A glorious morning: 0C/32F degrees at my cabin in the shade, but probably 5/40 where I sit out here in the sunshine. There is blue sky right now, but it is transient. A mile to the west across an arm of the sea, the domes and shear rock walls of Staines Peninsula have disappeared into the mist for now. Ten miles away to the east, beyond a three mile wide channel and a border of low foothills, the peaks and glaciers of the Southern Andes shimmer in the slanting sun. The sun itself hangs low in the sky far to the north. Just yesterday I moved the solar panels yet again and now they are perched as far south as they can go - almost to the high tide line - and just capture the direct sun rays over the line of trees to the north. My cabin is in perpetual shade and will not see the sun for several months. It faces southeast and is nestled between trees and sea to hide from the ferocious NW summer winds.

I am settled on a small island (perhaps 200X300 meters in size), and this plus two more small islands to the south and southwest form a fairly protected basin in the sea out front. Otters come here to fish and, surprisingly (at least to me), to hunt sea birds. I saw one such, unsuccessful, chase and it was fierce. The birds, large non-flying ducks, went flapping and flailing off across the water hollering alarm as they went, and the otter, in hot pursuit, would grab a breath and dive, swim, up for more air and dive again. At one point it crossed a small shoal of rock on the run and plunged back in. I’ve always thought of otters as sort of cute and lovable, but I imagine the ducks have a somewhat different view of the matter. A group of 4 dolphins also comes through regularly, and one day, a couple months ago, I watched as they made slow sensual love together among the undulating beds of kelp. What a gift. More recently a group of 4 sea lions has moved into the area over by Staines Peninsula and they too come by here now and then - the male roaring as he goes. I have seen no land mammals at all, not even rodents, but there are lots of birds: grebes; cormorants; flying and non-flying pairs of ducks; a black bird, gregarious and raucous, that’s got to be some sort of corvid; southern eagles, with black topknot, white wing tips and orange beak and breast; condor; red-headed woodpecker; hawk. They all seem pretty unconcerned with my presence. There were hummingbirds, but they have gone now. Occasionally one would fly in through the open door of my cabin, which having walls of translucent tarp is quite light inside, and try to leave through the plexiglas window rather than using the door again. Then I would gently capture it in cupped hands and stroke the iridescent head and feel the tiny fluttering life of it a moment before releasing it. There is what might be a kind of chickadee that has pretty much moved into my porch and into the cabin too when it suits its fancy. Robs my bacon, lands on my head or arm, and leaves little globs of shit scattered everywhere. Cat doesn’t seem thrilled with this invasion since I sternly forbid him stalking the birds around the cabin.

The weather is extremely variable. Much like Vancouver, but somewhat colder, and for most of the year there are very strong winds which roar in from the northwest and keep me land-bound instead of out in the inflatable boat or kayak. These are what the sailors call the roaring 40s and 50s. The latitude where I am here on the southern tip of South America is 51 degrees, and this is the only land on earth foolish enough to hang down this far into the sea. There is nothing else to interrupt the wind as it swirls around the globe. Supposedly it will be calm for the next two months and then the winds will return. Certainly last summer - February and March - the first two months I was here, the weather was much worse than it has been since. I wondered if I would see blue sky or sun at all during the year. But there have been some fantastic days in May and June: clear blue sky and glassy sea. The temperature in summer was about 10C/50F - 12C/55F most days. Now it is between C/32 and 5/42. Supposedly it gets down to -15C/5F in July. Already the surface of the sea has frozen in some areas on a few cold days. At present with little sun or wind, I have little electricity from either solar panels or wind generator, and have switched over to using the propane light and keep computer use to a minimum. I need to be sure there is always enough juice in the battery bank to run the satphone. Like Vancouver in mid winter, days are short and nights are long. Here, I have been very aware of losing the sun and if I didn’t know better, would fear it was leaving forever, never to return. Solstice has never meant so much. It is quite strange to be in the dark heart of winter in June and to think of you all (except Aled who is also Down Under) expanding out into the long warm days of summer. I hope you are enjoying it.

