30 years in the woods, the extraordinary life of Simona Kossak

The scene is set in Poland, in a room that could be a living room or a dining room. There is a chandelier, clocks scattered on the walls, and a flowery oil lamp. A woman sits behind a large solid wood table. And in front of her, on the other side of the table, its two front legs neatly placed on the table – a wild boar. A sow, to be precise, named Zabka. This woman is Simona Kossak. A biologist, zoologist. Born in 1943 into a large family of artists in Krakow, she died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 64. And between these two dates, a life that resembles very few others. Because Simona Kossak lived for more than thirty years in an abandoned cabin, without running water, without electricity, in the heart of the primeval forest of Białowieża on the border between Poland and Belarus. She thought she would stay there for a few years. She never left. It was in February 1971 that she arrived in this abandoned house in the Białowieża forest where an improbable Noah’s Ark would be created: Zabka the sow, who shared her life for fifteen years; a crow playing with Simona’s braids; a female lynx named with whom she took naps at the foot of trees; a donkey, two elk named Pepsi and Cola, orphaned deer fed with a bottle, a black stork, owls, buzzards, foxes, martens, and mice. In this isolated place from the world, Simona conducted her research on animal psychology for the Institute of Forestry Research. But she also fought against traps set under the pretext of counting, against slaughter plans that threaten one of the last primeval forests on the continent. This woman, this extraordinary life, is the subject of a book. And it is her story that we are going to tell you.

Simonetta Greggio, The Breath of the Forest, on the trail of Simona Kossak, Arthaud Editions