44 now: one senses that it has taken her this long to understand the true meaning of the journey – or perhaps she had to wait for certain people to die. At any rate, she is happily married with two children, her demons at bay, and her book, a New York Times bestseller, was taken up by Oprah (you can watch a Strayed  slideshow on the Oprah website). Towards the end of Wild , approaching journey's end at the Bridge of the Gods over the benighted Columbia River, the author writes: "I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in the world now." Lucky her.

Sara Wheeler's new book, O My America! Second Acts in a New World, will be published in March by Jonathan Cape

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The Tracks of an Author’s, and a Reader’s, Tears

By Dwight Garner

• March 27, 2012

It’s not very manly, the topic of weeping while reading. Yet for a book critic tears are an occupational hazard. Luckily, perhaps, books don’t make me cry very often — I’m a thrice-a-year man, at best. Turning pages, I’m practically Steve McQueen.

Cheryl Strayed’s new memoir, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” however, pretty much obliterated me. I was reduced, during her book’s final third, to puddle-eyed cretinism. I like to read in coffee shops, and I began to receive concerned glances from matronly women, the kind of looks that said, “Oh, honey.” It was a humiliation.

To mention all this does Ms. Strayed a bit of a disservice, because there’s nothing cloying about “Wild.” It’s uplifting, but not in the way of many memoirs, where the uplift makes you feel that you’re committing mental suicide. This book is as loose and sexy and dark as an early Lucinda Williams song. It’s got a punk spirit and makes an earthy and American sound.

“Wild” recounts the months Ms. Strayed spent, during the summer of 1995, when she was 26, hiking alone on the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State. There were very frightening moments, but nothing particularly extraordinary happened to her.

The author was not chewed on by bears, plucked dangling from the edge of a pit, buried by an avalanche or made witness to the rapture. No dingo ate anyone’s baby. Yet everything happened. The clarity of Ms. Strayed’s prose, and thus of her person, makes her story, in its quiet way, nearly as riveting an adventure narrative as Jon Krakauer’s two “Into” books: those matey fraternal twins, “Into the Wild” and “Into Thin Air.”

Ms. Strayed began her hike because her life was in meltdown. “I was living alone in a studio apartment in Minneapolis, separated from my husband and working as a waitress, as low and mixed-up as I’d ever been,” she writes. Her mother had recently died, effectively rendering her an orphan. (Her father had vanished when she was 6.) She was using heroin; she had, she says, slept with too many men.

Her grief, early in this book, is as palpable as her confusion. Her portrait of her mother, who died of cancer at 45, is raw and bitter and reverent all at once.

“She dated men with names like Killer and Doobie and Motorcycle Dan,” Ms. Strayed writes about the woman who sometimes had to feed the author and her two siblings on food stamps, government cheese and powdered milk.

Yet when Ms. Strayed went away to college, her mom came along and enrolled too. She got straight A’s. “Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned,” Ms. Strayed writes. “Every day she blew through her entire reserve.” When her mother became ill, the author says, “I folded my life down” to care for her.

“Wild” is thus the story of an unfolding. Ms. Strayed went walking in search of what she calls “radical aloneness.” She had no cellphone and no credit card; often she had only a few coins in her pocket to last a week. What felt profound, she says, “was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay.”

Physically, she was unprepared for this adventure, and she recounts a great deal of physical pain: that of setting off with a ridiculously overstuffed backpack she comes to refer to as Monster; losing most of her blackened toenails to ill-fitting boots; having her feet become “a throbbing mass of pulp.” After a few weeks on the trail, she writes, “my stench was magnificent.”

In a comical scene, a reporter for a journal called The Hobo Times mistakes her for one of his tribe and attempts to interview her. “I did not so much look like a woman who had spent the past three weeks backpacking in the wilderness,” she admits, “as I did like a woman who had been the victim of a violent and bizarre crime.”

Ms. Strayed got tougher, mentally as well as physically. She tells good, scary stories about nearly running out of water, encountering leering men and dangerous animals. About bears and other carnivorous woodland beasties, she asks, “Why did they always have to run in the direction I was going?”

An aspiring writer, she keeps a running tally of the books she reads (Faulkner, Drabble, Coetzee) and recounts how, to lighten her load, she burned each morning the pages she had read the night before.

