My Year Without Matches

In the tradition of Wild and Tracks, one woman’s story of how she left the city and found her soul.



Disillusioned and burnt out by her job, Claire Dunn quits a comfortable life to spend a year off the grid in a wilderness survival program. Her new forest home swings between ally and enemy as reality – and the rain – sets in.



Claire’s adventure unfolds over four seasons and in the essential order of survival: shelter, water, fire and food. She arrives in summer, buoyant with idealism, and is initially confronted with physical challenges: building a shelter, escaping the vicious insects and making fire without matches. By winter, however, her emotional landscape has become the toughest terrain of all. Can she connect with her inner spirit to guide her journey onwards?



Brimming with earthy charm and hard-won wisdom, My Year Without Matches is one woman’s quest for belonging, to the land and to herself. When Claire finally cracks life in the bush wide open, she discovers a wild heart to warm the coldest night.



“A brave and adventurous book … Claire’s writing is full of life and profound surprises.” – Anne Deveson



Claire Dunn worked for many years as a campaigner for The Wilderness Society and is now a freelance journalist, writing for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, while studying postgraduate psychology. Claire is a passionate advocate for “rewilding” our inner and outer landscapes, and she facilitates nature-based reconnection retreats and contemporary wilderness rites of passage. She currently lives in Newcastle.