My project Living Wild documents a group of twenty-first century hunter-gatherers who are rediscovering the traditional living skills of the Paleolithic Period. I spent ten years involved with this movement, spearheaded by a woman named Lynx Vilden, who runs the Stone Age Living Project, composed of individuals unified by a single ambition—to leave the modern age and return to primitive living.
Every summer for the last fifteen years, Vilden has led a small clan of people into the wilderness to see how long they can survive with only primitive technologies. To prepare, the group spends a year tanning hides, drying foodstuffs, and learning other skills (archery, friction fire) that will carry them safely through the project.
Vilden and the other primitivists say they are trying to recover an ancient life-way that can resolve the tensions between human technology and wild nature. They’re hoping to return to the Pleistocene from the postmodern present. “After four months preparing,” says Vilden, “we go time-traveling.”
Nothing prepared the group for the actual trials of living wild. The
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