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Woman in the Wilderness: My Story of Love, Survival and Self-Discovery

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Somehow I had forgotten what I looked like, because Peter’s face had become more familiar to me than my own. In a way, rivers are kinds of beings too,’ he said. ‘Lakes and pools are calm, the river is busy, the ocean endless, yet they are all of the same essence. Water is a symbol of the eternal.’ 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. Peter’s theory is, “Modern civilisation, the suburban life just doesn’t suit men’s nature. 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 20s, then along comes 30 and they succumb to the pressure. You think: ‘Why did you do nothing else with your life?’”

Just watching it calmed my mind. It had taught me its main principles: it always needs space and air. And, once a fire is burning well, it detests being disturbed in its heart. Fire and human beings have a lot in common that way. I think it’ll be a bit of an adjustment in the beginning, don’t you?’ I sounded far more coherent than I felt. Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.When they do bump into another person in the wild it’s usually a hunter, and always a man. She thinks that 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 shit outside,’ ‘I can’t have my period in the bush.’” She thinks it’s a shame women are missing out. Don’t write that down.’ He (Peter) laughed. ‘See it for yourself. Words are meaningless compared to direct experience.’ Then the woman fled into the wilderness where she had a place prepared by God, so that there she would be nourished for 1,260 days.

I had the impression that she was studying our sounds, habits and patterns, as if she was some kind of weka anthropologist studying human-ape behaviour

Customer reviews

My sister Jammy: Why do you feel the need to fetishise a conventionally attractive white woman who’s chosen to adopt this lifestyle as though it’s radical, when thousands of indigenous people globally have already been doing this since for ever? Except they don’t feel the need to make a big song and dance about it, and actually colonial white supremacist governments continue to socially marginalise and oppress them simply for the act of living this way? Shouldn’t you be paying attention to them instead? Did she always think she’d survive the crossing? She shakes her head. Before the trip she was warned that if she was approached by bull camels she must shoot first and think later. “All they want is a female camel and they will do anything to get it, including killing you.” One day three bulls approached. “I shot two dead and only wounded the third, who ran off and would have had a very slow and miserable death.” How did you feel that night? “Pretty bloody awful but you just do what you have to do.” Gah. Still recovering from this book which is very incoherently written and left me very irritated at the woman in wilderness. I'm not sure if I'm skeptical or envious or busy rolling my eyes or getting cringey or fangirling or...

It's oddly liberating to consider how we could call the whole world (or at lest a chunk of an island) a home. Soothing and agoraphobic. Wouldn't it be strange to be at home wherever you go? OK. That makes twelve a day, a hundred and twenty for ten days, two hundred and forty for twenty days . . . So that’s about three hundred and sixty a month, or a thousand and eighty for three months.’ (c) Oh, yes, a major adjustment.’ Peter nodded. ‘The mind needs to calm down. It could take days to ease into the rhythm of this place. Maybe weeks.’ It’s a kind of permanent yearning, but it also gives me the energy to keep aiming for an ever-moving goalpost.’ I told her about the day I had seen the chamois and realised that real beauty lies in being not becoming. It had made perfect sense in the wilderness, but I now saw that in civilisation everything was about comparison. Peter is supportive of Miriam, comforting and attentive. Yet he makes it clear more than once that he sees her as a free agent - free to end their intimate relationship at and time and take off on her own. This is the stuff of randomness – no anchor to hold you down, free-floating.Op den duur wordt het verhaal wel wat langdradig en gaat het in de herhaling. Meer spirituele ervaringen op meer prachtige plekken in Nieuw Zeeland. Bovendien is het ook niet bijzonder goed geschreven. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days.

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