Solitude

Years after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull traveled to a remote island in Patagonia’s coastal wilderness with supplies to live alone for a year. He sought to explore the effects of deep solitude on the body and mind and to find the spiritual answers he’d been seeking all his life. With only a cat and his thoughts as companions, he wrestled with inner storms while the forces of nature raged around him. The physical challenges were immense, but the struggles of mind and spirit pushed him even further.

Solitude is the diary of Kull’s tumultuous year as well as a meditation on the tensions between nature and technology, isolation and society. With humor and brutal honesty, Kull explores the pain and longing we typically avoid in our busy lives as well as the peace and wonder that arise once we strip away our distractions.

Kull went into solitude seeking the Answer , but came back empty-handed. Wilderness, he found, is a place to clearly see the insanity of denying that the world is as it is. He discovered that life itself teaches us all we need to know — once we pause to really listen.

Born in Ventura, California, Robert Kull has spent years wandering North and South America, working as a scuba instructor, travel guide, construction worker, logger, community organic gardening teacher, truck driver, bartender, dishwasher, firefighter, photographer, and professor. In 1985 he lost his lower right leg after a motorcycle crash in the Dominican Republic. He began undergraduate studies at age forty and now holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia. He lives in Vancouver, B.C. His website is www.bobkull.org.