Lynx Vilden | The Call of the Wild

Lynx Vilden, a barefoot blonde in buckskin clothing, has carved her own unique path in the world—a path that used to be natural to all of us, but no longer is. While most have us have grown more and more distant from our roots in the Earth, Lynx has intentionally grown closer. She has explored the natural environments and indigenous cultures of arctic, mountain, and desert regions from Hudson Bay to the Red Sea. She has lived in a Sami village in Scandinavia, in the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, in the Rocky Mountains of Montana, and the North Cascades of Washington. She has been practicing and teaching primitive living skills in both the United States and Europe since 1991. An instructor at Boulder Outdoor Survival School in Utah for several years, she has also taught workshops at primitive skills gatherings such as Rabbitstick, Winter Count, and Saskatoon Circle. At her own Living Wild school in the Methow Valley, Washington, she teaches participants “how to live in the wild, rather than ‘survive’ the wild until they can get back to civilization.” She does this through intensive hands-on wilderness living skills training, teaching people “how to harvest and transform the gifts of nature for everyday needs such as tools, fire, shelter, food”—in a conscientious and sustainable manner, as the ancients did. A regular contributor to the American publication, Bulletin of Primitive Technology, her goal is to form a group prepared to live for a full year in the wild with only Stone Age technologies—no knives, Goretex, or other manufactured materials.

I first met Lynx at Saskatoon Circle Primitive Skills gathering a few years ago, where she offered workshops in felting simple garments from sheep’s wool and working with small draft horses using only a small piece of twine. Demonstrating, she turned to the palomino horse at her side, jumped upon its back, and cantered around our speechless group, grinning broadly.

For this interview, Lynx spoke with me on the grass outside her cabin at Living Wild. Stretched out in the sun, clad in belted deerskin pants, a T-shirt, and simple bone earrings, she wore no shoes, hat, sunglasses, or touch of make-up—at home in who she is, how she is.

— Leslee Goodman

Interview with Leslee Goodman of MOON Magazine

The MOON: Why is it important for people to learn to “live wild”?

Lynx: I don’t know; maybe it’s not important. We certainly can’t all live wild. There are too many of us. What is important is for us to have a connection to nature, and urban people are so tied into their TVs, computers, smart phones, and gadgets that they’ve essentially lost that connection.

The MOON: Yes, but most people who want to renew their connection to nature take a walk in the park, or go to the beach, or perhaps go backpacking for a week or so. You’ve taken your return to nature a lot farther than most people.

Lynx: There’s something that happens somewhere between the tenth and fourteenth day out in the wilderness. You finally let go of the life you left behind and drop into the rhythm of the natural world in the place you are now. You become present to the moment. In fact, you become one with it; you realize you belong to all of it. You literally feel your place in the universe—probably for the first time in your life. Once you’ve experienced that you want to keep experiencing it.

Then, about a week before you’re going to return to civilization, you start living in the future—anticipating your return. So, if for two weeks you’re living in the past and one week you’re living in the future, you pretty much need to be out in the wilderness for at least a month in order to have any time at all in the present!

The MOON: What compels you to come back to civilization at all?

Lynx: Blood ties, mostly. Hunger. Winter.

The MOON: Family I can understand, but I thought you taught people to forage and hunt for their own food, and to build shelter suitable for harsh winters.

Lynx: Yes, but we’re all beginners, really. It’s quite difficult to sustain oneself for months at a time as a hunter-gatherer. And surviving a harsh winter is very hard. I teach seven-day classes in the winter, and after seven days we’re all very happy to come home and get warm.

The MOON: What’s the longest you’ve ever stayed out?

Lynx: Forty consecutive days. Then I came back in for ten days, and went back out again for fourteen days. My Stone Age Project group typically goes out for thirty days.

The MOON: You have set a goal to take a group of people out to live in the wild with only Stone Age technology for a year. Do you think that’s possible?

