Together they travelled for a few years before moving to Peter’s homeland, New Zealand. Most men my age are fat and can’t walk for long. The seed of their idea was planted in India where they met 12 years ago Peter, then 52, was a former sheep farmer, arborist and university lecturer, and Miriam, then 22, wanted to see the world. What do the women who write to her tell her the book inspired them to do? “One woman said: ‘You inspired me to get a divorce.’ If you want to be more content, sometimes you have to change your life completely.” Younger women still have the big decisions – and regrets – ahead of them. Interestingly, the women at her readings in Holland are usually aged between 40 and 50 maybe they are drawn to Miriam’s story because they see hers as the alternative life they could have led if only they’d been bolder and conformed less. She says women worry about being eaten by wild animals or being murdered by a mentally unstable predator, like they’ve seen in Nordic noir. “They’re amazed that it’s possible to live this primitive life but they’re afraid: ‘What’s out there?’” “Women write to me and say, ‘You inspired me,’” she tells me. Her book is coming out in Britain this month but is already published in Holland, where it’s become a small sensation. It seems Miriam is not the only woman to think that women are missing out. 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. She thinks that perhaps women have lost their connection with nature, “even more than men. When they do bump into another person in the wild it’s usually a hunter, and always a man. The hunt is on: Miriam, striding through the backwoods, wondering what’s for dinner. And depressed about thinking I’m going to do this forever and ever.” She’s learned so much since she’s been out here but one question remains unanswered: “Where are all the women?” Those were grim days: “I was always stressed.
It’s a stark contrast to when Miriam was still working as a special needs teacher in New Zealand. Half of any given day is spent collecting firewood. Waiting for you.” In the first few months of their primitive life, Miriam thought she’d go mad with boredom but she soon fell in sync with nature.
What have they been doing all day? “Nothing much.
It’s an exciting occasion for them: they haven’t seen another human being for 11 days. There are foraged wrinkly plums to start. I’ve been invited for dinner and Peter is standing over a cast iron pot containing a bubbling bean stew. So here we are in Bulgaria – three hours west of Sofia, upstream from a river where the couple can bathe, sitting around a campfire in a wood (the photographer met up with them earlier in their journey, in Bavaria). The couple have since relocated to Europe, where they’re spending the year walking to Turkey part two of their life’s dream of never returning to “civilisation”. They have less of a need to prove themselves.” I sat in the sun for a horrible, stinky half-hour toįive years into their nomadic life in New Zealand, Miriam decided to write a book about her experiences. Her husband, Peter, proudly tells me she could beat most men in a fight: “Miriam is the hunter and I’m the cook. A Dutch Sarah Connor – she was born in Holland. She is powerfully built almost the double of Sarah Connor from The Terminator. I’d expected Miriam to look bedraggled, maybe with a couple of teeth missing, but she’s immaculate and smiling broadly, her teeth shiny white (she usually cleans them with ash) no dandruff, legs shaven, she smells of campfire.
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