I am finally settled in. It was a lot of work building a shelter and outhouse, clearing an area on the beach of rocks to drag up the boat, setting up the solar panels and getting the wind generator up on its tower, figuring out the electric system and satphone antennae setup, getting rain water catchment rigged for a water supply, and getting in a supply of firewood. I still have some things to do like getting permanent steps built, but the heavy work is done - I hope. By the time I got moved in, I was exhausted. It felt like I had been running at top speed for a long long time getting ready for this trip and getting down here, and before that doing other things. It has been a challenge to slow down and just be instead of doing all the time.

My diet consists mainly of oatmeal, rice and beans, and fresh fish (mostly red snapper which I catch over in the shadow of Staines Peninsula). I also brought 20 kg potatoes, 20 kg flour, 20 kg pasta, 13 kg bacon, 8 kg cheese, bouillon cubes, coffee, sugar and powdered milk, some onions and garlic. For treats, every day I have a small piece of semi-sweet bakers chocolate, a teaspoon of peanut butter, a tiny piece of cheese, a handful of dried fruit, and a small piece of frybread with honey.

In my preparations I forgot to bring surprisingly few things I would really like to have here. Not that I actually remembered everything, but brought so much extra that I can make due which is good since I can’t buy anything for the year I will be here. Plastic is a good example. I forgot to buy plastic to line the inside of the shelter, but brought so much extra for other things that I had just enough to go around. There are a couple of exceptions: I’ve run out of nails. I brought more than enough to build the shelter the way I’d planned (not too many nails since I’ll need to tear it down when I leave), but after a couple of the wind storms, I reverted to my usual anal practice of overkill and really nailed everything down. I did bring a lot of different guage wire though and so have cut 2 and 3 inch lengths to use as nails; slow process. I also bought the wrong size staples for my staple gun. And so to attach the tarp and plastic covering to the wood frame I had to separate almost 2000 staples by hand and pound them in one by one with a hammer. At the time my finger tips were split from the wet and cold and so were wrapped with duct tape. Trying to hold the wee staples and stretch the plastic tight with fingers all taped up was cause for some serious profanity.

I’ve been here 4 1/2 months now, and until a couple days ago the solitude was complete (well, I did hear a plane once, and sometimes on clear days see jet contrails far to the east over the mountains). I often think I hear human sounds, but it is always the wind in the trees or the sea gurgling among the rocks. I also frequently think I hear the sound of a motor, but it turns out to be the kettle coming to a boil, or the wind generator humming, or a hummingbird making wind with its wings (one day one hovered so close I could feel the breeze on my face), or a bumble bee, or the roar of a distant waterfall drifting in on a vagrant breeze. But a couple days ago the sound I heard really was a motor. The man from the National Park Service who is in charge of this whole huge area came by. Actually there is no one at all in this park. He lives in the neighboring park. There are four employees for an area of islands and peninsulas and fjords that stretches several hundred miles north to south and about a hundred east to west. Other than myself, there is simply no one else here. About 15 or 20 miles to the west is the main north/south navigation route which may see 3 or 4 small boats a day. The closest settlement, Puerto Natales, has a few thousand habitants and lies about 100 miles by water to the southeast. But it feels so natural to be here that I don’t often think about the solitude unless I stop to remember and reflect on how truly fortunate I am to be able to be here like this. So I had company for a while. The ranger and his three assistants dropped by (it is about 3 hours in their boat off their route to Puerto Natales) ostensibly to bring me the barometer that Patti mailed me in early January and which didn’t arrive before I left Punta Arenas, but more to see my set up. They liked what I’ve built and asked me to leave it when I go next year. Hmmm. A dilemma... It would be much easier for me to leave it, and after all the work building it, I sort of hate to tear it back down. And it would be nice if someone else could use it. But. I would like to leave the area as much like I found it as possible when I go. It is so undisturbed here. No human footprints at all except the odd bit of plastic on a windward beach which I sometimes find and pick up while out beach combing for firewood. I’ll see how it feels next year when it is time to leave. When my visitors were ready to leave, I was ready too. I was - surprisingly - happy enough to have the company for a while, and was also glad to be alone again once they had gone.

