Miriam Lancewood - Woman in the Wilderness: A Story of Survival, Love and Self-Discovery in New Zealand

04/14/20 • 40 min

Miriam Lancewood was born in a loving home in a small village in the Netherlands in 1983. After completing her university degree, she worked for a year in Zimbabwe, and then traveled to India. And in India she met her now husband Peter Raine. 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 Himalayas, journeyed for years through South East Asia, including Papua New Guinea, and eventually they ended up in Peter’s home country: New Zealand. Miriam worked for a while as a teacher, then they decided to give up all their worldly belongings and move into the mountains with a tent and bow and arrow. They wanted to learn how to hunt and survive in the wilderness, and they wanted to find out what happens to the mind and body, when living in the beauty of the wildest nature on earth. Show notes - Growing up in Holland

Wanting to be a sports teacher
Heading off travelling at 21 years old
Meeting her husband Peter and travelling together
Climbing 8 mountain ranges in the Himalayas
Deciding to live in the wilderness
Making it to New Zealand and having to work as a teacher for a year
Tramping in the mountains
Deciding to spend a year in the mountains
How to afford to live
What it was like living in the wilderness
Learning how to hunt...
Deciding to catch possums
Not knowing what to do
Learning the art of doing nothing
Walking the Te Araroa Trail, 3,000km from the North to the South
Keeping clean and healthy
Dealing with periods
Keeping in contact with friends and family
Not taking anything for granted
Her relationship with Peter
Deciding to write a book about her life
Having to find a house
Stress and anxiety in the wilderness
Thinking short term to not get overwhelmed
Lessons learned from living in the wilderness
Walking the Lycian Way in Turkey
Second book on it’s way with plans to release it in October 2020
Plans for the future
Attending writers festivals around the world
Learning how to cook and skin the animals
The roles in the relationship
Why you should read the book and how it will inspire you
Not understanding social media
Final words of advice
The power of sleeping

Social Media Website - https://miriamlancewood.com

Wanting to be a sports teacher
Heading off travelling at 21 years old
Meeting her husband Peter and travelling together
Climbing 8 mountain ranges in the Himalayas
Deciding to live in the wilderness
Making it to New Zealand and having to work as a teacher for a year
Tramping in the mountains
Deciding to spend a year in the mountains
How to afford to live
What it was like living in the wilderness
Learning how to hunt...
Deciding to catch possums
Not knowing what to do
Learning the art of doing nothing
Walking the Te Araroa Trail, 3,000km from the North to the South
Keeping clean and healthy
Dealing with periods
Keeping in contact with friends and family
Not taking anything for granted
Her relationship with Peter
Deciding to write a book about her life
Having to find a house
Stress and anxiety in the wilderness
Thinking short term to not get overwhelmed
Lessons learned from living in the wilderness
Walking the Lycian Way in Turkey
Second book on it’s way with plans to release it in October 2020
Plans for the future
Attending writers festivals around the world
Learning how to cook and skin the animals
The roles in the relationship
Why you should read the book and how it will inspire you
Not understanding social media
Final words of advice
The power of sleeping

Social Media Website - https://miriamlancewood.com

Previous Episode

Mollie Hughes - 29, Youngest woman to ski from Hercules Inlet in Western Antarctica to the South Pole.

In 2019 Mollie set off on her most ambitious expedition to date, skiing solo from the coast of Antarctica to the Geographic South Pole. 29-year-old adventurer and motivational speaker, who was born in Devon and lives in Edinburgh, started her world record attempt at 1.40 pm (Chilean time / 4.40 pm UK time) on Wednesday 13 November. After 58.5 days and 650 hours of skiing alone in whiteouts, storm-force winds and temperatures hitting minus 45C, Mollie reached the Geographic South Pole on the 10th January 2020 at 8.50 am (Chilean time / 11.50 am UK time) – achieving her second world record by becoming the youngest woman in the world to ski solo from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole. Listen to Mollie as she shares more about her polar challenge, discussing sponsorship, learning how to ski, coping in a whiteout, and the power of positive affirmations. Show notes