Eating cheap, dehydrated meals on the trail, and sleeping in a tiny tent, she is absurdly vivid about the comforts she misses. Bottles of cold Snapple lemonade become talismanic in their import. About a cheeseburger and fries she cannot afford, she declares, “I was devastated by the sight of them.”

She is even better on her own lust. Parts of this frank and witty book belong in “Best American Sex Writing 2013.” There’s a moment when a stern and upright fellow is helping her lighten her backpack and finds a dozen ultrafine condoms in their crinkly packaging. He holds them up and asks, “Do you really need these?”

Ms. Strayed doesn’t — at least not a dozen. At one point she meets a young man on the trail, begins talking to him and says to us, as if she were a randy Doonesbury character in hiking boots, “There was no way I was going to keep my pants on with a man who’d seen Michelle Shocked three times.”

Two things almost kept me from picking up this book. Why did Ms. Strayed wait 17 years before committing this story to paper? As in any memoir, some of the interior life here has to have been reconstructed. She never explains the delay, but the aging of her notebooks and memories seems to have, as with casked whiskey, only strengthened her book’s complicated flavors.

There’s also the matter of her made-up surname, Strayed, which sounds like the punch line from an old joke. (Mae West: “I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”) The author doesn’t reveal her original name, but “Strayed” strikes me as a deft stab at self-reinvention. (She changed her name from Nyland in 1995, according to her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.)

“Growing up poor had come in handy,” the author says near the close of her book. “I probably wouldn’t have been fearless enough to go on such a trip with so little money if I hadn’t grown up without it.”

The lack of ease in her life made her fierce and funny; she hammers home her hard-won sentences like a box of nails. The cumulative welling up I experienced during “Wild” was partly a response to that too infrequent sight: that of a writer finding her voice, and sustaining it, right in front of your eyes.

From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

By Cheryl Strayed

315 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.95.

Exploring the Outdoors, One Step at a Time

Hiking is a great way to immerse yourself in nature and tune out the chaos of city life. the tips below will help you get ready before you hit the trail..

Hiking offers a host of mental and physical benefits. If you’re new to it, here’s how to get started .

Fourteen years and one Apple App of the Year award in, AllTrails has become something rare: a tool that works for both experts and newbies .

Make sure you have the right gear . Wirecutter has recommendations for anything you might need — from hydration packs  to trekking poles . And remember to try on hiking boots  at the right time of the day .

These clever apps and devices  will help you to find your way, triage an injury and generally stay out of trouble on the trail.

Planning to venture out for a nighttime  hike ? Opt for wide, easy-to-navigate paths.

Experts say failing to alert family or friends of your plans is one of the biggest mistakes hikers make. Here are some more safety tips .

7 Things That Didn't Make It into Wild

1. The Scene from the Book That She Hated to Cut but Had To

2. the trail buddies she never expected to see again, 3. the details about her eating disorder, 4. the reason she didn't have to go through drug rehab, 5. the story behind meeting her husband, 6. the mistake she never made again, 7. the wildest thing that's happened since the book came out.

• The official reading group guide to Wild

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Wild author Cheryl Strayed on adapting essay collection Tiny Beautiful Things with Kathryn Hahn

Strayed and showrunner Liz Tigelaar share the 'enriching experience' of bringing the Dear Sugar story to the small screen.

Samantha is a writer based in Los Angeles. Television is her one true love, and she tweets about it. A lot.

Cheryl Strayed knows what it's like to have stories from her life play out on screen. In 2014, her book Wild was turned into a feature film, one that landed Reese Witherspoon an Oscar nomination for portraying Strayed as she hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. Now, almost 10 years later, another of Strayed's works, Tiny Beautiful Things , is being turned into a television show. The collection of essays comes from a time when Strayed wrote an advice column for online literary magazine The Rumpus , each essay a response to a reader's question.

With Liz Tigelaar ( Little Fires Everywhere ) as showrunner, the series follows Kathryn Hahn 's Claire as she struggles to figure out what she's doing with her life, all the while still dealing with the trauma of losing her mother at a young age. And through her advice column, she's able to move toward healing.

EW spoke with Strayed and Tigelaar about bringing this story to the small screen. Check out the conversation below.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did this come together?

