I would love to live like Miriam Lancewood and her husband Peter Raine ("Living in the wild", Magazine). I long to be closer to nature and have forayed into this type of life for short periods and found it invigorating and profound. One loses all sense of one's own importance. If you embrace nature, you just become part of it, no more important than the leaves on the trees or wind in the grass. I think it's called something that politicians don't like us discussing: freedom.
It's very easy to rubbish the life they lead, the old guy with the young Amazon, the Nordic jumpers etc. Nevertheless, they are living an extraordinary life. They're not pretending this is the Stone Age; they're no more romantic about things than anyone who aspires to a new three-piece suite, but they are a damn sight more dynamic.
I would be surprised if they would be bothered about finishing their days in security. I have kids and I have no regrets about having them, in fact, they saved me. No less invigorating and memorable are the times I've spent in wild places, alone or in company. Other than that, everything else mostly pales.
The bow illustrated on the cover of the Magazine is totally unsuitable for hunting or much else. It is a cheap target bow straight from the shop.
The arm location and gentle recurve would suggest a draw weight of about 35lb. The arrow shown is new and unused; it is too long and is shown on the wrong side of the bow for a right hander – totally wrong for hunting; for that, you need either bird arrows or broadheads or both. There is no sign of a tab, a bracer, rest, sights or any bow furniture whatsoever. Any archer will tell you that an arrow must never be nocked – fitted to the bowstring – until you intend to shoot. Frankly, my dear, I don't believe a word of it!
The couple in your article had much sourness about parenthood, child-rearing and us oldie stay at homes alongside their triumphalist lifestyle of yomping through the margins of civilisation without a care in the world.
With both knees gone weak at my 72 years (no replacements because I sideswiped a mate on a motorbike aged 17), I'm happy to view my relative immobility as a badge of honour. Not for my teenage foolishness, but because I helped wear them out in one of the finest environments known to humans – the teaching profession, among teens and growing adults.
So, much the better that it took 20 years to wear them out as a geography teacher-driver, equipped with Ford Transit 15-seater minibuses (speed-governed, of course ), which I jumped in and out of countless times, carrying ranging poles and the other paraphernalia of physical geography measurement, looking for trig points, scree slopes, beach gradients, etc (on concrete, asphalt, limestone, slate, granite and, occasionally, sand).