Our seven years of living wild
Tired of the soul-sapping demands of modern life, Miriam and Peter Lancewood decided to get rid of just about everything they owned and move to New Zealand’s Southern Alps to live wild and off the grid. It was hard going – but now, seven years on, they sa
SHE can still vividly recall the moment she truly knew there was no going back – that she’d broken with social norms and was officially a wild woman.
“It was when the idea was born to wash my hair with urine,” Miriam Lancewood recalls.
For weeks she’d been looking for a sign – anything that would show her she and her husband, Peter, had made the right decision to get rid of just about all their material possessions; that she was tough enough to crack it living off the grid in the wilds of New Zealand. And when Miriam developed a persistent dandruff problem she at last found her proof.
She remembered reading about an ancient remedy. It involved washing hair in fresh urine but she was desperate enough to try it. “I sat in the sun for a horrible, stinky half-hour to let it soak in,” she tells me.
Although it was unpleasant it was effective – she claims her dandruff was cured and has never come back.
I’D EXPECTED Miriam (34) to look bedraggled, maybe with a few teeth missing, but she’s immaculate and smiling broadly, her teeth shiny white (she usually cleans them with ash), no dandruff, legs shaven; she smells of campfire. She’s powerfully built; almost the double of Sarah Connor from The Terminator. A Dutch Sarah Connor – she was born in the Netherlands. Peter (64) proudly tells me she could beat most men in a fight.
“Miriam is the hunter and I’m the cook. She’s much stronger than me. Women are better shots,” he says.
“And they’re more careful,” Miriam adds. “They’re less driven by trophy hunting. They have less of a need to prove themselves.”
Five years into their nomadic life in New Zealand Miriam decided to write a book about her experiences. The couple have since relocated to Europe where they’re spending a year walking to Turkey; part two of their life’s dream of never returning to “civilisation”. So here we are in Bulgaria – three hours west of Sofia, upstream from a river where the couple can bathe, sitting around a campfire in a wood.
I’ve been invited for dinner and Peter is standing over a cast-iron pot containing a bubbling bean stew. There are foraged wrinkly plums to start. It’s an exciting occasion for them: they haven’t seen another human being for 11 days. It’s 5pm. What have they been doing all day? “Nothing much. Waiting for you.”
In the first few months of their primitive life Miriam thought she’d go mad with boredom but she soon fell in sync with nature. Half of any given day is spent collecting firewood. They sleep as long as it’s dark. They’ve never had more energy.
It’s a stark contrast to when Miriam was still working as a special-needs teacher in New Zealand. Those were grim days. “I was always stressed. And so bored. And depressed about thinking I’m going to do this forever and ever.” She’s learnt so much since she’s been out here, but one question remains unanswered: “Where are all the women?”
When they do bump into another person in the wild it’s usually a hunter and always a man. She thinks perhaps women have lost their connection with nature “even more than men”. “And also,” she adds, passionately, “why do women behave so weakly physically? As in, ‘I can’t lift that’, ‘I can’t s**t outside’, ‘I can’t have my period in the bush’.”
She thinks they’re missing out – and it seems many women agree. Her book has just been released in English but is already published in the Netherlands where it’s become a small sensation.
“Women write to me and say, ‘ You inspired me’,” she tells me. “They’re amazed it’s possible to live this primitive life but they’re afraid. ‘What’s out there?’”
She says women worry about being eaten by wild animals or being murdered by a mentally unstable predator like they’ve seen in Nordic noir.
Interestingly, the women at her readings in the Netherlands are usually aged between 40 and 50; maybe they’re drawn to Miriam’s story because they see hers as the alternative life they could have led if only they’d been bolder and conformed less. Younger women still have the big decisions – and regrets – ahead of them. What do the women who write to her tell her the book inspired them to do?
“One woman said, ‘You inspired me to get a divorce.’ If you want to be more content, sometimes you have to change your life completely.”
THE seed of their idea was planted in India where they met 12 years ago. Peter (then 52) was a former sheep farmer, arborist and university lecturer, and Miriam (then 22) wanted to see the world. Together they travelled for a few years before moving to Peter’s homeland, New Zealand. In 2010 they got rid of most of their possessions and struck out on their bold off-grid experiment, roaming and camping in the vast, remote countryside. It was Miriam who carried the big hunting knife and knew how to use their Steyr Mannlicher .308 rifle.
Without electricity, digital technology or a watch the experiment was supposed to last a year.
“In Europe it’s tricky because you can never get far enough away from people,” Peter grumbles. Fortunately “we’re absolute masters of disappearing into forests”.
Miriam’s gripe is you can’t use or carry a gun in Bulgaria without a licence – otherwise she’d have shot, skinned and butchered a hare for dinner. They give me
‘Miriam is the hunter. She’s much stronger than me. Women are better shots’
the tour. Their home is a khaki-green tubular three-person tent with two sleeping bags in it, sleeping pads and two rucksacks neatly packed with rudimentary supplies. Food and utensils are arranged on the grass: enamel mugs, a black prospector’s plate that’s become partly redundant since they realised “panning gold is the most miserable experience you can have”. Miriam shows me her bow and arrow – it’s beautifully polished and colossal.