Gathering firewood is a big job. Like the coast of BC, it is wet here and the forest dense, so I go out and comb the beach for driftwood logs. There are not many since there has been no logging, and I now have to go 3 miles across the channel to the east to find wood. My small 15 hp outboard groans and strains coming home pushing the heavy load along at about 4 or 5 miles an hour. I have a good supply now and think a few more loads will see me through. I want to have plenty before the winds begin again.

There have been some tough times especially during the first two months. The Chilean Navy boat dropped me and my gear in the late evening on Feb. 5. Actually, they dropped me and most of my gear here. We started to ferry all the stuff to shore by inflatable boat about a mile to the south, but the wind came up and the sea got very rough there so we came here where it is more protected. It took quite a while to land everything, and by then they were in a hurry to leave and reach a safe anchorage for the night. It was raining, blowing and getting dark as I set up my tent on a temporary platform of plywood laid over some 2x4s amidst the rocks and grass. I thought the grass indicated the high tide line, but was wrong. It turned out to be seagrass. That night had one of the highest tides of the year and the water was pushed even higher by the wind. It kept rising and rising and I kept jamming more 2x4s under the plywood to raise the tent a bit higher until I could add no more and then switched to magic incantations: urging, pleading, raging at the rising water to halt and give me a fucking break... which it did with the surge splashing against the bottom of the plywood. Huddled alone in the cold and wet and dark (kitten in his cardboard box inside a plastic garbage bag) all my gear and supplies wrapped in plastic but still out in the rain, almost all my food on a beach a mile away, I wondered if perhaps I’d made a mistake in coming.

The spot I’d picked on the map (while sitting in the UBC map library) to probably settle for the year is 14 miles by boat south of where the navy dropped me. I had to go down to look it over and then make 5 or 6 trips in my 13 foot inflatable to haul all my gear. I sat where they dropped me for 10 days waiting for the wind to die and the sea to calm so I could make the trip. I moved my tent platform to higher ground, stretched a tarp over it and waited. The wind howled and the rain pounded and I worried about my food and other supplies on the beach a mile away. Finally the weather cleared enough that I could make the trip. The location, in a small protected bay, was good, but not great. On the way back I stopped to pick up all my supplies except for two propane tanks. The boat rode very low under the weight and the motor knocked and groaned. The wind came up again, and by the time I got back to my camp, I had grudgingly accepted that it wasn’t feasible to move everything down to the bay. I looked with fresh eyes at the place the Navy had dropped me and realized that except for no river or creek it was quite satisfactory: high ground to build on, pretty good protection from the wind, a tiny cove and beach to land the boat, an open point close enough to set up solar panels and wind generator, an absolutely mind bogglingly beautiful view of the high mountains to the east and rocky peninsula to the west. This is where I have stayed.

I cleared some ground and started to build figuring I would pick up the other two propane tanks sooner or later. The wind and rain continued to roar, and in the night I would peer out of the tent with the flashlight to check the tarp and boat which I had anchored out about 20 feet from shore since I had not yet cleared a place of rocks to land it. All seemed OK until one dawn after a night of especially fierce gusting winds I looked out to see my boat floating upside down. That was a disheartening moment; a real low point. I felt battered and exhausted by it all and again wondered if I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I had no idea what to do, but got up, put on chest waders and went out to look. Everything that had been in the boat had either floated to shore or sunk to the bottom. My backup 4 hp outboard was on the bottom in two feet of water, and my main 15 hp outboard, while still attached to the boat, was completely under water and flooded. Submerging a motor in salt water is just about the worst thing you can do to it short of setting it on fire. Here I was facing a year alone (most of my propane a mile away, no firewood collected yet) and likely no motors. Sick feeling. Even though I had no idea what to do, I got busy and one thing led to another: I took the 15 hp off and carried both motors up to the half-built cabin; managed to flip the boat back over, and, after clearing away the biggest rocks and chain sawing a hole in the brush, drag it up onto the beach. Then I got the outboard manual and followed the instructions on cleaning and servicing a submerged motor. I finally finished the 15 and with a prayer put it back on the boat and pushed them into the water again. After only a few pulls on the starter cord it came to life. And ran and has continued to run perfectly. Ahhhh. Thank you. Thank you. The 4 hp was a different matter. I cleaned it too, but could get no spark at all. I assumed it was dead. It has been troubling to go out in the boat without a backup motor, and I decided to always take the inflatable kayak with me. A strange sight perhaps to see a 13 foot inflatable boat chugging along with a 12 foot kayak lashed across the bow, but who’s to see. Way out here alone, I need a way to get to land or back to camp should the 15 hp stop running. I also always take the satphone and a survival kit (blanket and space blanket, snowsuit, food and water for three days, small stove and pot, machete, tarp, rope, gps, compass) whenever I am going away from this small cluster of islands. The 4 stood leaning against a tree for almost 3 months until I decided to put it under the cabin. I figured, what the hell, I’d just crank it to see. And I did see... a very faint spark in one of the plugs. Wheee. I took off the flywheel (that’s another whole story, but this report is getting very long indeed and there is still a ways to go) and cleaned the points and it started and is running fine now too. Yes! This is very very good news. I hope I never need it, but it feels good to have it.

