wild 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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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 .

Cheryl Strayed

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Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

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Nature, Journeys, and Self-Discovery

Aside from flashbacks, Cheryl’s book focuses entirely on her journey hiking in the wilderness. Cheryl provides rich descriptions of the natural environment, which ranges from lush and beautiful to arid and barren. These descriptions allow readers to visualize Cheryl’s surroundings: “I noticed the beauty that surrounded me, the wonder of things both small and large: the color of a desert flower that brushed against me on the trail or the grand sweep of the sky as the sun faded over the mountains” (67). Cheryl’s descriptions also allow readers to understand the obstacles she faced on her hike: “The heat was so merciless and the trail so exposed to the sun I wondered honestly if I would survive […] The parched scrub and scraggly trees still stood indifferently resolute, as they always had and always would” (83).

Nature is ever shifting in Cheryl’s book. At the start of her journey, she is struck by the unrelenting sun and clusters of Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert. The climate and terrain change the further she hikes. For example, the air cools as Cheryl climbs to high altitudes. By the time she approaches the High Sierra, conditions are so bad she is forced to use her ice ax:

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Wild : a journey from lost to found

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The 'Wild' Effect: How Cheryl Strayed's Memoir Inspires Hikers

By Allison Williams

Call it the call of Wild. In spring 2012, author Cheryl Strayed released her memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, about hiking a large chunk of the Pacific Crest Trail back in the 1990s. The trail itself is a daunting challenge, winding through 2,650 miles of mountains and deserts of California, Oregon, and Washington, from the bottom of the country to the top. In 2014 a film version starring Reese Witherspoon was released. The bestselling book immediately drove more hikers to the route, and the Oscar-nominated film looks to do the same.

Liz Bergeron and the Pacific Crest Trail Association , which works to protect and provide information about the path, saw increased numbers everywhere within a year—more day hikers, doubled website traffic, and more permit requests for thru-hiking, the ambitious practice of completing the entire trail at once. Nearly 2,000 people attempted a thru-hike in 2014, double the previous year. Every time Bergeron and her board members hit the trail, hikers kept asking them the same question: Have you read Wild ?

Strayed's memoir isn't the first tome to popularize long-distance hiking. The more humorous A Walk in the Woods, with Bill Bryson describing a hapless stumble up the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail on the east coast, came out in 1998. This year, Robert Redford starred in a film adaption of the tale, which nabbed a seven-figure distribution deal after its Sundance Film Festival premiere in January. "We saw a 50 percent increase in long distance hikers on the AT within two years of the book," says Ron Tipton of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, "and we expect similar results from the movie."

April Sylva on the Pacific Crest Trail

One person who was inspired by Wild is April Sylva, who picked up Strayed's book at the airport on her way to Bermuda in hopes of recovering from surgery to remove malignant melanoma. The 39-year-old Oklahoman "felt extreme parallels with Cheryl Strayed's story," she says; the self-abuse, filling voids in her painful life. "[Strayed] set out and said, basically, 'fuck this.'" A year later, Sylva quit her high-paid oil and gas-industry job and successfully applied for a PCTA sponsorship program through Yama Mountain Gear. She got mentors and gear, and in 2014, she hiked the entire PCT over five months.

"Her words became my guide," Sylva says of Strayed. Sylva had two bouts of giardia, foot injuries, and "my demons came out," she says. "You can't run from them; the trail will bring out the truth." But she found healing and used Strayed's words to pull strength from her own mind. Within a month, she went off anxiety medication. She's now a minimalist activist and blogger with only a handful of possessions, and she married one of her trail mentors. Strayed sometimes comments on her Instagram photos, which is "the coolest thing ever," says Sylva. She's currently prepping to hike the entire Continental Divide Trail, almost twice the length of the PCT, this summer.

For those who are curious about hiking the massive trail, the PCTA has a special Responsibly Wild section on its website, complete with hashtag, to inform curious readers and viewers. As the organization considers increasing the size of a few campgrounds to accommodate more backpackers, they're generally happy with Hollywood's portrayal of Strayed's experience. Fortunately, says Bergeron, Wild hasn't inspired an influx of grossly unprepared newbies, mostly because Strayed wrote about underestimating the experience. "I’ve heard from a number of people that because she was so unprepared, that has motivated them to be prepared," says Bergeron. "Because she was miserable."