CHERYL STRAYED: It really was an idea that was just born out of having so much fun on Wild with Reese. We were chatting and I said, "Gosh, I just feel like Tiny Beautiful Things could be a TV show." At the time I didn't have any specific ideas, so we proceeded from there and took a couple different paths, and it wound its way beautifully down the mountain in the direction of Liz Tigelaar. Reese called me up one day and she said, "I have the perfect showrunner." That's where our friendship and collaboration began.

LIZ TIGELAAR: I had been so moved by Cheryl's writing. I had read Tiny Beautiful Things and I started just obsessively listening to her Dear Sugar podcast. So Cheryl's voice was in my head. It's always scary to meet somebody who you just have a one-sided connection [with] — you love them so much and they have no idea who you are. But Cheryl is everything you would hope and then a million times more. The show has been a gift, but just Cheryl herself has been such a gift in my life.

STRAYED: I feel the same way about Liz. It was amazing to see the way that she started to conceive the show and this character of Claire/Sugar. We had some early conversations about this idea of structuring what in real life we call a "woman," and in Hollywood we call a "complicated woman." And so we structured this "complicated woman" who is at this crossroads in her life. So many things were falling apart, and essentially she was reckoning with the fact that she never did answer that call that she had deep within her to be a writer. And finally in the form of giving other people advice, she was taking her own advice and becoming Dear Sugar. And we knew that this character would be a lot like me, but also very fictional.

I did want to touch on that. In Wild , Reese played you, but in this, Kathryn isn't playing you. Why did you make that decision?

STRAYED: Even though it's true that Reese definitely played me in Wild , that was me at 26 and younger. And that's very different than being like, "Okay, come on up to Portland, Kathryn, let me show you how it really goes around here at the dinner table, and then we're going to reenact that on TV." It would be a different kind of endeavor and I think a less interesting one. The character of Claire, she and I have deep things in common, but what Liz often says is our Claire is like Cheryl if she hadn't hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, if she hadn't written Torch and Wild and actually answered that call that we see Kathryn finally answering as Claire. So we're the same, and then our paths diverged.

TIGELAAR: We also thought of it as waving to your sister life from shore. That's the spirit of this. And of course, it gave us the freedom to explore a fictionalized version of a character who shared Cheryl's past but made different choices that led to a different present. It also gave her a particularly relatable journey. Maybe I just say this being the age of Claire, but I think a lot of people face getting to a certain age in your life and feeling the weight of time bearing down and think, "Have I done what I intended to do? Have I become who I wanted to become?"

STRAYED: On that level, we were interested in telling a story about a woman in middle age. If we had decided to make it more replicate my life, I started writing the Sugar column when I was 41. My kids were little. And we were really interested in having a mother who was parenting a teenager instead of young kids, a woman who had been married for a good while, and had settled into that kind of monogamy for well over a decade. Some of the questions that Liz and I were curious about as writers sort of gave way to this idea of making Sugar slightly older than I was when she started writing the column.

How did casting Kathryn Hahn come about?

TIGELAAR: I feel like for everyone, Kathryn is a prototype in terms of, you can almost never not be thinking of her. But we didn't write this for Kathryn. She came into the show once we had all the episodes, pretty much once we had the series broken. But she was this kind of north star dream person. And so when we heard she might be interested, it was this, "Oh my God, are you serious?!"

STRAYED: What's been so cool to see is every single person, when I say, "Oh, the show stars Kathryn Hahn," they all say, "Oh my God, I love Kathryn Hahn." It speaks to her absolute accomplishment and talent as an actress. People see themselves in her. She can be just both funny and dead serious and dramatic and crazy and chaotic, and she can convey the whole range of all of our emotions. What a gift that she said yes.

You also have Sarah Pidgeon playing a young Claire, and Merritt Wever as Claire's mom.

STRAYED: Yeah, we felt so lucky. It mattered to me so much, the person who played the character based on my mom, because those scenes between Merritt and Sarah are very autobiographical. I mean, incredibly close to, in many cases, exactly what happened as I remember it. And the stakes are always incredibly high when that happens. It mattered a lot that the writing was right and that the acting was right, and that the energy and the essence that they exuded was right, and they all knocked it out of the park.

