Julia Elliott - The Wilds

The guests descend from the stage with newfound confidence, as though Zugnord has galvanized them with his godlike breath. By the time my name — Ellen Wiggins — is called, I’m feverish with anticipation. I lope up to the platform, aware of the eyes on my dumpy body — stooped shoulders, curdy midsection, droopy bust and butt. I skulk across the stage, feeling larval and squishy from office work and domestic sloth.

Zugnord flashes a twinkling, carnivorous smile.

“Welcome,” he says, slipping me my cavewoman costume, packaged in plastic.

And then he hands me the sacred pomegranate, the forbidden fruit packed with evil seeds — seeds of blood, seeds of knowledge, seeds of deadly agriculture.

“You are no longer Ellen Wiggins,” Zugnord whispers, his ape breath hot in my ear. “You are Vogmar, daughter of the Blackboar Clan.”

Only half the people attending the Wild Foraging Workshop the next morning are wearing their cave costumes. I myself am wearing spandex fitness gear. Jeff, a chatty journalist from New York who sports his standard-issue loincloth with a Magma T-shirt, keeps assuring everybody that he’s not an exhibitionist.

“Yes, I look ridiculous,” he says, scratching the pale skin of his left thigh, which looks rash-prone, “but I feel obligated to indulge in the full Paleo experience.”

Chewing dandelion root and jonesing for coffee, we drift down a forest trail as Whezug, ex-botany professor and author of Forest Feast , lectures us on the evils of caffeinated stimulants. A scrawny sexagenarian with the mangy ponytail of a decrepit hesher, Whezug sports a leather loincloth that looks like something from a fetish shop. Although he’s not literally lashing us with a bullwhip, he might as well be. As we stumble through the forest with empty stomachs, our brains mutinying from caffeine withdrawal, Whezug drones on about nuts, herbs, roots, and berries, forcing us to scramble up embankments, climb trees, crouch and dig with our bare hands to wrest a few bitter morsels from Mother Earth.

Whezug pauses beside a sunbaked boulder and draws our attention to a withered newt, which he peels from the rock surface and eats, tearing strands of jerked reptile with his teeth.

A woman shrieks. Jeff chuckles and jots a note on his iPhone.

“Paleolithic humans took advantage of whatever protein they could get.” Whezug smirks.

To further illustrate this concept he squats, overturns a rock, scoops up a handful of termites, and pops them into his mouth. And so begins his lecture on wild protein. Whezug teaches us how to locate and catch grasshoppers. He distinguishes between edible and nonedible slugs. We watch the old man shimmy up a tree to raid a woodlark nest. Watch him pick maggots from the carcass of a lynx. Watch him grab a baby squirrel that has fallen from its nest, sniff the dead animal, and pronounce it “fresh.” I turn away, fighting back a retch as Whezug gnaws off the head, recalling that urban legend about Ozzy Osborne biting off a bat’s head midconcert.

“Oh my God,” says a guy in garish cycling apparel.

“Paleolithic man ate plenty of carrion,” says Whezug. “Which enhanced his intestinal flora and quickened his metabolism into a state-of-the-art fat burner. Would anybody like a bite?”

Silence. Most of us study our feet.

“All right,” Whezug sniggers. “I was going to talk about edible scat next, but we’ll save that for another day. How about some fungi fun?”

As Whezug enters deeper forest in quest of mushrooms, I lag behind with Jeff the journalist and a tax attorney from Atlanta.

“Mental illness, anyone?” Jeff’s smile is squirrel-like but cute: a parting of beard, a revelation of yellow front teeth.

“This is not exactly what I signed up for,” says the tax attorney, a tall lean woman in yoga garb.

“I’m still feeling queasy from that Ozzy stunt,” I say.

“Exactly!” says Jeff. “I thought of Ozzy too. Bet you Whezug’s into weed and metal. Bet you he still tokes up. Bet you he listens to Metallica, if the loincloth is any indication.”

“Or worse, Cinderella.”

“I was going to say Poison, but it doesn’t get worse than Cinderella.” Jeff flashes his squirrel smile — conspiratorial, contagious. I feel like we could stand there all morning, chatting about hair-metal bands, but Whezug summons us into the forest.

At the mixed-grill meet and greet, Zugnord struts around with two cave babes — a brunette, a blond — both wearing fur bikinis. He shakes our hands, offers us words of encouragement, and then retreats to his ceremonial throne, an egg-chair of burnished stone, where he sulks like a sultan as his women feed him protein-rich hors d’oeuvres. A djembe troupe starts pounding skins. Spitted meats roast, sending fragrant smoke tendrils into the air.

I spot Jeff, hunched over an appetizer tray, wolfing down trout-and-beet crudités. He waves his wineskin at me.

Tonight Jeff’s sporting his loincloth with flip-flops and a Rock in Opposition tee. I try not to look at his man-parts, neatly packaged in their deerskin pouch. I’m wearing my fur cavewoman top with a sarong and sandals, a necklace of faux tiger teeth. I glance down at my belly and adjust my sarong.

“How are you feeling?” asks Jeff.

“Better.”

“I can’t believe you ate that mushroom.”

“It was just a bolete. Besides, Whezug must know what he’s doing. They wouldn’t risk the lawsuits.”

“Don’t count on it,” says Jeff.

According to Jeff, Pleisto-Scene Island has been sued for intestinal sepsis, E. coli infection, hypertensive heart disease, and a slew of personal injuries, including club-fight-induced memory loss, Jacuzzi overstimulation, and broken bones acquired during the recently discontinued saber-toothed-tiger hunt.

“And Zugnord has settled countless sexual misconduct suits. Seems he has a penchant for pagan sex rites.”

“Are you serious?”

The swell of drums drowns our conversation. When the racket ceases, Zugnord stands, raises his wineskin, and blesses the fruits of the hunt .

Jeff and I refill our own wineskins. As the orientation video explained, Pleisto-Scene Island serves only Stone Age vin de primeur , the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes. I take a grateful tug, pleased to taste some bite in the booze.

We sit down at one of the stone picnic tables and dig into our arugula and berries. Our tablemates include the tax attorney we met earlier, a periodontist, and a belly dancer. Laughing, we take mock-fierce tugs from our wineskins. By the time we finish our salads, we’re all using our cave names, sprinkling our conversation with sarcastic primal grunts.

A waitress in a fur bikini appears, lugging a grilled suckling pig on a wooden trencher. The pig, garnished with charred carrots and turnips, glistens in the torchlight. When my tablemates lift their phones to snap pics, I remember how Tim, my fiancé, swore he’d obsessively check Flickr for glimpses of my transformation. But I won’t post a single thing. He’ll peer into cyberspace and find a black void.

“The pig has been stuffed with its own minced vital organs, a caveman power food,” says our waitress.

“Uh, plates?” says Jeff.

“Try to enjoy the carnal experience of communal eating.” The waitress, a college girl who channels Raquel Welch from One Million Years B.C ., winks. “Of tearing off hunks of flesh with your bare hands.” The waitress licks her lips and leaves us alone with our dead piglet.

“Well, this is awkward,” says the periodontist. “How do we begin?”