South China Morning Post

BOB KULL IS A true survivor. He lived alone for a year in the wilderness, on a tiny island off the southern coast of Chile, frequently buffeted by raging storms and icy winds from the South Pole.

Home was a make-shift cabin that he built. He extracted his own teeth and twice nursed serious injuries to his shoulders after losing his footing. He also managed to live beyond human civilisation despite being a paraplegic, having lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. His only communication with the outside world was through a lap-top computer and satellite phone, and a kayak and rubber dinghy were his sole means of transport. He had a cat for company.

But despite the pain and freezing cold, he reveled in his spectacular surroundings off the Staines Peninsula - the snowcapped Andes the distant backdrop - and of being so close to the nature around him. He watched otters hunt, sea lions roar, dolphins procreate and Non Flying Steamer Ducks in their life-and-death struggle for survival. Eagles, condors and humming birds were among the many birds that passed his way. Kull's odyssey on the unnamed island was to delve into a concept that could not be further from Hong Kong, where Sars seems to have tested the limits of high-density urban living.

He was there not for any high-ratings TV reality show, during which crews lurk off screen to groom the survivors. His purpose was to explore the nature of solitude - its physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual effects -study his own "vibrant aliveness" and gain a doctorate.

Kull, formally attached to the Forestry Faculty of Canada's University of British Columbia (UBC), has described his work as being somewhere between psychology, biology, philosophy, education and spirituality - a diversity that can be accommodated in UBC's interdisciplinary studies programme. He wrote in verse as part of his PhD application:

I wish my work to evoke
and feel it can't
if meaning and argument
must be nailed down

And in a telephone interview he said: "My idea is not to prove anything in a scientific way but through my work to create a space for others to reflect on their own lives, to reflect inwardly how solitude can affect them. I am offering a perspective, rather than an answer." For many conventional academics, this rebuttal of scientific methodology would test what is acceptable for a PhD. Can you be the subject of your own narrative research? Can you present a voyage of personal discovery, in prose, poetry, audio and video tape, as a thesis?

The 56-year-old mature student acknowledges that many in the Vancouver institution think him "wacko". "Universities are extremely eclectic. The majority of professors may think I am a total wacko, but a segment is extremely supportive of what I am doing," he said.

Kull explained why he had to be the subject of the study. "It is the exploration of a particular lived experience, but the subject is myself. If I depended on someone else's experience of solitude it would stick to the level of language."

Kull was born in California, fled the United States to avoid the Vietnam War and worked as a forestry logger and scuba diving instructor before the motorcycle crash led him to begin a more sedentary life as a student, in his 40s. He explained the various motivations behind his research. "I have a deep concern with the human relationship to the non-human world and our environmental difficulties," he said. "Fundamentally we are continuing to push the ecosystem of the world beyond what it can support. One of the core reasons for that is that we don't experience ourselves as part of that ecosystem. We don't experience the world as a sacred, living place."

In solitude in the wilderness he hoped to experience that big picture, of being a part of the flow of the universe. "How can I survive in a respectful, caring way and so allow the world to live as well?" was a question he set out to answer.

He had no qualms about seeking to integrate more closely the personal and academic worlds. "Education should be a journey of transformation that opens us to the mysterious unknown rather than encloses us in a fortress of facts," he wrote in the qualifying essay, A Pathless Land. For him, solitude aids that fundamental shift in understanding. He also recalled long having operated outside standard scientific methodology, even in his undergraduate days when studying sciences. He would arrive at correct answers, but often in ways that would bemuse his teachers.

"I am using academia as a tool for my own spiritual exploration," he said, his thinking deeply influenced by the concept of Buddhist mindfulness and the practice of meditation (although he has no firm beliefs about any life hereafter arid does not identify with the imagery of the religion). But the experience did not proceed according to his expectations. He had hoped that after a few months he would shift into a different consciousness and would be able to catalogue how this happened, to share with others. But this did not happen. He remained very much concerned with the here and now - his daily survival. "This was troubling, on both the personal and academic levels. It took months to accept. Then I began to recognise a more subtle shift. Part of this was self-acceptance." He came to acknowledge who he really was, warts and all, and to accept the discomforts of his self-imposed lifestyle that never went away.

"From that came a sense of tenderness, a gentler character towards myself and those around me," he said. As well as focusing on solitude, he did conduct two studies of the creatures around him: the movement of limpets over two months and a descriptive study of a pair of non-flying ducks. After the year was up, his solitude ended when he was joined for his last month on the island by his Californian friend, Patti Kuchinsky. It was then that he first heard of the September 11 terrorist attacks. His reaction was one of detachment. He wrote in his journal: "When she told me, my response was pretty much 'Uh huh'. It didn't strike me very deeply at all. In fact, all the activities of humanity seemed no more than a vague smudge on some far horizon."

His return to civilisation has not been easy. His first rude awakening came when the pair were leaving the island. The captain of the naval vessel that picked him up tried to insist he leave his rubbish behind. There was a stand-off, with Kull refusing to leave unless he could leave the wilderness as he had found it The captain was forced to back down.

Reintegration was also difficult after his return to Canada. "I expected to be very socially engaged with people, but that hasn't happened. If you are on an island being lonely is OK But back in the city it is more painful, although I have now come to recognise I truly like to be alone, even in the city."

Kull left the island more than a year ago and gives frequent talks and slideshows about his adventure. The greater challenge now is for him to complete the PhD.

Even Kull is not yet sure how it will work out "I won't know what my PhD is about until I have done with it I don't know what the focus is going to be. The overall structure is still quite mysterious," he said.

He remains confident it will be completed. "But it was always a high-risk proposition. There was never a guarantee. If you want freedom you have to accept risk."

Bob Kull has a slideshow on the Web, at www.bobkull.org

Bob Kull's research may be unconventional, but it has wide-spread support from the University of British Columbia, a leading university in Canada.

"Bob's research is located in a university where innovative dissertations are supported by a significant number of faculty," said Professor Carl Leggo, of UBC's Faculty of Education.

Kull's advisers are drawn from a wide range of disciplines - biology, commerce (the adviser from that faculty studies environmental factors that promote and inhibit self-realisation), education and forestry. Professor David Tait, of the Faculty of Forestry, said; "Bob's programme is expanding, by example, the domain of reflection available in a leading academic institution.

"Any exploratory venture into uncharted domains, at a minimum, fuels a social involvement with wonder ... Bob's programme adds the question: 'Who and what are we, particularly if we are stripped of much of our cultural surroundings and support?'"

Professor Lee Gass, a zoologist who has specialised in the evolution of animal intelligence, and another adviser, said: "We on the committee don't know what Bob will produce, or whether our peers will find it satisfactory for a PhD. But we believe in Bob and we believe in the process Bob has asked us to participate in."

He said if Kull were younger it would have been easy to discourage him. "But Bob is a grown man who has great talents, deep and broad experience, and clear ideas about what he needs to experience next," he said. "If he can propose something that makes some sense to us in the university and if he can assure us that he can do what he proposes without killing himself, why not?" The project worked, Gass added, because of its inter-disciplinary nature.

"From within science, Bob's project would be very difficult to promote as PhD level research, primarily because science is predominantly about 'out there'," he said. Similarly, it would likely be seen as inadequate from the narrow perspective of any other discipline.