Cheryl, do you find that there's almost a level of catharsis to experiencing certain life experiences over in a different form for you?

STRAYED: Yeah. I feel like it's my own personal individualized form of therapy called reenactments. I'm going to open an institute of reenactments. It'll be a film set, we'll have it on the Disney lot, and it'll be like, "Welcome to your life." We'll have you write down the five most traumatic things that have happened to you and the five most beautiful things. And then we'll hire actors to play them out. [ Laughs ]

TIGELAAR: There were times when we would be stuck and we'd be like, "What could this be?" And Cheryl would be like, "Well, I don't know if this is helpful, but at Summer Solstice, we didn't have air conditioning. So mom would take us outside with a sleeping bag and just land under the stars and this field of horses. And then they would come and they'd sniff our hair and put their muzzles on our faces."

STRAYED: I love how whenever Liz tells this story, she says, "She didn't have air conditioning." We didn't have electricity. [ Laughs ]

TIGELAAR: I love hearing the details of Cheryl's life. They're so unique and singular, and there's so many stories. I've never met anybody with more of an ability to remember the details. So there was so much, there still is so much. You could make eight seasons of Tiny Beautiful Things and tell every story of Cheryl.

This is a limited series, but if the chance were to come up, is this a story you all would be interested in continuing?

TIGELAAR: I would do this show for the rest of my life. Some things are jobs and some things are experiences. This has been an experience. This has been an incredibly moving, wonderful, enriching experience. So yeah, as long as Hulu will have us, we'll be here.

STRAYED: Sign us up. There are a lot of things in Tiny Beautiful Things .

TIGELAAR: I think that the show has a beautiful mother-daughter arc to it that has a completeness to it. But I think the intention is never to imply that any story is wrapped up in a bow. Everything leads to more, every hurdle, every nut you crack open leads to a repercussion of being cracked open and unleashes something else. So however that looks, we're here, we're available.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Tiny Beautiful Things premieres Friday, April 7, on Hulu.

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Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller  Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail , which was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Her bestselling collection of Dear Sugar columns,  Tiny Beautiful Things,  was adapted for a Hulu television show and as a play that continues to be staged in theaters nationwide. Strayed's other books are the critically acclaimed novel, Torch , and the bestselling collection Brave Enough , which brings together more than one hundred of her inspiring quotes. Her books have sold more than 5 million copies around the world and have been translated into forty languages. Her award-winning essays and short stories have been published in  The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue,  and elsewhere. Strayed has also made two hit podcasts, Dear Sugars , which she co-hosted with Steve Almond, and Sugar Calling . She lives in Portland, Oregon. 

Connect with Cheryl Strayed online:

Wild is "uplifting, but not in the way of many memoirs, where the uplift makes you feel that you’re committing mental suicide. This book is as loose and sexy and dark as an early Lucinda Williams song. It’s got a punk spirit and makes an earthy and American sound." Dwight Garner, New York Times. "Big-hearted, keen-eyed, lyrical, precise...Cheryl Strayed reminds us in every line that if defeat and despair are part of human experience, so are kindness, patience, and transcendence." George Saunders "Cheryl Strayed is a courageous, gritty, and deceptively elegant writer." Pam Houston "Cheryl Strayed needed to be alone in the vast American outdoors, but she also needed to tell us about it. The film adaptation of her book — itself already a classic of wilderness writing and modern feminism — provides another reason to be grateful that she did." A.O. Scott, New York Times "Strayed gives the impression of tapping raw emotion while at the same time exerting tremendous authorial control. Her carefully honed sentences are as sharp as knives." Bernard Cooper "In language that's lyrical and haunting, Cheryl Strayed writes about bliss and loss, about the kind of grace that startles and transforms us in ordinary moments." Ursula Hegi "No one can write like Cheryl Strayed." Ann Hood [Wild is] "spectacular... at once a breathtaking adventure tale and a profound meditation on the nature of grief and survival, ... both a literary and human triumph." Dani Shapiro, New York Times Book Review "Strayed writes fierce truths about how we live, with compassion, humor and uncanny precision. We need her." Sandra Scofield

Watch an excerpt of Cheryl's conversation with Oprah on "Super Soul Sunday."

