Roasted over a fire, Grasshoppers taste great

Kiliii Yueyan is a scion of two worlds. As a child of Russian immigrants, the photographer grew up in the United States. His ancestors belong to the Nanai, a popular Siberian primordial inhabitants. Today Yueyan is part of the “Stone Age Living Project”, a group that brings them back to the woods to live for a few weeks as the people of the Stone Age hunter-gatherers. On the project’s website states: “We do not want the wilderness about life to get back to civilization we want. Inliving the wild.”

Yueyan is already for more than 15 years of the group. In one of the last expeditions, the photographer took his camera. The photo series “Living Wild” are crisp glimpses of a life without the comforts of civilization.

And, yes, they look in their stone-dresses as the wildlings in “Game of Thrones”, Kiliii Yueyan has heard this before.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Once a year, unplug and your colleagues to Stone Age clothes, go into the wilderness and live a few weeks as hunter-gatherers. Why?

Yueyan: When I started 17 years ago, I was looking for my roots. My ancestors are Siberian natives who still live very secluded and in harmony with nature.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How have you been?

Yueyan: What I have learned over the years is, above all, how many things we have forgotten about living together with nature. What is good for you, what is bad? How do you do a piece of forest floor to your sleeping place? I am a long time part of the project and now a pretty good hunter. But compared to someone who would be really grown up in a wild culture, I am perhaps at the level of a ten- or twelve-year-olds.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do you still always driven in the woods?

Yueyan: If I go out and try to live by nature, I’m just learning to appreciate how easy things are today; about as simple comforts of water coming from the tap. In the wild, there are things that are hard to get in our world: For example, clean water that had not been clarified previously. Or a fresh salmon. So a salmon, which is fresh, because you caught him up in the river and has prepared a few minutes later on the fire.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: It sounds nice. But judging from the brochure of self-discovery trips for stressed top manager.

Yueyan: If you start with the preparations, there are already some who expect it is a survival adventure, a battle with nature. But it is the opposite. The idea is to find ways to live together with nature and of nature. Who just looking for a great outdoor adventure, leaving the camp after one, at least two weeks. There is just too hard.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is so hard?

Yueyan: The challenge to survive as hunter-gatherers. Cold, wet, injury, the long distances that one person makes each day – that alone brings a gentle to the absolute limit. But to do the little food that is what makes you ready out there.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What are the meals like?

Yueyan: Mainly there are berries or salads from the herbs that we find. In addition, fish and grilled grasshoppers. Roh is the way disgusting. But roasted over the fire, grasshoppers taste great. But it’s hard to be away sick. After about ten days you can feel the consequences: One can not think as good, one is fast dizzy. It is generally more difficult to understand what is happening around you.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: hunger to know many homeless people who involuntarily outdoor life.

Yueyan: This is an aspect which we are aware. In the beginning when we planned the trip, I offered the story of the “National Geographic”. But one of the editors said, “What I take: There’s this bunch of people who live in the forest, because they have the privilege to which you simply do not see the poor people who live on the road and pull into the forest.. ” Therefore, they have rejected the story. They wanted to kindle no controversy.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And what do you think?

Yueyan: To say we live outside like poor people there, not true. In fact, this life is very rich. Rich in time, full of impressions and experiences.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How did an excursion begins so? Agreed to in a parking lot and then go easily together in the forest?

Yueyan: No, as a beginner it takes months of preparation. You have to establish yourself and the food that you want to take to prepare, your entire clothes. Because with pre-dried food is your life there a lot easier – at least initially.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So you go in advance to the store and stock up with Stone Age food like dried meat and dried fruit?

Yueyan: No, everything has to be collected and dried himself.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: That is checked?

Yueyan: There are very strict rules, which mitdarf and what is not. Basically, you have to restore it from nature, with Stone Age tools and Stone Age techniques.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But have you doing a first aid kit and a cell phone for emergencies.

Yueyan: That’s all not allowed. Part of the idea is to learn to solve problems without the help of modern technology. The last time we had, for example, forest fires on three sides of our warehouse. Therefore, an emergency plan was very important.So we marched twice daily at a nearby mountain and looked to see if the fire had come closer.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And your plan for the real thing?

Yueyan: There was a lake nearby. To which we would have run if the fires had trapped us.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: And then?

Yueyan: If we had been waiting in the lake, while the fire everything would have devastated around us.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What are you talking on this trip, anyway? Only about Stone Age theme?

Yueyan: Not quite. In the beginning you have to speak a lot about practical things.Where do we go? Where to find water? Where food? Where is it safe? How do we find traces of animals that we can chase? Another dominant theme are sensory perceptions. It really speaks a lot about the smell of things or how they feel. Also because we run all the time barefoot. That’s as much information that we usually no longer perceive. About the smell of cold water.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Sounds pretty romantic and intense. But you have laughed at the question. Why?

Yueyan: Because you pretty much about excrement speaks: “Have you relieved there Ah, because I really wanted to sleep?” And: Hardly anything makes the other angrier than having done his business too close to the camp.