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Subway Strays: The Dogs of Moscow’s Metro

Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union, the stray dogs in Moscow have a surprisingly well-documented history which animal behaviorists have been paying close attention to for several decades. During the Soviet period in Russia the packs of wild (or stray) dogs in were regulated. Only the clever canines who learned to stay in isolation were able to survive. Usually, these dogs would remain on the outskirts of the city hunting in wild packs, as the living in the city was dangerous and food scarce.  After the fall of the Soviet Union quality of life in Russia began to slowly improve and with it more street vendors and food collecting in busy neighborhoods. This began to bring some the stray dogs out of the suburbs into the city.

Today, there are nearly 35,000 stray dogs that call Moscow home. Out of these 35,000 stray dogs there are about 500 that have taken to living underground. Out of these dogs, there are a few that have started thinking outside the box and inside the boxcar. They have begun the slow move underground to stay out of the cold (Russian winters reach an average of -5 degrees every day). Many of the Russian commuters embraced the dog’s underground migration by petting them or giving them food.

Though these claims may seem like the made up type of internet misinformation that we have learned to be skeptical of these days, it is actually sourced to a Russian biologist by the name of  Dr. Andrey Poyarkov , a highly regarded scientist in his field of study. As it turns out Poyarkov has been studying these dogs for the last thirty years and told news sources back in 2010 that he suspected a small fraction of these underground dogs had actually learned to use the subway in order to beg for food in bustling urban areas where food is more plentiful.

Andrei Neuronov , an animal behaviorist, says much like you train your dogs at home to respond to verbal commands like “sit” or “stay,” the Moscow metro dogs are using audio cues from the subway stops they have learned. The dogs memorize the names of the stops to navigate the subway systems in order to take them to heavily populated places during the day and get food.  Then, they return to their more secluded corners of the suburbs at night where they are less likely to be bothered by people.  Here is a story ABC did back in 2011, talking about this very thing.

Do you have any information on how to help these dogs?  Please share and comment below.

Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Travel and Tourism Industry — The History of Moscow City

The History of Moscow City

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9 Things to See in Moscow's Red Square

 Sir Francis Canker/Getty Images

In most cases, you'll be entering Red Square from the north, passing landmarks such as the Bolshoi Theatre and Duma parliament building as you make your way southward. Although you don't necessarily have to pass through the Voskresensky (or Resurrection in English) Gates in order to gain access to the square these days, they definitely provide a sense of arrival, to say nothing of the way their left arch frame's St. Basil's Cathedral if you look from just the right angle.

An interesting fact is that while a gate of some kind has stood here since the mid-16th century, the one you currently see wasn't built until 1994, having been destroyed in 1931 so that tanks could enter and exit Red Square during military parades.

St. Basil's Cathedral

TripSavvy / Christopher Larson 

Few sights are as iconic not only of Moscow and Red Square but indeed of Russia than St. Basil's Cathedral, whose colorful, onion-shaped domes are a symbol of the country around the world. Officially known as the Cathedral of Vasily the Blessed, this church has stood since 1561, which is quite miraculous when you consider all the turbulent history that has transpired since then.

Among other things, religion was severely prohibited during the Soviet period , which led some to believe that this emblem of the Russian Orthodox church might not withstand the tenure of the USSR. 

An interesting fact is that St. Basil's is the so-called "Kilometer Zero" of Russia; all of Moscow's main roads (which can take you anywhere in Russia) begin at the exits to Red Square. In this way, St. Basil's iconic status also has an extremely tangible element.

The Kremlin

TripSavvy / Christopher Larson

When you think of The Kremlin, it's unlikely that positive images enter your mind. The fact that simply saying the word "Kremlin" is too vague a descriptor (most Russian cities have their own Kremlin complexes; you should say "Moscow Kremlin") notwithstanding, this misunderstood place is incredibly beautiful, even if you don't like the policy that comes out of it.

Senate Square

In spite of its name, which refers to the role the building that rises above the square played during Imperial Russia, Senate Square is actually home to Russia's presidential administration, currently helmed by Vladimir Putin. In order to see where Russia's legislature operates from, walk just outside Red Square to the Duma parliament building.

