Jessica Carew Kraft had it all—a house in the Berkeley hills, a solid marriage, a well-paid job in the tech industry, and two school-age children—when she walked away to pursue a simpler, more nature-centered life in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Despite the trappings of success, Kraft had felt increasingly overwhelmed as she faced daily 90-minute commutes and tried to be a supermom to her two young daughters.
In Why We Need to Be Wild: One Woman’s Quest for Ancient Human Answers to 21st Century Problems, the author recounts her pursuit of a less-harried life. Kraft immersed herself in the “rewilding” world—an eccentric community of modern hunter-gatherers—to learn ancestral skills such as foraging, carving bones into tools, making clothing from buckskin, and scavenging what she calls “organic, local food.”
Layering reportage, personal experience, and academic studies (she has an MA in anthropology from Yale), Kraft offers a compelling and provocative narrative that strikes at the heart of what it means to be human. “A growing body of psychologists argue that everyone is suffering from the trauma of being separated from nature and our evolutionary lifestyle,” she writes. “I knew I was, to some degree.”
You left your marriage and the daily grind of motherhood. Can you talk about the factors that went into this and the fallout that occurred?
After I had learned a lot of ancestral skills and spent time with folks who live with very little comfort and convenience in their daily lives, I wanted to seek a wilder life. The grueling work routine that enabled me to afford a house, buy insurance, run around to activities, and buy stuff for my family just didn’t seem necessary anymore for a good life. In fact, that lifestyle seemed counter to every trend line of human physical and mental health throughout our 300,000-year history as Homo sapiens on this planet. I could be much happier with a simpler life where I could spend hours outside in nature every day, often collecting and processing wild food. I was lucky to find a property I could buy in the Sierra foothills that had what I needed—acres of woods, a creek, ample wildlife, and a supportive neighbor community—but it was a long drive from my children’s father.
So the fallout is that I spend hours driving between my home and his to be able to spend half the week with my kids (which is never enough). This highlights the fact that we are all caught in a destructive system, and we have to choose which parts we will participate in out of necessity and which we will willingly try to give up. I’ve chosen to prioritize wildness and family, and I hope that in future years, I will be able to lessen the negative ecological impact those choices create. But I don’t miss living in an urban area—now, when I return to the city, I’m more sensitive to the constant noise and busyness. Just hearing a leaf blower crank up drives me bonkers, because I’ve become accustomed to living with the peaceful sounds of nature.
In the broadest terms, what does being wild mean to you?
It means recognizing that we were born with the brains, bodies, DNA, and spirits of hunter-gatherers, and we are instead shockingly raised in the captivity of civilization. Being wild means reanimating our balanced connection with nature and with a reciprocal, supportive community. It has physical, mental, spiritual, and social elements. Going completely wild means gaining the skills to satisfy our needs only from the living environment around us. I aspire to keep increasing the wildness in my life and lessening my dependency on industrial systems and goods, but I’m not a purist about it, since I’m learning these skills so late in life.
Obviously, we can’t all quit our jobs and move to the wilderness. What do you advise folks who can’t completely unplug from modern society?
Many people think that rewilding requires a huge life shift, but it’s amazing how much more aspects of rewilding show up in contemporary society than one might think. Many people are already on the path, because it is about reconnecting to nature and doing everyday activities in ways our ancient human ancestors did. People are yearning for a closer relationship to the environment and want more control over the products and services they need for daily life, even as we simultaneously witness the rise of AI, automation, Amazon same-day delivery, and the dominance of social media. I think of rewilding as a balancing force, if not a backlash, to increasing technological influence in our lives. It’s very easy to move some of your indoor activities into the fresh air. Start eating one meal outside. Choose to work out or run in a park instead of going to the gym. You can take this to great lengths—I have a solar battery to power my internet router and use it away from my house. If my kids don’t feel like hiking, I tell them they can only access the internet if they go outside.
What do you say to people who accuse rewilders of cultural appropriation? Aren’t most middle-class and white?
If you go to an ancestral-skills gathering, you will see mostly white folks, and lots of the attendees appear to have middle-class lifestyles. But many instructors have deliberately chosen to live modestly, and rewilding is ultimately about living with much less material wealth. You become rich in relationships and resilience instead.
Cultural appropriation is a tricky issue, especially when the art, rituals, ceremonies, and other non-survival-based aspects of culture are adopted by people not from that culture. This can do a lot of damage. But there’s no problem in learning survival skills used by all our human ancestors, and no one group can lay claim to hunting, gathering, making fire, building shelters, sourcing clean water, or making essential items from natural materials. Many rewilders are also trying to revive family heritage traditions developed before agriculture and industrialization, whether those are Chinese, Celtic, Jewish, Norse, Yoruban, or Sami.
Plus, there are lots of folks working on bringing new groups, especially disadvantaged communities, into wild spaces to learn ancient human skills. It’s really painful when Native American people, for instance, are deprived of access to ancestral homelands, where they were accustomed to foraging and collecting materials, but now other groups are out there doing those activities.
Everyone deserves access to the wild.•
Sourcebooks WHY WE NEED TO BE WILD: ONE WOMAN'S QUEST FOR ANCIENT HUMAN ANSWERS TO 21st CENTURY PROBLEMS, BY JESSICA CAREW KRAFT
Julia Scheeres is the New York Times bestselling author of Jesus Land, a memoir; A Thousand Lives, a narrative history of the Jonestown tragedy; and Listen, World!, a biography of intrepid Hearst columnist Elsie Robinson.
