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Praise for Solitude:
“Bob Kull has done something relatively rare in the modern world: He has made a retreat/journey/pilgrimage that suits his own need and desire. He has learned essential lessons, and like a good spiritual adventurer, he is letting us in on the lessons he learned. Although his adventure is fascinating, it is his inner discoveries that appeal to me. It is worth everything for him to say that he is not a hero and his adventure is not heroic. That is just what we desperately need today: nonheroic adventures. This is an amazing story, worth reading and being inspired by. Bob is like a modern shaman, going out and coming back. And readers can take a good portion of Bob’s experience into themselves and be changed by it.”
—Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and Dark Nights of the Soul
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Years after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull traveled to a remote island in Patagonia’s coastal wilderness with equipment and 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 wild forces of nature raged around him. The physical challenges were immense, but the struggles of mind and spirit pushed him even further.
Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes is the diary of Kull’s tumultuous year. Chronicling a life distilled to its essence — the fundamental mechanics of daily survival — Solitude is also a philosophical 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 frantically busy lives as well as the peace and wonder that arise once we strip away our distractions. He describes the enormous Patagonia wilderness with poetic attention, transporting the reader directly into both his inner and outer experiences.
Kull went into solitude fishing for enlightenment, 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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Order Solitude from Amazon.com: Solitude Seeking Wisdom in Extremes
Solitude is published by: New World Library
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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.
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