Lynx: I think it’s possible, yes. It’s a matter of finding the right location—permission to use a big enough piece of private land. And then we’d have to figure out how to feed ourselves for an entire year. You can’t just shoot a deer every time you need one, you know. There are rules about that, just as there are rules that restrict what you can do on public land…which is why we’d have to be on private land.

I do have some leads to big ranches in Montana—10,000 acres—with buffalo herds living on them that we might be able to hunt for food. Lately I’ve been thinking that maybe we should spend six months in the fall and winter preparing enough dried meat to take into the wild with us and then spend six months living in the wild.

The MOON: Why is it so difficult for people now to sustain themselves by hunting and gathering now, when our ancestors did it for millennia?

Lynx: Well, there are fewer resources, and we’re less adept at the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Plus, we’re limited by public policies. I’m not even allowed to teach these skills on Forest Service land without a permit…and they’re not giving out permits.

The MOON: How did you get the name “Lynx”?

Lynx: My given name is Lisa, but I always had nicknames growing up. As a teenager I was a guitarist in a punk rock band called Luby Loo, after the British slang for toilet. I was called Lo Djur, which is Swedish for lynx… “lynx animal,” actually, and when I came to the U.S., it just evolved into Lynx.

The MOON: How did you fall into this “career path”? It seems almost ludicrous to call it a career—as if you have another life apart from it.

Lynx: [Laughs] I call it “my service.” I fell into this “line of service” after emerging from a sweat lodge ceremony in 1989, realizing I was being called back to the Earth. Of course, other experiences also prepared me for it. As I kid I was always interested in primitive technologies, like fire-making and wild edible plants. My parents were artists so there were always a lot of crafty things going on, which is probably how I started working with leather when I was a teenager.

I grew up mostly in London, England, but I spent summers picking berries and mushrooms with my grandparents in Sweden. Then, when I was sixteen, I moved to Amsterdam and spent three years “living wild” in a completely different way. One day on a visit to Sweden, I was in the forest again, on drugs, and two big trees told me that I didn’t need to do drugs anymore. I say that the forest saved my life.

I moved in with an aunt and uncle who lived at the edge of the forest and spent every day amongst the trees and animals. Then I lived with a Swedish couple for six years and helped them raise their kids. During that time I also traveled extensively. I went to Egypt, Israel, all over Europe, and to the United States, but my home base was this couple’s home near the forest in Sweden.

In my early twenties, I spent a summer with a boyfriend in north central Washington. My favorite place to hike into was Stehekin, at the headwaters of Lake Chelan and the foot of the North Cascades—a very remote and beautiful place. My big complaint with backpacking, though, was that you had to carry so much food. People in Sweden are much more attuned to finding edible plants, but I didn’t know the plants of this region. So instead of food, I’d carry plant books.

One day I came across Tom Brown’s Guide to Wild Edible and Medicinal Plants. This wasn’t simply a plant identification book, but more anecdotal. He described his relationship with the plants. That was intriguing. Then I read The Tracker, and three weeks later I was in his classroom at The Tracker School, in Pine Barrens, New Jersey. I took all eight of his classes in 1981 and lived in the Pine Barrens for about six months. I’d return periodically to take additional classes.

After that, I studied at Peter Bigfoot’s Reevis Mountain School of Self-Reliance, in the eastern Superstition Wilderness of Arizona. I lived there for nine months…until one day a man rode up on a wild mustang—a wild stallion actually—and lured me away. (Laughs) His name was “Ocean” and he became the father of my daughter. He took me to his school bus and horse trailer, and we drove north. We ran out of gas in Montana, near where Brooke Medicine Eagle lived. I’d met Brooke at the Tracker School, so we lived next door to her for five or six months. I was doing a lot of felting, practicing making fire by friction—I’d thrown away my matches, so if I was going to be warm, I needed to be proficient—and learning tanning, although I was not hunting a lot then.

