Lynx Vilden

Founder and head instructor of the Living Wild School, Lynx Vilden has traveled, explored and researched the nature and traditional cultures of arctic, mountain and desert regions from Hudson Bay to the Red Sea. She emerged from her first sweat lodge ceremony in 1989 with the realization of the calling back to the Earth, learning, sharing and teaching the old ways. She has been practicing and teaching primitive living skills both in the U.S. and in Europe since 1991. As an instructor at Boulder Outdoor Survival School in Utah, she taught workshops at primitive skills gatherings, including Rabbitstick and Winter Count. She contributes regularly to the American publication Bulletin of Primitive Technology. Vilden has lived in a Sami village in Scandinavia and lived and studied in the desert Southwest of Arizona and New Mexico, the Rocky Mountains of Montana and the North Cascades of Washington. In 2001, she started the Four Seasons Prehistoric Projects program dedicated to sharing the ancient skills of primitive living. The 2012 film Living Wild, directed by Eric Valli (Caravan, Mountainfilm 2000; Honey Hunters of Nepal, 1991 and Chasseurs Des Tenebres, 1993) documents Vilden and a small group of apprentices living in a prehistoric manner for several months, preparation for her goal of forming a group prepared to live a Stone Age living experiment for a full year.