Outside Magazine: The Woman Who Lives 200,000 Years in the Past

As we confront the reality of COVID-19, the idea of living self-sufficiently in the woods, far from crowds and grocery stores, doesn't sound so bad. Lynx Vilden has been doing just that for decades, while teaching others how to live primitively, too.

By Katherine Rowland, April 2, 2020

The appeal of the “Stone Age thing,” Lynx explains as we sprawl before the fire, is that all you have are the materials available in the immediate environment. “It liberates something in the mind when you realize you’re not constrained by having to go buy some kind of tool that’s going to make your life easier.” This direct dependence on the elements cultivates “a depth of connection with all the nuances of nature around us,” she says. “You might see a shriveled-up stalk of grass. What I know is that, below the earth, there’s an edible root that tastes nutty. You just keep on learning.” Living wild, she elaborates, is an act of bearing witness, one that frequently requires relearning how to see and hear. Our senses have been numbed by the unrelenting light and noise of urban life. It deadens us, she says. “If we get so tame, so domesticated, we lose something that is very human.”

Read the entire piece here.