Dormition Cathedral

Dating back to the year 1479, the gold-domed Dormition Cathedral pays homage to an Orthodox religious feast that commemorates the death of the Virgin Mary . As is the case with St. Basil's, it is curious that such a conspicuously religious structure was able to survive through the Soviet period.

Armoury Chamber

Though it takes its name from the fact that it housed Russia's royal arsenal when it was built in the 16th century, the most notable resident of the Kremlin's Armoury Chamber today is the Russian Diamond Fund.

Notable Kremlin Towers

Robert Schrader

The interior of the Moscow Kremlin is more beautiful and inviting than you'd expect, but the walls and towers that rise around it better live up to the intimidation with which the complex is associated. 

Borovitskaya Tower

Named to commemorate the dense forest that once stood atop the mount where it's built, this tower is extremely picturesque. Built in the late 15th century, it's visible from most places in the square, and also as you walk along the Moskva River.

Nikolskaya Tower

Also built in the year 1491, this tower currently suffered destruction at the hands of Napoleon's army in the 19th century. What you see now is the result of an 1816 re-design and renovation, though artillery fire during the Russian Revolution also caused superficial damage to the tower, named to honor St. Nikolas of Mozhaysk , so it's difficult to know which elements of it are original.

Spasskaya Tower

Known in English as the "Savior's Tower," this iconic, star-topped tower is perhaps the best-known of all the Kremlin's towers. Built in 1491 like the other two towers on this list, it's certainly the most photographed. As a result of its proximity to St. Basil's, it often makes its way into tourists' pictures.

Mausoleum of Lenin

Just as it's strange to learn how many religious monuments survived through the Soviet period, it's a bit odd to think that Lenin's preserved body still sits in a mausoleum just beneath the walls of the Kremlin on Red Square, given the lack of consensus about the ultimate impact of his Revolution, even in Russia.

It's not guaranteed that you'll be able to see the body (which, believe it or not, seems to be improving with age ) when you go, and if you do you will likely have to wait in line, but even strolling past the outside of the Lenin Mausoleum, flanked by stone-faced guards that almost look like statues, illuminates the gravity of his body still being here.

GUM Shopping Center

You might cringe, at least initially, when you realize that one of the most iconic stops on a tour of Red Square is a department store—until you see said department store, that is. Built in 1893 and known during Soviet times as the State Department Store, GUM  ( Glávnyj Universáľnyj Magazín​ or Main Universal Store in English) hearkens back to the grandeur of the late 19th century, both seen from the outside (especially, when lit up at night) and the interior, which might have you feeling like you're further west in Europe.

A trip inside GUM is a particularly good idea during winter, when frigid temperatures outside will have you savoring the heat, the quality of souvenirs, confections and other goods sold inside notwithstanding. Also, make sure not to confuse GUM with CDM, which sits near the Bolshoi Theatre, even though both are stunning and iconic in their own right.

State Historical Museum

The Russian State Historical Museum is located near Voskresensky Gates, though you should wait until after you've seen the first few attractions of Red Square and the Kremlin to head back there and go inside. To be sure, as you pass by its facade (whose late-19th century grandeur somewhat obscures that fact that it's currently a museum accessible to the public) you might not even think to try and gain entry.

Once inside the museum, you can plan to spend at least a couple of hours, given that artifacts here date back to the very beginning of the Russian state in the ninth century. As is the case with GUM, this will be a particularly alluring prospect if you visit in winter, when Moscow is arguably at its most beautiful, but certainly at its least tolerable. 

Minin-Pozharsky Monument

It's somewhat easy to disregard this monument, which pays homage to the two Russian princes who ended the so-called "Time of Troubles" in the mid-16th century, during which Polish-Lithuanian forces occupied Russia, among other awful things including a famine. That's because the statue currently sits just at the base of St. Basil's Cathedral, which makes it very difficult to photograph or even see without being overwhelmed by that much more famous edifice.

Though the statue originally sat at the very center of Red Square, it came to be an obstacle to the movement of tanks during the Soviet period, much like the Voskresensky Gates. As a result, authorities moved it during that time, and it's stayed where you currently find it ever since.

Kazan Cathedral

Taken by itself, the smokey-pink Kazan Cathedral is an architectural marvel; originally built in the 17th century, the church you find here today, located just north of the GUM department store, dates back only to 1993.

