I can’t remember precisely when I began using the word “feral” as a compliment. I suspect it all started when I was in my late 20s, when I spent six months living in a campervan in New Zealand. I worked on vineyards in the morning, and wrote articles for international magazines like Glamour and Vogue in the afternoon. I’d type on my MacBook Air with muddy fingernails, Skyping fashion designers and actors while sitting on a bale of hay. “Thank goodness Vivienne Westwood can’t see how feral I look right now,” I said to my boyfriend... and I think I recall being proud of my muddy self, rather than revolted. In fact, being a morning farmer and afternoon writer suited me. I enjoyed my earthy mornings of physical exertion, nature and tangible productivity, and my abstract afternoons of introspection, indolence and ideas. Most of all, I loved that I had one foot in nature, and one foot in civilisation, and no farm or fashion magazine completely owned me.
This story is from the April 2023 edition of Gourmet Traveller.
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This story is from the April 2023 edition of Gourmet Traveller.
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