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Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes: A Year Alone in the Patagonia Wilderness | 
 enlarge | Author: Robert Kull
Publisher: New World Library
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $14.28
You Save: $9.67 (40%)
New (32) Used (9) from $13.50
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 42603
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 1577316320
Dewey Decimal Number: 204.092
EAN: 9781577316329
ASIN: 1577316320
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: P20090105120738S
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 A Fascinating Disappointment December 13, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Having always been captivated by true tales of nature and books written in first person about being alone, I held high hopes for this book. Adding to the intrigue was Kull's challenge of 1) going somewhere fully isolated for a year, 2) having an artificial leg and 3) using his learnings as a foundation for his Ph.D. thesis.
The book is written as a journal. Interspersed are reflections documented by the author after the actual events.
The opening chapters set the context well. Kull spent time alone in his 20's. The stories about trip preparations and getting to his location are intriguing. His tales of getting supplies and getting them to South America are fascinating. Then he gets to Chile and the essence of Kull's personal emotional state begins to surface.
Now in his 50's life has changed and Kull seems angry with his inability to get to the sense of peace that he experienced 30 years earlier. For a risk taker and solo adventurer, Kull continually expresses his fear. The author constantly worries about everything, food, weather, wind, water, email, boats, his health, and when he doesn't have a worry, his is worried about his lack of worrying. All this fretting overpowers the writing.
The journal becomes tedious with all Kull's complaining and worrying. Of course, things go wrong and fortunately Kull is quite talented when it comes to building, tinkering and fixing things. One would think he would be grateful for these skills and this would bring a sense of optimism, but optimism is sorely lacking in this work.
Rare moments of peace and serenity are few. Most of the description focuses on the bad weather, the rough terrain and Kull's feelings of anger, frustration and self-doubt.
Along for the journey is a cat. Even Kull's relationship with the cat is distinctly off-balance. He continually slaps, kicks or yells at the cat, especially when the animal acts in ways that are natural for a cat, but not what Kull wants - example, the cat is 'underfoot' as Kull builds his cabin, so he kicks it out of the way. I found this highly disturbing!
The book just kept pulling me deeper and deeper. I read on hoping that there would be a 'curve in the road' and optimism would surface, but it never did.
This book was a significant disappointment. Truth is fine and life can sometimes be rough, but Kull did this voluntarily. He gets through it, but never seems to grow from the experience. Optimism, hope and positive personal transition are in short supply. Get ready for a downer if you venture into this territory!
 Solitude November 27, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
In 2001, Robert Kull spent an entire year on a deserted island in not far from the Andes Mountains. He did so purposefully, as part of his Ph.D. research and in hopes of spiritual enlightenment. Solitude includes diary entries during that twelve month period with interludes written after the fact to give perspective on what was happening at the time.
It's an absolutely fascinating work. I can't remember how many times I've gotten frustrated at my chaotic life and thought that if only I were alone I could meditate and really get to the bare bones of why I am here and what I'm suppose to learn.
Solitude shows that enlightenment doesn't follow our schedule. We can't pencil it in on Monday evening at ten and expect to suddenly be there. It happens when we are willing to let go of control, be mindful, and willing to go out of our comfort zone. Even in the middle of nowhere with no one to judge us (except ourselves, of course), no chaotic daily schedule, and no one else to take care of we'll still find things to fixate about so that we retain the illusion of control.
truly moving November 6, 2008
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I just heard Bob Kull do a reading from his book. If the rest of it is as moving as the poems and excerpts he read, this work and the journey it's based on is truly remarkable. This was not some peaceful soul-searching journey he took but a year of terror, defiance, utter beauty, and transcendance. I can't wait to read the entire book after what I heard tonight.
 Tale of a hard journey - mentally and physically October 25, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
So You Think Your Spirit Is Calling You to Go Off Into the Woods? Well, Read This Book First October 16, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
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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