The MOON: What are the skills you teach people for learning to live in the wild?

Lynx: The basic skills start with tool-making, so we go to the river and listen to the rocks. That’s my way of suggesting that they use all of their senses in selecting the stones they will use for various purposes. We’re so used to discounting the information we receive from the natural world that we don’t even take it in any more. If we don’t read it in a book, or see it on televisions, or hear it on the news, it’s not real, or credible, to us. Many of us don’t even rely on our senses for the weather!

So I suggest that students tap on the rocks and get a feel for their density, their hardness, their ability to strike a spark. I ask them to taste them, smell them—experience everything they can about them.

The MOON: Native Americans call the stones “grandfathers,” our oldest ancestors, and say that the rocks even speak to them.

Lynx: Yes, the stones will teach us. The plants, too, will teach us what we can eat, what we can use for tinder, or for cordage, or for making shelter, or fire, but we have to attune ourselves to them.

So, the students gather stones for various purposes—for cutting, abrading, hammering, making arrowheads, making sparks for fire, and so on. Then they spend some time shaping their stones into the tools they will need. They go into the woods to gather wood for a bow drill—hard wood for the bow, soft dead wood for the drill, and fine, dry tinder for kindling. They gather plant fibers for making cord. Once they’ve got these basic tools, they learn to make fire—which becomes a magnificent tool—but it takes some practice to become proficient at making it.

The MOON: How fast can you make a fire using friction?

Lynx: I don’t know. Thirty seconds?

The MOON: Wow. Really?

Lynx: [Laughs] Yes. When you practice you get good at it.

So, students spend the first three days acquiring those basic tools—stone tools, wood tools, and fire. Then we learn how to process deer legs into other tools— knives, awls, needles, chisels—and even instruments.

The MOON: Deer legs?

Lynx: Hunters save them for me. We learn how to skin them, hollow them out, and make implements out of them.

The MOON: You don’t kill your own deer?

Lynx: Sometimes we kill a wild animal. Usually, however, I teach people how to kill and process a domestic animal because that can be done at the school. People need to acquire skills before going out into the wild where their lives depend on them.

The MOON: What is that like—killing an animal?

Lynx: It’s life-changing. To hold a warm, living, breathing animal in your hands, to pull back its fur or feathers prior to slitting its throat… it’s very humbling. It really commands your attention, too—the realization that another being is going to give its life so that you can eat. When I know we’re going to do a kill, I can’t sleep the night before.

It’s very different killing a domesticated, versus a wild, animal. Domesticated animals are so docile; it’s almost as if they give themselves to you. I’d much rather shoot a deer that has spent its life running free than kill a domesticated animal.

We draw straws for the one who will actually make the kill. In the last class, it was a girl who was a vegetarian. She wanted to do it. She wanted to know what it was like to take full responsibility for her life—which includes the lives that are sacrificed on her behalf.

She did a good job. She brought all of herself to it—and we always do our kills with prayers and respect. I don’t know how it played out for her emotionally, but I know she ate of every part of that sheep.

That’s another thing that happens when you know that another animal gave its life for you: you don’t waste any of it. We ate all of the meat and the organs. We used the brains for tanning, the hooves and connective tissue for glue, and the bones for tools and jewelry and even musical instruments. Every part of the animal becomes precious.

When you live your life this way, everything in your life has a story to it. The story of the sheep you killed, and ate, and wear, and made tools from, is a much richer and more durable story than the story of the piece of meat wrapped in cellophane that you bought from the grocery store and knew nothing else about. When you know the story of your food, it connects you viscerally to the rest of life. And when you don’t know the story of your food, you’re disconnected.

The MOON: It also sounds as if being connected to the lives invested in our food would make us confront our own hunger a little more strenuously. Much of my own eating, for example, is out of boredom, or for entertainment. If I had to take a life for it, I think I’d wait until I was actually motivated by hunger.

