It doesn’t even sound like they tried to be prepared. “I’m going to live off the land,” she replied, and then they’re burning sticks inside a tent stocked with canned goods and ramen?

Fuck’s sake. Not that I’m trying to speak ill. They must have known they fucked up in a way that was final this time and beyond help and if so, it would have been a kind of deep, visceral horror few people get to experience these days.

But she genuinely believed she was going to move out there, grow whatever, and forage, and just be fine, and she apparently did not find out whether or even how she could do that. Idealistic doesn’t have to mean blind.

Take this from personal experience. Living in a frigid, leaky tent full of weenie cans is not living off the land, it is being homeless.