Well, that’s it. The men folk have f**ked it. Apparently, AI is going to kill us all within 10 years. Who could possibly have predicted that ram-raiding our artistic and cultural heritage and lobbing it into a virtual combine harvester that consumes more water than a biblical flood, to produce crappy internet memes would be a bad idea? Surely, someone should have seen this coming?
I don’t know if we really are in danger here, or if such claims are a sneaky marketing ploy (I suspect the latter), but either way it might be time for the women to finally implement our collective “plan B” – namely, to run away, form a woodland commune and raise goats.
The livestock may vary, but this is the ultimate fantasy of every, single woman I know. Forget a man made of wicker or Christian Grey’s red room, this is the one that truly makes us weak at the knees. I don’t know what men are fantasising about, but for women, it’s churning our own butter in a sun-drenched alpine meadow, singing to a chicken called Gloria. No men. No children – just us, at one with nature, growing our own food and weaving clothes out of hemp.
Perhaps this isn’t the fantasy of young women who still dream about a high-flying career and a family, but as soon as you hit 35, Bam! This is where your mind starts to wander. “I am not in an office cubicle. I am washing my hair in a stream that runs alongside my rustic watermill. There are no emails here. Is that a llama?”
I indulge a truly embarrassing amount of time to my own take on this fantasy. In this world, I live deep in the forest, in a cottage where I grow exactly the right number of vegetables to feed myself and the animals I am keeping but will never eat. I bake sourdough bread and the local children are frightened of me and stay away in case “the mad cat lady” gets them. I have friends over for homemade wine and we plot to overthrow the patriarchy, by a roaring fire as it snows outside. I’m sure all of this would have been enough to have seen me executed as a witch a few hundred years ago, but today, this feels like bliss.
So, what is driving this powerful fantasy? In an increasingly scary and fast-moving, modern world, a simpler life where you don’t have to worry about Teams meetings or TikTok trends becomes a safe mental space to escape to. We know that women still undertake the bulk of domestic and emotional labour of family life, which makes the idea of a silent woodland all the more appealing.
Sometimes I worry that this makes me a bad feminist. Is this really what I want? Underneath all the bravado, do I secretly crave a life of domestic contentment? I watch the tradwives online, baking bread and promoting a similarly rustic aesthetic and worry that I am being seduced by their yeasty ways, but then I remember in my fantasy there are no children dangling from my apron strings and certainly no man that requires feeding. It’s just me, the animals, and the scent of pine.
All of my friends have their own take on this daydream. The Germans actually have a word for it (of course they do): “Fernweh”. “Fern” means distance and “weh” means an ache or a sickness, so a rough translation of fernweh is “far sickness.”
It is the opposite of homesickness and means the intense longing to be somewhere else, usually outside and far away. Reddit is full of women absolutely riddled with fernweh. “My ideal living situation would be to live in a cabin in the woods by a river and to live off the land. All I would want is to spend my days writing and tending to my vegetable garden/chickens, etc,” says one. “Not exactly in the ‘cabin in the woods’ sense, but more like a secluded farm where I’d raise goats, sheep and hell if anyone disturbs my little piece of Eden,” says another. I hear you, my fellow hermits.
Perhaps what is also behind this is an increasing desire from women to live apart from men and the chaos they seem to be creating on the world stage. But this urge to segregate is also happening on the microlevel as more and more women start to decentre men and make it on their own. Women are forming women-only communes at this very moment to live out the dream, and good luck to them.
We’ve also seen a demand for women-only gyms, taxis, and nightclubs, because that’s where women feel safer, and not without cause. A few years ago, women were asked if they would prefer to be in the woods with a man or a bear, but is choosing neither an option? Can we just have the woods?
Of course, the reality of this daydream would be very different. I know that. I imagine the appeal would wear off after the first week of 4am starts, terrible Wi-Fi, and ultimately starving to death because I have no idea how to grow vegetables or bake bread. I’ve seen enough of Clarkson’s Farm to know its not all gingham dresses and Victoria sponge. I know it’s a very tough life and I’d likely die of dysentery within a week.
But since when does a fantasy have to be accurate? That’s surely all part of the appeal. It’s a little mental enclave for you to escape the real world and enjoy a brief respite before the crushing responsibilities call you back.
Maybe one day I’ll have the money to fulfil my fantasy, but for now I will compromise. I’ll buy houseplants that I will doubtlessly fail to water and try to do something wholesome with a potato. But even if I never actually make this dream a reality, there is a still a huge amount of comfort in indulging it and believing that – in theory, at least, it could happen.
And if the world is ending in 10 years, that at least gives me a time frame to work with.
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