Unfortunately, since it sits not only in the shadow of GUM, but also in the shadow St. Basil's and the Towers of the Kremlin, it's easy to miss entirely if you aren't looking. As a result, you might wait until you've seen just about everything else in Red Square before coming here to take photos, and to appreciate the understated beauty of this oft-overlooked cathedral.

Moskva River

As you head south from St. Basil's Cathedral to exit Red Square, make sure to walk onto Bolshoy Moskvoretskiy Bridge, which crosses the Moskva River. If you look due north, you can get an excellent shot of the church framed, on the left, by the towers of the Kremlin. Directing your gaze a bit to the west allows you to see the skyscrapers of Moscow City as they rise above the Kremlin's walls.

Walking westward along the riverbank is also a worthwhile excursion, for the views it provides of Red Square and the Kremlin, as well as the fact that doing so takes you to other iconic Moscow attractions, including Gorky Park and the Pushkin Museum. The views you enjoy from the river and the bridge are particularly stunning at night, though you should make sure you bring a tripod if you want to get a clear picture, given how strong winds over and near the river can be.

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The Comprehensive Guide to Moscow Nightlife

• Posted on April 14, 2018 July 26, 2018
• by Kings of Russia
• 8 minute read

Moscow’s nightlife scene is thriving, and arguably one of the best the world has to offer – top-notch Russian women, coupled with a never-ending list of venues, Moscow has a little bit of something for everyone’s taste. Moscow nightlife is not for the faint of heart – and if you’re coming, you better be ready to go Friday and Saturday night into the early morning.

This comprehensive guide to Moscow nightlife will run you through the nuts and bolts of all you need to know about Moscow’s nightclubs and give you a solid blueprint to operate with during your time in Moscow.

What you need to know before hitting Moscow nightclubs

Prices in moscow nightlife.

Before you head out and start gaming all the sexy Moscow girls , we have to talk money first. Bring plenty because in Moscow you can never bring a big enough bankroll. Remember, you’re the man so making a fuzz of not paying a drink here or there will not go down well.

Luckily most Moscow clubs don’t do cover fees. Some electro clubs will charge 15-20$, depending on their lineup. There’s the odd club with a minimum spend of 20-30$, which you’ll drop on drinks easily. By and large, you can scope out the venues for free, which is a big plus.

Bottle service is a great deal in Moscow. At top-tier clubs, it starts at 1,000$. That’ll go a long way with premium vodka at 250$, especially if you have three or four guys chipping in. Not to mention that it’s a massive status boost for getting girls, especially at high-end clubs.

Without bottle service, you should estimate a budget of 100-150$ per night. That is if you drink a lot and hit the top clubs with the hottest girls. Scale down for less alcohol and more basic places.

Dress code & Face control

Door policy in Moscow is called “face control” and it’s always the guy behind the two gorillas that gives the green light if you’re in or out.

In Moscow nightlife there’s only one rule when it comes to dress codes:

You can never be underdressed.

People dress A LOT sharper than, say, in the US and that goes for both sexes. For high-end clubs, you definitely want to roll with a sharp blazer and a pocket square, not to mention dress shoes in tip-top condition. Those are the minimum requirements to level the playing field vis a vis with other sharply dressed guys that have a lot more money than you do. Unless you plan to hit explicit electro or underground clubs, which have their own dress code, you are always on the money with that style.

Getting in a Moscow club isn’t as hard as it seems: dress sharp, speak English at the door and look like you’re in the mood to spend all that money that you supposedly have (even if you don’t). That will open almost any door in Moscow’s nightlife for you.

Types of Moscow Nightclubs

In Moscow there are four types of clubs with the accompanying female clientele:

High-end clubs:

These are often crossovers between restaurants and clubs with lots of tables and very little space to dance. Heavy accent on bottle service most of the time but you can work the room from the bar as well. The hottest and most expensive girls in Moscow go there. Bring deep pockets and lots of self-confidence and you have a shot at swooping them.

Regular Mid-level clubs:

They probably resemble more what you’re used to in a nightclub: big dancefloors, stages and more space to roam around. Bottle service will make you stand out more but you can also do well without. You can find all types of girls but most will be in the 6-8 range. Your targets should always be the girls drinking and ideally in pairs. It’s impossible not to swoop if your game is at least half-decent.