She says she struggled to kill her first animal: a possum. “I was vegetarian since birth but getting weaker and weaker. We were waking up with pains in our stomachs from trying to keep warm.” She set a trap but badly botched killing the possum. While it was happening she felt sick and yet the fried possum tasted delicious.
“Later I felt proud of myself.” She used her bow and arrow to hunt goats; the couple also ate dead deer left behind by hunters.
If you’re going off grid prepping is key. Miriam and Peter spent months training for that first winter in South Marlborough, New Zealand: long, demanding treks, first-aid courses; reading survival and foraging books – working out by the spoonful exactly how much flour, pulses, teabags they’d need. They practised seeing in the dark with night walks. Miriam isn’t a conspiracy theorist but she’s proud she’s now learnt survival skills in case of Armageddon.
They do sometimes return to “civilisation” to send an email or top up supplies or (in Miriam’s case) to write a book. Isn’t that cheating? Peter disagrees. “Because we’re living outside society there are no rules. We can move from the Stone Age to the big city and back. It’s a unique combination of primitive living and modernity.”
What happens if they split up? Miriam says she’d try to find another off-grid partner. Peter phlegmatically says he’ll be dead anyway. Certainly neither of them wants to return to a life of all mod cons: artificial light is too bright, the noise is too noisy, sleep is fitful, the food makes them constipated.
The question Miriam often gets asked by her readers is how they can afford to live as they do. “We have savings, we live cheaply: on about $5 000 NZD (R42 500) a year.” But she wanted to write her book for other reasons – “to show that in the 21st century a different way of living is possible”, one in which long-term relationships can work. “A lot of people write, ‘I’m so happy to read that at least someone is living harmoniously. A married couple spending 24 hours together!’ ”
“I’ve been married twice before,” Peter reveals. Miriam likes his worldliness and sense of adventure. Her only other serious boyfriend wanted the big house and kids – she doesn’t. She thinks the key to a good relationship is a desire for self-knowledge. “If he says something and I see it as an insult then I think, ‘Ah, why do I see that as an insult?’ I use it as a reflective method to find out about myself.” “We refuse to fight,” Peter adds. When he annoys her, Miriam says, “I pretend not to listen.” Doesn’t living in these physical circumstances force dependence? “We call it independent interdependence,” Peter explains. “Sometimes under extreme stress we do get a bit snappy . . .” ( for example, when they both nearly drowned in some New Zealand rapids). Miriam completes the thought: “. . . So you become more aware of how external factors affect your mood.” The book hints theirs is an open relationship but I’m not sure how that can make much difference given they never meet anyone. They’re hoping to meet some Roma (European nomads) in Bulgaria to exchange experiences. Don’t the poor feel patronised by their experiment? “No, it’s the middle classes who don’t like us,” Peter says – especially men. “A lot of my old friendships are breaking down because of it. Most men my age are already buggered. They can’t sleep on the ground, they’re fat, they can’t
walk for long. They’re envious. Mostly they’re envious of her,” he says, looking at his wife. “They want to know how to do it.”
As in, how to marry a woman 30 years younger? The age gap can be difficult to ignore. Miriam mentions it several times in her book, mainly because other people keep bringing it up. For them it isn’t an issue although would Peter really be here with a woman his own age? “I’ve never met a woman in her sixties who wants to live as I do,” he says.
MIRIAM and Peter often use the word “trapped” to describe how other people live. They never intend to have children and rely on another modern innovation – Miriam’s IUD birth control device – to make sure they don’t. They say it would be impossible to live in the wild with kids. So are kids a trap?
“For us it would be a trap,” Miriam says. “You have to have a regular income. You have to settle down.” She laughs. “It scares me just thinking about it.” She describes how men they meet on their travels will often suddenly open up about their personal lives. “They say they wish their wives would come out hunting with them or if they had a choice again they’d never have children. That was the end of their freedom, they say.”
She looks at Peter. “We met one guy – do you remember him? He said, ‘I can’t wait for my children to be old enough to leave the house.’ And I said, ‘Oh, how old are they?’ And he said, ‘Three and five’.” There was a pilot who told her he had recurring fantasies of pushing his wife out of his helicopter.
“Modern civilisation, the suburban life just doesn’t suit men’s nature,” Peter says. “It leaves men feeling constantly unchallenged. I’d say a third of the population are seriously unhappy.” He finds it startling that with the advances in birth control the majority of women still choose to have children.
“I’ve met so many interesting women in their twenties, then along comes 30 and they succumb to the pressure. You think, ‘Why did you do nothing else with your life?’ ”
The real problem, Peter thinks, is that everyone’s too obsessed with security to the point where it interferes with their ability to think logically or find happiness. “People say to us we’re living their dream and I say to them, ‘Do it.’ But they say, ‘Oh, I can’t,’ and I say, ‘What do you mean you can’t? Of course you can.’ And they look a bit confused by that statement – because it’s true.”
Maybe, I say, it’s because they’d prefer a more temporary break with society: once you’ve opted out of your career, sold all your stuff there’s no return.
“And that,” he says with satisfaction, “is exactly the point.”
Miriam nods in agreement. “Because once you’ve cut with your boring, unhappy life I can guarantee you’ll never want to go back.”