Cheryl Strayed, Jay Jurden, and Dessa Live Wire with Luke Burbank

• Performing Arts

Acclaimed writer Cheryl Strayed (“Wild,” “Tiny Beautiful Things”) discusses her new personal essay "Two Women Walk into a Bar," which follows her complicated relationship with her late mother-in-law; stand-up comedian Jay Jurden bridges the generational divide with some poignantly hilarious observations on Boomers and Gen Z; and singer-rapper-poet Dessa performs "Hurricane Party" from her latest album “Bury the Lede.” Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello unpack the benign (but complicated) relationships our listeners have with the people from their everyday lives.

• Episode Website
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by Cheryl Strayed

Wild quotes and analysis.

I looked south, to where I'd been, to the wild land that had schooled and scorched me, and considered my options. There was only one, I knew. There was always only one. To keep walking. Cheryl, pg. 6

This quote shows the combination of suffering and resilience that encompasses why Cheryl's hike is so impactful for her. Before beginning her hike, she had been struggling to find purpose and a sense of direction. The hike puts her in a situation where she has a single, clearly defined goal, along with only one possible way to reach it. Her limited supplies and structured schedule mean that she can neither procrastinate nor change her mind on a whim. By narrowly limiting her options, Cheryl puts herself in a situation where her progress is reduced to a single action: she has to keep walking.

It took me years to take my place among the ten thousand things again. To be the woman my mother raised... I would suffer. I would want things to be different than they were. Cheryl, pg. 27

In this quote, Cheryl reflects on why she struggled for so long after her mother's death. She found it impossible to come to terms with the reality that her mother was gone and never coming back. Even though her mother showed her that it was possible to rise above suffering and to choose joy even in tough circumstances, Cheryl fixates on her sense of grief and loss. Once she accepts that she has no control over what happened to her mother and can only choose how she wants to live her life going forward, Cheryl is finally able to achieve a sense of peace and self-acceptance.

Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Cheryl, pg. 51

In this quote, Cheryl reflects on how she manages her emotions, even when undertaking a dangerous journey. She rejects the idea that women are vulnerable and susceptible to danger, and she relies on a belief in her safety to create confidence. To a large extent, this strategy works. Cheryl is able to continue even in face of dangers like bears, and most of the people she meets during her hike are supportive and helpful. However, late in her journey, Cheryl does meet two men who behave in a predatory way. She is able to get away from them, but that experiences underscores that her decision to reject fear doesn't actually guarantee her safety.

I'd set out to hike the trail so that I could reflect upon my life, to think about everything that had broken me and make myself whole again. But the truth was, at least so far, I was consumed only with my most immediate and physical suffering. Cheryl, pg. 84

This quote shows the gap between Cheryl's expectations of what her time on the trail will be like and what it actually ends up being like. She thinks that she will be able to achieve peaceful and meaningful reflection, but she ends up totally preoccupied with her physical reality. On one hand, this is helpful because, whereas Cheryl has previously been dwelling in the past, she now ends up immersed in the present moment. Also, as Cheryl's hike progresses, she gets stronger so that she is not in as much pain anymore. Cheryl never ends up achieving the transcendent state she was hoping for, but she is eventually able to both think about her present experience and reflect on her past.

"I love him," I blurted when we were nearly through, my eyes filling with tears. I thought about pulling up my sleeve and showing her the square of gauze that covered my brand-new horse tattoo, as proof. Cheryl, pg. 99

This quote shows Cheryl's feelings as she signs the papers finalizing her divorce from Paul. Even though she knows their marriage is not working, she still loves him, and she struggles to reconcile these two realities. When Cheryl and Paul get matching tattoos around the same time they divorce, they reverse expectations: they are severing their legal ties to each other, but they are also promising they will always remain emotionally and spiritually connected.

Alone wasn't a room anymore, but the whole wide world, and now I was alone in that world, occupying it in a way that I never had before. Cheryl, pg. 119

This quote illustrates how Cheryl's experience on the trail has changed her understanding of what solitude means. She thought she knew what it felt like to be alone, but she always had the option to seek out company if she truly wanted it. On the trail, she is truly alone for the first time. This experience is challenging but also liberating for her: she realizes that she can achieve her goals even if she only has herself to rely on, and she cultivates a true appreciation of her own company.

