A
PhD in solitude
by
charlie gillis
He
had already spent eight months
on a deserted Chilean island
– with just the wind, rain and
an epileptic kitten for company.
He had
watched a
windstorm flip his boat, had
badly injured both his shoulders and
had been forced to yank
an abscessed
tooth from his own mouth.
But
Bob Kull felt no closer to enlightenment.
"Solitude
is a powerful thing," Mr.
Kull, 56,
observed yesterday from
his home in
Mr.
Kull managed the latter, remaining
intentionally stranded on his
unnamed, uninhabited islet for an
entire year as part of a novel thesis
project approved by the
Mr. Kull, a
PhD
candidate in UBC's Interdisciplinary Studies program,
had
gone to
It
was an exercise, in "lived-experience"
research and
though it had been a difficult sell to his graduate
committee, he
thought it would
result in a kind of spiritual release. Eventually,
he surmised, he
would free
himself from the petty
desires of normal, urban life and connect more
deeply with his natural
surroundings.
Mr.
Kull, a California-born Vancouverite
with a taste for adventure,
was just the type for "lived-experience"
study.
He
had worked a variety of jobs, from
logging on
In
his younger years, he had spent
shorter stints alone in B.C.'s Chilcotin
country and the hinterlands
of northern
Things
did not unfold so smoothly
in
The
vicious windstorm that flipped
his inflatable boat submerged
both bf his outboard motors in saltwater.
His
stovepipe began to disintegrate
in salty air that rarely climbed
above 15C, and he soon realized
he had brought the wrong-sized
staples for his staple gun. That made
building his tarpaulined
cabin much tougher.
He did,
however, have a
tabby kitten for company, given
to him by
Chilean Parks
workers to test shellfish
to make sure they were safe
to eat.
He
named the animal Cat ("There
were no other ones,"
he pointed
out) and never really fed it
suspect seafood. Cat was given to
occasional seizures
but proved a
friendly, loyal companion.
The
island itself was truly desolate,
a rain-washed lump of rock less
than a square kilometre in area
and covered with dense, spiny
brush. It
is located 150 kilometres
from the nearest town
and 2,700 kilometres south
of the Chilean capital,
Mr.
Kull's camp sat in a sheltered
spot in full view of the
"It
would have been way easier to
do something like this on the coast
of
"For
the whole year I was on the
island, I heard the sound of planes
maybe twice. That was it."
His
cabin was a simple wood-frame
affair, covered with tarps and
plywood and heated by a wood-burning stove.
He
cooked on a separate propane stove and relied
on two solar panels to power
his
laptop computer.
For
food, he drew from his stockpiles
of rice, beans, oatmeal,
pasta, chocolate and coffee,
which he
supplemented with
red snapper he caught around
the island.
For
safety reasons, Mr. Kull took
along a computer and a satellite
phone, which he used to
send occasional emails to his friend,
a nurse in
But he
eventually
decided that the phone, the
comfort snacks and the 100
or so books he brought
along were inhibiting his
experience. "I
realized at some point
that I was
escaping into
food," he said.
Slowly,
he weaned
himself
off the reminders
of city life,
allowing himself
only a few
hours on Sundays
with the works of P.G.
Wodehouse, but
otherwise sticking
to the task of survival in a
"raw, cold climate."
The
physical challenges alone were
daunting. Twice
Mr. Kull slipped
on the algae-covered rocks
and tore
muscles around the
rotator cuffs in his shoulders. Having suffered the same injury
in the past,
he set about rehabilitating
himself using ropes
and pullies he brought along.
Meanwhile,
he grew despondent
by his failure to undergo a transformation,
to merge with his
environment and free himself
from the ambitions
and desires
of civilization.
By his
eighth month on
the island, Mr. Kull began to
form a theory
as to why it had not occurred.
"The
notion of going to get something
was the problem," he said. "That recognition was a major
turning point...
the desire to not have desires,
to be free, can also
tangle us up."
The
navy came and retrieved Mr. Kull in
February, 2002, but he remained
in
But
he insisted on leaving the place
unmarked by his stay.
He
returned this winter to UBC and
an $18,000 scholarship – a welcome
bonus given that he had undertaken
the $30,000-project with
little more than his own savings
and a last-minute $10,000 grant
from the university.
Mr.
Kull has not yet written his thesis, but he is doing public lectures
and slide shows on request. And he
promises a dissertation
that will read like few others
in Canadian academe.
"There
were some real doubts in
the beginning as to whether this
could be a PhD," he said yesterday. "But
I've spoken to the committee
and they've told me it doesn't
have to be a traditional scientific thesis – that
I
just have
to tell my story.
"That's
what I'm going to do."
National
Post cgillis@ndtionalpost.com