Woman in the Wilderness: My Story of Love, Survival and Self-Discovery

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And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. But how will you shower? ... Oh no, you have to come out once a month! At least when you have your period, surely! (c) Ugh, I have no idea how people managed to make it when there were no facilities or modern sanitary stuffs. By the age of 16, she had moved to Sydney and was living independently, sometimes on the streets, working as a croupier and artist’s model among other things. I tell her that I imagine an incredibly super-confident girl. She laughs, and says she was anything but. Her childhood had left her with an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. “My sense of myself was that I was weak, incompetent, unable to succeed in everything. So the preparation for the journey in particular and the journey itself was a self-proving, and it worked.” The opening line tells all (almost): It is a beautiful winter’s day and I am walking with my bow and arrows on the side of a mountain, in search of a wild goat. It's oddly liberating to consider how we could call the whole world (or at lest a chunk of an island) a home. Soothing and agoraphobic. Wouldn't it be strange to be at home wherever you go?

Don't get me wrong, I couldn't live how they lived, but getting through the book was really painful at times. It felt judgemental and condescending towards people who don't have the luxury of giving up everything for the wilderness. I spotted a big plant with yellow flowers and when I touched its soft green leaves I felt, intuitively, that these could have a medicinal property for the lungs. When I saw another plant, which Peter recognised as ragwort, I felt that it should not be eaten, but could perhaps have a use for skin treatments. We walked from plant to plant, and each one told us something of interest. I realised that in the past people would have had a sense for the medicinal values of plants, and that this insight was now rendered obsolete by modern science and technology. (c)

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And the woman fled into the wilderness, where God had prepared a place to care for her for 1,260 days. If I looked into the heart of nature’s rhythms, I could see that sacrifice was part of its cycle. All around me, I was aware of a sweeping power that had the ability to destroy living creatures so casually, but with the same movement could also create profoundly. I saw that same energy in the vast landscape around us. (c) I was not doing anything special, but suddenly it felt as if a lightning bolt entered my head, as if the right part of my brain suddenly opened, and with it came an extraordinary clarity. I sat down in wonder, and saw that the whole of reality was in fact moving like a kaleidoscope. I saw that everything, including my own mind, was constantly transforming; I was not really fixed in one place. I saw that this changing reality was an eternal movement in a timeless world. (c)

Since 2010, Miriam Lancewood has lived nomadically in the wilds of New Zealand with her partner. They spend all their waking moments connected to nature. They walk hundreds of miles through forests, rivers, mountains. She hunts for their food with a bow, and a rifle. And she somehow does all of this whilst also looking like a mega babe!? Wtf??? On a scale of one to epic, how FREAKING EPIC is that? Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days. De cover is precies zoals Miriam op jacht ging. Ze leefden voornamelijk van de dieren, die toch maar gedood worden zonder ze op te eten, omdat Nieuw-Zeeland de dieren van vroeger zonder menselijke inbreng terug willen. While we talked, I realised how, in nature, everything is living: the trees, birds, animals, and even fire and the weather are lively. Everything exists in relation to everything else. A house, on the other hand, with its totally indoors environment, is quite dead by comparison.This book could easily have descended into fetishising a way of life which many people have no choice but to lead, and for them is actually incredibly difficult. In fact, it's a ‘self-fulfilment’ exploration on the importance of individuals being able to seek a lifestyle that provides you with meaning and mental peace, not matter what that is. The moment that I walked through the door of responsibility I found myself in the room of obligation Miriam Lancewood is attractive, energetic, tough and eloquent - and just 34 when her memoir was published in 2017 . She had a story to tell and people who heard her wanted more. Hence, she was commissioned (I presume by Allen & Unwin) to write a memoir of her nomadic exploits in the rugged, wilderness of New Zealand’s South Island with her partner, Peter, old enough to be a father-figure.