"Mom can go to the other side now," he said, looking into my eyes as if it were only the two of us in the entire world. "That's what the Indians believe--that when a great warrior dies you've got to kill their horse so he can cross over to the other side of the river. It's a way of showing respect. Maybe Mom can ride away now." Leif, pg. 162

Cheryl's brother Leif speaks these words to her after a traumatic episode wherein he, she, and Paul shoot Bobbi's horse, Lady. Lady was very old and had not been well cared for after Bobbi's death. Cheryl and Leif decided to euthanize her and decided that it was better to do it themselves than to rely on a vet. Although it is a very upsetting event, it provides Leif with a sense of closure and peace, leading him to believe that his mother is now going to be able to cross into the afterlife.

"The father's job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse and ride into battle when it's necessary to do so. If you don't get that from your father, you have to teach yourself." Astrologer, pg. 204

When Cheryl impulsively visits an astrologer, she is told that she carries a wound from her father. This prediction is significant in that Cheryl has always been haunted by her lack of relationship with her father and the way in which he abandoned the family. Part of the reason her mother's loss is so difficult for her is because Cheryl has already struggled with loss and a feeling of being abandoned by a parent. Cheryl starts her hike in order to deal with the loss of her mother, but she also ends up confronting her feelings about her father and grieving that loss. Since neither of her parents is present in her life any longer, Cheryl has to rely on herself to get what she needs.

It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, stream and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. Cheryl, pg. 207

In this quote, Cheryl reflects on how powerful it is to be surrounded by the natural world. She knows that, for herself and generations of hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail, the power and beauty of nature is transformative. Humans tend to be self-absorbed and think they are the center of the universe, but being amidst the natural world forces her to become more humble. Cheryl realizes that she is one small part of something bigger and that everything is connected.

What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was also what had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was? Cheryl, pg. 258

This quote represents the moment of epiphany and healing Cheryl finally achieves as a result of her long journey. She has been carrying shame along with her grief, wishing that she could be someone different from the person she truly is. It is only when she contemplates self-acceptance that she finds peace. Cheryl realizes she cannot change the past, and that it is not helping her to feel badly about it. She also sees that everything she has experienced has led her to where she is now and that those experiences therefore have value.

Wild Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Wild is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

how does Strayed explain her conflicting relationship with her husband after her Mother's death?

Cheryl has grown up safe in the knowledge of her mother's unconditional love, so when she loses Bobbi, she feels deeply wounded. As her marriage to Paul crumbles, Cheryl also has to accept that it is possible for two people to love one another...

What is the mood depicted in the last paragraph one page 19 ,

Are you referring to Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

What is the main conflict

The novel's main conflict is a direct result of Strayed's loss of her mother to cancer. Her inability to cope with this loss causes her to emotionally fall into a deep depression and physically become dependent upon drugs. Four years later,...

Study Guide for Wild

Wild study guide contains a biography of Cheryl Strayed, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• Wild Summary
• Character List

Essays for Wild

Wild essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

• The Unsympathetic Cheryl Strayed

Lesson Plan for Wild

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Wild
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Wild Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Wild

• Introduction
• Distinctions and recognition

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Lone wild turkey wanders into Midtown Manhattan

An uncommon visitor has taken up residence in Midtown Manhattan. 

A lone wild turkey has been seen walking up and down Park Avenue, collecting scraps of food and jumping into trees to sleep.

          View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Spectrum News NY1 (@ny1)

The Wild Bird Fund is aware of the bird and intends to capture and relocate it to a safer location. 

In the meantime, the turkey is creating some buzz among avian allies, who are curious about how and from where exactly the bird traveled to get here. 

“There’s some speculation that this is the same wild turkey hen that was seen in Astoria recently. Also, an unusual place to see a wild turkey,” birder David Lei told NY1. “You know, I don’t, obviously, think this a safe place for her to be. Turkeys do walk into roads. I’m hoping if she doesn’t leave, someone will be around to transport her.” 

While it’s rare to see these birds in Manhattan, there are plenty of turkeys regularly seen on Staten Island. 

In 2022, many Staten Island residents complained about the droves of wild turkeys roaming neighborhoods.

The official response from the city and state has been: Staten Islanders need to learn to live with them.