Living Wild for a While
Updated: Aug 17
An Opportunity
I’m about to embark on a short but intense earth living journey. Totally stoked and utterly intimidated, below are my reasons why.
It’s the 2 week Hunter Gatherer program with Boulder Outdoor Survival School. The first 4 days will be at base camp processing a large animal, and using as much of the animal as possible to craft for our needs. The following 10 days we will walk out on the land with whatever rations we have procured, hunting, trapping, and gathering the rest of the nourishment that we consume.
Ha! I have to remind myself why in the world I signed up for this!! I do have deeply meaningful reasons, AND it is easy to become stupefied with intimidation as the adventure approaches. In any case, aligning with my purposes and the intention of being fully present, open, and engaged with the journey — this feels empowering, grounding, and humble.
So, here are my reasons for going on a short stint of wild living:
1) To feel like a competent human.
I have always been drawn to the skills of living close to the Earth. I grew up camping, fishing, and sitting around fires. Being immersed in nature was my reality, and yet there was always a yearning to get closer to the wild. I didn't know what that even meant until my late teens when I read The Tracker by Tom Brown Jr. His way of conveying absolute freedom and bliss, amongst the raw challenge of living with the Earth catalyzed a knowing in my being, and inspired me to seek further.
Yet, when I completed the Standard Class at Tom Brown Jr.’s Tracker School in 2006, I felt utterly overwhelmed and incompetent.
How could I ever master all the skills necessary to live in harmony with the Earth?!
Was I strong enough and smart enough? Intuitive enough?
How could I find the time to practice?
It seemed far too easy to starve, freeze, dehydrate, overheat, or in any way simply wither and die. I can't say I feel much different 20 years later! I do have more earth living skills and experience, but I have not devoted my life to practicing primitive skills (other than Wildlife Tracking :), and am not a ‘hard-core' person.
While 2 weeks is such a short time, I hope to get a taste of success in living wild. A glimpse of what is needed, what it takes, and in that, deeper insight into the ways of the ancient ones and their communication with Mother Earth.
2) To take agency for my place in the cycle of life.
As a human consuming life for sustenance, I want to step closer to understanding the pattern of destruction and creation that drives nature.
I have always loved animals. As a teenager, I became a vegetarian because I didn't think I needed to eat meat, and why would I, if I didn't have to? I was vegetarian for 10 years and vegan for three of those years.
I was living at sea level that whole time, and though I did have some health issues come up, such as the onset of food allergies, it was not severe enough to convince me to eat meat. However, when I moved to New Mexico in my early 20’s, at 6500 feet above sea level, my body seemed to begin demanding it. I felt the physical need to eat meat, and actually stopped having my moon cycle for several months.
I was advised by a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine to eat red meat. So I did, and had my moon the very next day. Over the following weeks and months, I continued to feel like my gut was healing from the inside out. The digestive issues I had developed decreased dramatically, and it became very clear to me that my body needs meat.
And yet there's still this lingering irony of... Why?
Why is creation designed this way… why does life depend on death?
Throughout my life, I have had several very interesting communications around death and the predator prey cycle in the form of dreams, imagery, and signs in nature.
There lies something mysterious, deep, and seemingly just on the brink of human consciousness’s capacity to comprehend. I believe it needs to be lived in order to understand it, and must be understood more by the heart or spirit, than the mind.
Photo: Remains of a Striped Skunk left by an aerial predator, likely a Great Horned Owl; note the skull at top center (2026).
3) To get closer to the animals and find a deeper purpose with Wildlife Tracking.
I track because I want to connect with the wild animals and be an active part of this creation. Tracking has been a passion toward which I have been highly motivated for a long time, and it has indeed brought me into connection with the wild ones in a very satisfying way.
But, somewhere in the last couple of years, my relationship with wildlife tracking shifted. The energetic experience of my relationship to it had become very familiar, and now that is gone. It slipped quietly away, leaving me feeling disconcerted and curious. I have not lost interest, actually there is a strong call to something more.
So what takes me deeper?
What brings me even closer to the animals, and to living in active relationship with them?
I believe it must be in living as a ‘natural human’. Living outside of modern constructs, in flow with the cycles, and interacting with the elements, with shelter, and water, and fire, and food.
Becoming part of the landscape, the animals would understand me very differently, and I them.
4) To experience the reality that Mother Earth provides all that we need.
This is the biggest one for me — to have the lived experience that Mother Earth provides all that we need. Intellectually, I know this is true. Look around. Literally everything we see comes from the Earth, I suppose with a bit of star dust mixed in. But from the perspective of a natural human as described above, the meaning goes much deeper.
I long to feel the sense of ‘Mother’ from the Earth, knowing that she is listening, and that she's lovingly providing abundance to be received graciously by her children. Perhaps fantasy or anthropomorphic delusion, but I believe she is called ‘Mother’ for more than her capacity to produce physical forms.
The historical traumas of famine, drought, flooding, and other times the Earth did not or could not provide for our needs, maintain a grip on our collective consciousness. This goes beyond questioning individual competence and into trusting, letting go of fear, and leaning into something greater than ourselves.
Is it the fear of perishing that keeps us from the very connection that would allow us to thrive in the wild?
If I can let go of fear and listen deeply, can I learn to thrive living on the bare breast of the earth?
To my mind, this possibility holds the essence of freedom. This is the point that touched me so deeply so many years ago reading Tom Brown’s book. It sparked a flame that I am still gently breathing life into.
Send me good wishes!
I don't know that any of this is possible to experience in two weeks, and that's not necessarily a goal. I'm on a journey, as we all are, and this promises to be an engaging step on the way. I am stoked to be embarking on such an endeavor and grateful for those who support me to be there.
I'll be sharing some of my experience upon my return, so let me know if you have specific questions (email in footer) and I will do my best to respond ~ Sarah
