2023-01-24
A memoir that serves as “an exploration of what a closer relationship with the natural world can offer us.”
British-born Vilden grew up in London and rural Sweden, and she lived in a series of “squat houses” in Amsterdam as a teenager. She also resided in a small Swedish village at the edge of a forest, where she had a job in theater. Now, in north-central Washington state, she inhabits a world of “peace, stillness, and silence,” living with the seasons and from the land. Described as “a primitivist, the last modern hunter-gatherer, or a woman outside of time,” for the past 20 years she has run workshops to teach students “how to live with the land in a respectful and conscientious manner.” At the school she founded, Living Wild, she offers a rugged immersion program in Stone Age living. In her spirited debut book, Vilden melds memoir with a detailed recounting of one Stone Age immersion project, when she and her clan challenged themselves to live in the wilderness as hunter-gatherers using nothing but primitive tools. The participants’ motivations varied: Some (Vilden created composites of her students) sought escape from what they saw as the falseness of civilization; others looked for spiritual solace; some, a balm for their emotional fragility. To prepare, they had to learn skills such as starting a fire without matches, building a shelter from foraged wood, making bows and arrows, fishing, hunting, and processing the animals they killed. “With each project I was learning, recognizing essential foundational truths,” Vilden admits, “but the list seemed endless.” As clan members quickly realized, Stone Age living was precarious and exhausting. Weather could turn life-threatening, and most critically, they risked starvation without enough calories to survive, especially from meat and fat. Besides chronicling a season at Living Wild, Vilden reports on her pilgrimages to the Himalayas, Egypt, and Namibia; her several marriages; and the joy of her daughter’s birth.
A rigorous, colorful portrait of true wilderness living.