Lynx: Well, you’d better not wait too long, or you won’t have enough energy to feed yourself. It’s really difficult to take one hundred percent responsibility for one’s food. It takes a lot of time. Most of the food I eat, I don’t kill.

Photo credit: Mingasson.

The MOON: Do you eat less meat because of your awareness of what’s involved in bringing meat to your table?

Lynx: No, I love to eat meat. I think the Paleolithic diet—mostly meat, nuts and seeds, fruits and vegetables, and very little grains or sugar—is very healthy. At least, it’s healthy for me.

The MOON: But you said that when you know you’ll have to do a kill you can’t sleep the night before…?

Lynx: [Smiles] I think men are supposed to do most of the killing. Women are supposed to be the ones who create and nurture life.

The MOON: How do you know—and teach—which plants are edible, or medicinal? Do you memorize types of plants, or do you attune yourselves to the plants to know what their purpose is, as Tom Brown recommends?

Lynx: I start with the ethics of harvesting, which involves sustainability and respect for the plant as a living being. Then it becomes about having a relationship with the plant, not just about, “This is a balsamroot and it has edible roots, seeds, and shoots.” I don’t really even care what the name is, although botanical names are often lovely. It’s about spending time with the plant as you dig its roots, or spend a few hours gathering, roasting, and grinding seeds, or finding the first tender shoots as the snow melts. Most people are not receptive enough—have not quieted their own minds enough—to be able to receive information from a plant. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m just saying that Tom Brown learned from Stalking Wolf, a man who had spent his entire lifetime in the wild listening to nature, and the rest of us haven’t had that experience.

The MOON: What is the biggest challenge most people face in learning to live wild?

Lynx: The mind. But then, the mind is the biggest challenge we face in learning anything.

The MOON: What do you mean?

Lynx: You’ve got a mind; you should know! Here’s an example of the type of problem the mind presents: You’re digging a hole with a stick, and your mind starts grumbling, “This would be much easier and faster with a shovel.” Or, you’re on your fourth day eating bitterroot, nettles, and dried buffalo meat, and your mind starts wishing, “If only I had a hamburger and cheesecake.”

But, as I said, after about ten days, your mind stops complaining and becomes present. And to be honest, I have never felt a greater sense of well-being than when I’m living wild. I don’t think about time. I don’t think about money. I don’t question whether I’m a good enough person. I’m simply alive, and it’s the most incredible thing.

The MOON: Have you ever been in a life-threatening situation where you thought, “If I ever get out of here, I’ll never do this again”?

Lynx: Never.

The MOON: Have you ever encountered predators?

Lynx: We see bears every year in the wild. Bears and humans are very similar. Anatomically, if you see a bear skinned, from the neck down it looks like a very strong child. We eat the same foods—fish and berries and honey. If we’re picking berries at a good berry patch, the bears have probably found it too. I don’t hunt bears; I respect bears. So we and the bears pretty much keep to our separate sides of the berry patch, and we’ve never had a problem.

I did dream one night about a rattlesnake biting someone I knew, and the next day we saw three rattlesnakes—including one that someone nearly stepped on. We stopped and explained our presence to the snakes—that we were just passing through and that we meant them no harm. And there was nothing more to it than that.

Probably the most dangerous experience I’ve had was being surprised by a snowstorm in the mountains in August. I woke up to find two inches of snow on the ground, and I was wearing only moccasins on my feet and was six or seven miles from base camp. When you’re in a life-threatening situation, however, you become fully present and aware and you act. When you’re living in the wild, you become sensitive to the changes in your environment. You feel whether you’re in a good place and, if you’re not, you move on. You learn to trust those inner promptings, whether you can analyze the reasons for them, or not.

The MOON: What do you do about ordinary things like Kleenex and toilet paper, moisture lotion and sunscreen?

