Why ‘female Bear Grylls’, survivalist Miriam Lancewood, swapped city life for the New Zealand wilderness
- Lancewood has been living deep in the wilderness with her husband for most of the last decade, living and breathing the survivalist life, completely off grid
- She is the hunter, he is the cook, and they never stay in one place long enough to get bored
Miriam Lancewood has lived deep in the New Zealand wilderness with her husband Peter for most of the last decade, hunting wild animals, foraging for edible plants and living a nomadic lifestyle.
What started in 2010 as a year-long adventure to see if they could survive off the land soon turned into a new way of life – isolated, connected to nature and, most of all, invigorated.
Ditching technology – no mobile phones, GPS or email – and living out of a tent, they were able to find a true sense of freedom with their rucksacks, moving through the dense bush and rugged mountain ranges of the majestic southern region. But the “most amazing” part of their lifestyle, the 36-year-old says, is that the pair have the freedom to live “without time”.
“We don’t have a watch. We go to bed when it gets dark and eat when we are hungry. It is such a contrast to life in the city, which is all about time,” she says.
Lancewood, a former competitive pole-vaulter, teacher and author of Woman in the Wilderness, a memoir of the pair’s first six years spent in the wilds of New Zealand, was speaking during a recent trip to Hong Kong for the Hong Kong International Literary Festival.