Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes: A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness

Solitude Seeking Wisdom in Extremes A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness by Robert Kull (based on 6 customer reviews)

(Hardcover)
Author: Robert Kull
Publisher: New World Library

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Most useful review as voted by customers:
11 out of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 8/28/08

Ask yourself just one question: "Could I do what he did?" Then read this book . . .

"Solitude" is a truly inspiring story, a real-life account of a man who spent a year in complete solitude on a remote wilderness island in South America. His initial aim was to "find spiritual enlightenment" and to come back with answers he could share with others through books, lectures, and film. His book is a series of captivating journal entries, mixed with contemplative interludes, about his day to day struggles dealing with the often intense and wild weather, finding food, building shelter, his complicated relation with his only companion, a cat, and coming to terms with his inner demons -- without any of the usual social "crutches" available to distract him. Although he doesn't make a big deal of it, he achieved all of this with one leg!

As soon as I got into the rhythm of his story, I did not want to leave it. I put everything else on hold, so as not to break the spell of reliving the tornado of pain, grief, peace, joy, and insight that flows from the pages of this gripping, evocative, and inspiring book. His writing is captivating because it is so honest, so authentic, so real, so human. Rarely, if ever, have I read such raw honesty. It takes real courage to express -- and even to read -- the full play of light and shadow in the human soul.

He went into solitude for a year, to an isolated island off southern Chile, in search of answers (or The Answer). He was intent on finding a way to spiritual enlightenment, to discover deep insights that he could take back to the world, answers he could share that would make the business of living life a little easier for others. But this is not what happened. He did not find The Answer, except to realize over and over and over again that there are no answers.

However, this is no "empty message" -- we learn, instead, that the emptiness of "no-answer" is the fullest answer of all. The integrity and spirit that shine from his writing will inform and inspire the rest of us who aim for spiritual enlightenment in the comfort of our homes, surrounded by friends and family. You don't have to abandon everything, pack up supplies, and head out into the wilds to discover the heights and the depths of the human spirit. Dr. Kull has done that for us. And he has returned to tell us that enlightenment is not an achievable end-state; rather, it is an ongoing process of opening to and accepting whatever shows up-inside and outside. Most of all, when you read "Solitude" you will realize, as Bob Kull has, that experiencing the richness of "ordinary" life is the most extraordinary achievement of all.

Like the bestselling book and Oscar-nominated movie "Into the Wild," Bob Kull's story brings us face to face with a "search for wisdom in extremes." The main difference, though, is that Kull lived to tell the tale. And we should be grateful for that. If you want to know what it truly means to be human, I encourage you to read this remarkable book.

6 out of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/25/08

Tale of a hard journey - mentally and physically

Resolved: Our complex, modern society may provide us with a host of comforts and conveniences, but it has also stolen from us at the same time. The modern world insulates us from the true meaning life and what it means to be human. We need to step back and contemplate both the natural world and ourselves far more deeply if we want to understand the true nature of reality and our place in the universe.

I think many even modestly self-aware people have at least fleeting thoughts along those lines, but few act seriously on them. For me a long hike in the woods or paddling a canoe at first light across a mirror-still lake is probably as close to such an experience as I'll ever have. But Dr. Kull takes this sentiment and runs it to ground. In search of spiritual enlightenment, he packs up and sets off to live, all alone, on a remote, uninhabited island in Southern Chile for an entire year. He builds himself a little cabin and lives self-sufficiently for the year. While there he struggles with both the physical challenges of surviving, as well as the spiritual and emotional turmoil of both trying to find higher purpose and being utterly alone.

The book is a mixture of his actual journal entries, written while he was there and more traditional chapters that reflect on some of the broader issues he encountered. While the result of this technique is not exactly a cleanly-flowing, unified piece of literature, it does open a raw, unflinching window into what such an experience would actually be like, particularly the emotional and mental anguish as Dr. Kull struggles to find the enlightenment he seeks.

If you liked Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World or Richard Proenneke's story of living alone in the Alaskan wilderness, realize that while the subject matter is facially similar, this is a very different kind of book, which is focused far more on the spiritual and mental aspects of long-term wilderness solitude. Dr. Kull is a bit of a tortured soul, and so what he lays bare for the rest of us to see isn't always pretty or happy, but it is honest and enlightening.

4 out of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 10/16/08

So You Think Your Spirit Is Calling You to Go Off Into the Woods? Well, Read This Book First

One of our most enduring American dreams is to find solitude in nature. Perhaps to find our own Walden Pond, like Henry David Thoreau. Perhaps to head down a river like Mark Twain's characters. Perhaps to trek to the Arctic like characters in Jack London's tales.

This autumn, I started reading this graceful yet haunting memoir by Bob Kull, a rugged scholar of many talents. I was hooked. I kept picking it up and reading 50 pages. Putting it down. Then it always drew me back. Perhaps my restless reading of his book is a salute to Bob's own restless spirit. Bob has been a logger, a truck driver, a fire fighter, a travel guide and a professor. Years ago, he lost a portion of one leg in a motorcycle accident -- but that didn't slow him down much.

In 2001, in the great tradition of Thoreau and so many other Americans, Bob set off into the wilderness. Rather than a convenient local pond, however, Bob set off alone into one of the remotest and most unforgiving regions of the world: the wilderness at the extreme southern tip of Chile.

I like the tone of this book. There are echoes of Jack London here. Echoes of Thoreau. This is not a sentimental memoir by any means. Think of Jack London's "To Build a Fire," the story of a man simply trying to walk through the extremes of Arctic cold. (2008 is the centennial of London's final and most famous version of that classic tale.)

Bob Kull is at his best when he's writing about the edgy anxiety and very specific daily struggles of trying to survive in extreme solitude. Very few of us will ever travel to the tip of Chile, let alone try to camp out there alone for a year. But what Bob really is writing about is a spiritual challenge as close as our own heartbeat.

All of us feel isolated, sometimes. All of us feel drawn toward solitude. And yet, like Thoreau who finally left Walden because "I had several more lives to live," Bob is also pushing us in the other direction. He's inviting us into his solitude, partly to push us back toward community.

Once home again, Bob writes at the end of his book, "I still struggle with feelings of isolation. In those times, a wall seems to separate me from others; a wall that begins to dissolve when I lean into it and treat myself and those around me with compassion."

In that way, this is a more sophisticated spiritual memoir than books like "Into the Wild," by Jon Krakauer. I hope that Bob Kull attracts as big an audience as Krakauer's best seller. There's a lot to learn from this epic tale.

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