Miriam Lancewood

Miriam Lancewood was born in a Dutch village in 1983. After completing her university degree, she worked and traveled in Africa and later India, where she met her now husband Peter.

Peter had resigned from his job as university lecturer in New Zealand and had moved to India to live like a ‘modern nomad’. He had lived five years in India when they met.
Together they hiked over eight mountains ranges in the Himalaya, journeyed for years through South East Asia, including Papua New Guinea. Eventually they ended up in Peter’s home country: New Zealand.

Miriam worked for a year as a PE teacher, then they decided to live in the wilderness.

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In 2010 they gave up all their worldly belongings and moved into the wild.
They wanted to learn how to survive in the high forested mountains, and find out what happens to body and mind when living in the beauty of the wildest nature on earth. Like our ancestors, they moved around like nomads,cooked on fires, slept in a tent, gathered edible plants and Miriam learned to hunt with bow and arrow. Initially they planned one year, but it ended up being seven years.

Miriam’s memoir “Woman in the Wilderness” became an international bestseller. In 2017, the couple travelled to Europe and walked the E4 long-distance trail from west to east. Along the way, they hiked through Bulgaria, where they discovered a charming little cottage—and decided to make it their own.

In her 2nd book “Wild at Heart”, you can read how Peter fell critically ill with kidney failure in the Australian desert, and how Miriam and her friend embarked on an epic women’s expedition, surviving nearly three months in the highest mountains of New Zealand. They took no supplies and survived by hunting and gathering alone.

In 2021, after 18 years of nomadic life, Peter and Miriam returned to their off-grid cottage in Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains. For the first time in nearly two decades, they chose to settle in one place – tending their vegetable garden and sharing their days with their dog and cat.

Miriam now sets off on solo adventures, documenting her expeditions on her YouTube channel, (miriamlancewoodinthewild). In her latest book ‘Alone in the World’, she reflects on this transition and shares the skills, resilience, and mindset required to survive (alone) in the wilderness.

For more information about her published books, click on “BOOKS” in the menu above.