What Mollie has done before
Her desire to go to Antarctica
The starting point with the plan
Figuring out the sponsorship
Creating a “war room” - in the living room
Being a visual learner
Being £15k short before the start of the trip
Getting the final sponsor on board
Learning how to cross country ski
Training in Norway
Learning how to cope being solo
Her fears and concerns before the trip
Feeling happy and excited
Having a degree in psychology
The importance of having a routine
Flying over to Chile
Taking advantage of the small weather window
The first couple of days on the ice
Entering an horrendous weather front for 2 weeks!
Letting her emotions out
What it’s like skiing in a whiteout
Getting into the rhythm of skiing big miles every day
Not being able to get the negative thoughts out of her head
The power of positive affirmations
Figuring out priorities and making better decisions
Supported or unsupported
Mini challenge for the tribe
Breaking the record
The lessons learned
Heading home and returning to normal
Quick Fire Questions
The power of getting started

Next Episode

Phoebe Smith - Extreme Sleeping Adventurer, Storyteller-in-Residence at Calm.com, & host of the Wander Woman Podcast.

Phoebe Smith is an adventurer, presenter, broadcaster, author, editor, photographer, speaker and filmmaker. By day she is award-winning travel writer, broadcaster and presenter, host of the Wander Woman Podcast, Sleep Storyteller-in-Residence at Calm.com and contributing editor for Wanderlust Travel Magazine. By night she’s an extreme sleeping outdoors adventurer who thrives on heading to the wildest locations she can find to sleep in the strangest places she can seek out. She was the first person to sleep at all the extreme points of mainland Britain – including the centremost point – which she did solo, on consecutive nights in 2014. In December 2017 she gave up her Christmas to complete the self-devised Sleep the Three Peaks challenge – in which she overnighted on the summits of the highest mountains in Wales, England and Scotland - successfully raising over £8,000 and awareness for Centrepoint (the young people's homeless charity) ending on Christmas morning on the summit of Ben Nevis. In 2018 she gave up Christmas again to walk the Hadrian Hundred for Homeless dressed as Wander Woman. In 2020 she will embark on a world first in Antarctica with her teammate Dwayne Fields, in a bid to raise awareness about climate change and how it effects the wildlife who call the place home, and as part of a bigger project to take a group of underprivileged young people to the White Continent in 2021 with her #WeTwo Foundation (LINK wetwoexpedition.com). She is the author of 10 books including the bestselling Extreme Sleeps: Adventures of a Wild Camper,Wilderness Weekends: Wild Adventures in Britain's Rugged Corners, The Wilderness Cookbook and the Travel Writer’s Field Guide. Show notes

Who is Phoebe
Extreme Sleeping
Getting more involved in charity work
Deciding to sleep the 3 peaks
What was involved and the challenges involved
Deciding to sleep off 10 UK Landmarks
Walking the width of Britain dressed as WanderWoman
The WE TWO Foundation
What it was like on Snowdonia in winter
Being in a cloud inversion
Dealing with gale force winds
Her motivations
Sleeping better outdoors
Sleep stories for an app called calm.com
The process behind sleep stories
Becoming a slow traveller
Portaledges...
Sleeping in a harness
How to poo and pee from the tent
Using a pee bowl...
The Night Vision Challenge in 2019
What Three Words
Not having any kayaking experience
We Two Foundation
The challenges of talking about gender and race with companies
Having to change the goal due to lack of funding
Doing the challenge in the UK - Seabirds to South
Planting seeds for the next generation
The challenges of the UK weather and dealing with the rain...
Human kindness seen on the trip
Maintaining moral during the tough times
The Wander Woman Podcast
Wanting to go to Easter Island in Chile
Katherine Routledge who helped us understand the origins of the Easter Island moai.
Getting mad and getting even by telling women’s stories
Final words of advice to motivate and inspire you