Basic clubs/dive bars:

Usually spots with very cheap booze and lax face control. If you’re dressed too sharp and speak no Russian, you might attract the wrong type of attention so be vigilant. If you know the local scene you can swoop 6s and 7s almost at will. Usually students and girls from the suburbs.

Electro/underground clubs:

Home of the hipsters and creatives. Parties there don’t mean meeting girls and getting drunk but doing pills and spacing out to the music. Lots of attractive hipster girls if that is your niche. That is its own scene with a different dress code as well.

What time to go out in Moscow

Moscow nightlife starts late. Don’t show up at bars and preparty spots before 11pm because you’ll feel fairly alone. Peak time is between 1am and 3am. That is also the time of Moscow nightlife’s biggest nuisance: concerts by artists you won’t know and who only distract your girls from drinking and being gamed. From 4am to 6am the regular clubs are emptying out but plenty of people, women included, still hit up one of the many afterparty clubs. Those last till well past 10am.

As far as days go: Fridays and Saturdays are peak days. Thursday is an OK day, all other days are fairly weak and you have to know the right venues.

The Ultimate Moscow Nightclub List

Short disclaimer: I didn’t add basic and electro clubs since you’re coming for the girls, not for the music. This list will give you more options than you’ll be able to handle on a weekend.

Preparty – start here at 11PM

Classic restaurant club with lots of tables and a smallish bar and dancefloor. Come here between 11pm and 12am when the concert is over and they start with the actual party. Even early in the night tons of sexy women here, who lean slightly older (25 and up).

The second floor of the Ugolek restaurant is an extra bar with dim lights and house music tunes. Very small and cozy with a slight hipster vibe but generally draws plenty of attractive women too. A bit slower vibe than Valenok.

Very cool, spread-out venue that has a modern library theme. Not always full with people but when it is, it’s brimming with top-tier women. Slow vibe here and better for grabbing contacts and moving on.

High-end: err on the side of being too early rather than too late because of face control.

Secret Room

Probably the top venue at the moment in Moscow . Very small but wildly popular club, which is crammed with tables but always packed. They do parties on Thursdays and Sundays as well. This club has a hip-hop/high-end theme, meaning most girls are gold diggers, IG models, and tattooed hip hop chicks. Very unfavorable logistics because there is almost no room no move inside the club but the party vibe makes it worth it. Strict face control.

Close to Secret Room and with a much more favorable and spacious three-part layout. This place attracts very hot women but also lots of ball busters and fakes that will leave you blue-balled. Come early because after 4am it starts getting empty fast. Electronic music.

A slightly kitsch restaurant club that plays Russian pop and is full of gold diggers, semi-pros, and men from the Caucasus republics. Thursday is the strongest night but that dynamic might be changing since Secret Room opened its doors. You can swoop here but it will be a struggle.

Mid-level: your sweet spot in terms of ease and attractiveness of girls for an average budget.

Started going downwards in 2018 due to lax face control and this might get even worse with the World Cup. In terms of layout one of the best Moscow nightclubs because it’s very big and bottle service gives you a good edge here. Still attracts lots of cute girls with loose morals but plenty of provincial girls (and guys) as well. Swooping is fairly easy here.

I haven’t been at this place in over a year, ever since it started becoming ground zero for drunken teenagers. Similar clientele to Icon but less chic, younger and drunker. Decent mainstream music that attracts plenty of tourists. Girls are easy here as well.

Sort of a Coyote Ugly (the real one in Moscow sucks) with party music and lots of drunken people licking each others’ faces. Very entertaining with the right amount of alcohol and very easy to pull in there. Don’t think about staying sober in here, you’ll hate it.

Artel Bessonitsa/Shakti Terrace

Electronic music club that is sort of a high-end place with an underground clientele and located between the teenager clubs Icon and Gipsy. Very good music but a bit all over the place with their vibe and their branding. You can swoop almost any type of girl here from high-heeled beauty to coked-up hipsters, provided they’re not too sober.

Afterparty: if by 5AM  you haven’t pulled, it’s time to move here.