Lynx: I haven’t used a tissue in years. Sunscreen is easy—you can use mud, or the white powder on the outer bark of an aspen tree, which makes an effective sunscreen. Or, you can wear long sleeves, or sit in the shade while the sun is high. It’s not like you have an appointment and have to get somewhere. That’s one of the things you realize when you’re in the wild. You lose your sense of time pressure. You don’t have to do anything. You might want to do something—make a fire before it gets cold; find food before you get too hungry—but you’re not on anyone else’s time schedule.

The MOON: What about toilet paper, and moisture lotion and lip balm, and toothbrushes, and even drinking water?

Lynx: We camp near springs for our drinking water. In these mountains, you can find a spring simply by traveling up any draw to its source. We use moss, or leaves, or even judiciously selected sticks or rocks, for toilet paper. For moisture lotion and lip balm, we make salves out of deer fat, or bear fat—which hunters give us—mixed with herbs and heated. For toothbrushes, we chew the ends of soft wood like aspen, or cottonwood, or willow, which frays them out so that you can use them to brush your teeth. But your teeth don’t get really gunky when you don’t eat sugar.

The MOON: I’ve noticed that your students tend to have really white teeth, and none of them are overweight.

Lynx: Yeah. Hunter-gatherers have their health risks, but obesity, heart disease, and diabetes aren’t among them.

The MOON: Living as closely as you do to nature, does it fill you with grief to see more and more wilderness destroyed, habitats lost, or animals threatened?

Lynx: I make it a practice to not dwell on the negative things that are happening. I know that it would take only two generations for people to bring human population back into balance with the Earth, and that would relieve a lot of the pressure on wildlife, habitat, and resources. Also, by demonstrating—and reminding people of—the joy of living far more simply, I am working to inspire more people to disconnect from a lifestyle that doesn’t satisfy and reconnect to one that does.

I also practice positive thought projection, and I have my students do it too. I imagine what it is I want to create and I speak it aloud as if it has already happened.

See that spotted horse over there? [Nods in the direction of a beautiful Appaloosa.] I brought her into my life. Several months ago I spoke aloud, “It’s November 2013 and I’m on my land. My spotted horse is breathing her warm breath on my check. The earth lodge is built, there’s snow on the ground…” I fully imagined the scene I wanted to create.

I look back over the last fourteen years of my life, since I started doing this practice in 1999, and here I am: I’ve dreamed it all into being. We all have this innate creative power.

The MOON: Do you dream and speak aloud on behalf of the planet, as well?

Lynx: Yes. My students and I speak aloud our vision for the earth, too. For example, “After all these years of turmoil, we’re finally all here together on this planet, working together, with no war, or famine, but with respect for all living things.” We create the vision in our minds and speak it aloud. People think that sounds magical, but we live in a magical universe. I mean, we’re on a ball that’s flying through space, and spinning. You can’t get much more magical than that.

The MOON: How long do you think you will continue to live in the wild? Do you intend to be an old wild woman?

Lynx: [Smiles] Yes. I will be an old wild woman—or a wild old woman! I’m finding that the body does need more attention as it gets older—I’m forty-seven—and I try to give it what it needs. I do eye exercises to maintain my vision, for example.

I do think I’m on the verge of a new phase of being—as if something is coalescing inside of me that I’m not fully able to articulate yet. It feels as if up until now I’ve focused on mastering the skills of physical living, and now I’m being drawn to something more spiritual. I still want to stay in my body, but I’ve always had a recognition of the necessity of marrying heaven and earth. So that’s what’s coming, I think. I’m about to switch my focus a bit more to heaven.

I spent part of the spring teaching in the Dordogne region of France, where I visited the Paleolithic cave paintings near Lascaux. Something happened as a result of being in that place and seeing that art. I began to feel as if time is not necessarily linear. We view it as linear, but the ancients did not. They sensed that time is simultaneous—and who is to say whether the dream time is any less “real” than our time awake? I think that my ideas of time and reality are about to be shattered and reconstructed. That’s where the call of the wild is taking me now.