Best afterparty spot in terms of trying to get girls. Pretty much no one is sober in there and savage gorilla game goes a long way. Lots of very hot and slutty-looking girls but it can be hard to tell apart who is looking for dick and who is just on drugs but not interested. If by 9-10am you haven’t pulled, it is probably better to surrender.

The hipster alternative for afterparties, where even more drugs are in play. Plenty of attractive girls there but you have to know how to work this type of club. A nicer atmosphere and better music but if you’re desperate to pull, you’ll probably go to Miks.

Weekday jokers: if you’re on the hunt for some sexy Russian girls during the week, here are two tips to make your life easier.

Chesterfield

Ladies night on Wednesdays means this place gets pretty packed with smashed teenagers and 6s and 7s. Don’t pull out the three-piece suit in here because it’s a “simpler” crowd. Definitely your best shot on Wednesdays.

If you haven’t pulled at Chesterfield, you can throw a Hail Mary and hit up Garage’s Black Music Wednesdays. Fills up really late but there are some cute Black Music groupies in here. Very small club. Thursday through Saturday they do afterparties and you have an excellent shot and swooping girls that are probably high.

Shishas Sferum

This is pretty much your only shot on Mondays and Tuesdays because they offer free or almost free drinks for women. A fairly low-class club where you should watch your drinks. As always the case in Moscow, there will be cute girls here on any day of the week but it’s nowhere near as good as on the weekend.

In a nutshell, that is all you need to know about where to meet Moscow girls in nightlife. There are tons of options, and it all depends on what best fits your style, based on the type of girls that you’re looking for.

Related Topics

• moscow girls
• moscow nightlife

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by Cheryl Strayed

Wild essay questions.

Why does Cheryl often question herself while on the trail?

Although Cheryl starts off her hike feeling confident, she is not actually an experienced hiker and she has never been backpacking before. She quickly realizes that she has not fully considered how challenging the trail is, nor how long it will take her to adjust. Because Cheryl has some early challenges, like being unable to lift her pack to put it on and not meeting her expected pace of hiking, she questions whether she should be hiking the trail. She also tends to compare herself to other hikers, who seem more competent and prepared in her eyes.

What are some reasons why Cheryl has an unusually close relationship with her mother?

Cheryl grows up with a single mother who left an abusive relationship, and she does not have a relationship with her father. Bobbi is a very loving mother who becomes the center of her children's world. Because Bobbi is quite young when her children are born, she also does not seem to be so far removed from their stage of life. In fact, Cheryl and Bobbi go through college together at the same time, and this experience bonds them and helps them to feel closer. Bobbi always encourages her daughter to think for herself and to live according to her own rules.

How are Cheryl's relationships with men affected by her grief?

After her mother's death, Cheryl's grief pushes her away from her husband, Paul. He has lots of hopes and dreams, but she finds it hard to think about the future. Cheryl quickly begins being unfaithful to Paul, first confining herself to kissing and then eventually having sex with other men. She knows this behavior is hurtful and will destroy her marriage, but she can't make herself stop. Later, Cheryl becomes involved with Joe, a man who is likely to be a bad influence on her. Because she is so grief-stricken after her mother's death, Cheryl uses her sexuality to numb the pain of loss.

What role does physical pain play in Cheryl's experience on the trail?

Cheryl is initially unprepared for how physically painful her hike will be. Her muscles ache from the exertion of hiking, and her ill-fitting boots cause intense pain in her feet. The physical pain is so consuming that, much to Cheryl's surprise, she actually does not spend much time reflecting on her life and her feelings. She is consumed instead with the physical realities of the present moment. Over time, Cheryl realizes that enduring the physical pain is making her stronger and more resilient, and that it also puts her emotional suffering in perspective. Rather than dwelling on the past all the time, she has to be fully present.

What role does solitude play in Cheryl's journey?

Solitude is part of what attracts Cheryl to the idea of hiking the PCT. She hopes that being alone will give her time to reflect and become more independent and self-reliant. As she progresses on her journey, Cheryl sometimes feels proud of being one of few hikers to go alone, something that is even rarer for a woman to do. At the same time, she often finds herself very lonely and eager to be around others. Although she is grateful for the companionship she finds on the trail, she is certain that she wants to hike the final stretch of the trail alone so that she can end her journey the same way she began it.

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