Pain - physical, emotional/psychological, spiritual - while usually not particularly welcome, has been as large a part of my experience here as joy and wonder and peace. In early March, while sneaking up on an otter, I slipped on the rocks, fell, and re-buggered the rotator cuff muscles in both shoulders. If you have done this to yourself, will know what I am talking about, if you haven’t, I strongly recommend that you avoid it if at all possible. It hurts like hell and takes forever to heal. From previous experience, I know what exercises to do for physiotherapy, but it has slowed me down and continues to be very uncomfortable especially at night. I try to be careful, but there is heavy work to do which further slows healing. Like most of us, I have been carrying a lot of tension in my upper back and neck. Usually there are many things to distract my attention from the discomfort of the tight knotted muscles, but less so here. Slowly, I think, the knots are loosening with meditation and exercise. The cold and damp in conjunction with hard physical activity has woken up the arthritis in my hands, so I have taken to wearing a copper bracelet. Hocus pocus maybe, but anything is worth a try. I am not especially good with physical pain, though I’ve had plenty of practice. I have little patience or equanimity and tend to snivel and whine and get angry. I usually just step on my hurting or move fast enough to stay ahead of it, but here neither strategy works and so I’m trying to accept and make peace with it not as MY pain, but as the pain of being alive. Suffering is such a deep part of living for all of us, that if we try too hard to avoid it, we end up avoiding life entirely.

Existential dread is always lurking in the shadows (for all of us so the psychologists say) and here, alone, I come face to face with the darkness. Often it is the wind that seems to trigger it. There is also sorrow and grief and loneliness. One of the difficult aspects of solitude, and one of its most powerful benefits, is that there is pretty much no way to avoid experiencing difficult feelings and thoughts for very long. I tend to try to lose myself in puttering around doing this and that to stay on the surface of things, but to no avail. All the existential questions and doubts that we are supposed to resolve or resolve to ignore in our youth are somehow still with me; neither resolved nor firmly put aside: what am I doing with my life? what should I be doing? how can I come to accept myself and the world and stop this endless judging and self justification? why so much fucking pain? and on and on. It is often so noisy inside my head with internal conversations that I might as well be in downtown Vancouver. And I have brought my anxieties, obsessions and compulsions with me: if I can just... get all my food and propane here; get this cabin built exactly the way I want it; get the electrical system working; get a couple more loads of firewood in; read and remember all those books on my shelf; get rid of this pain in my shoulders; just somehow have things be different than they are... then I will feel OK. If I can just be perfect, then I will be saved. I brought my dreams and illusions with me here; I brought myself.

There is often deep spiritual longing for something to fill the emptiness inside. Buddhists say this emptiness is the essential nature of existence. Big help that is. One of the reasons I’ve come here is to recapture experiences of peace and belonging and deep identification with the natural world that I have had before and lost along the way. I know, and tell myself over and over that it is the very striving and grasping that locks me out of that spontaneous, flowing world of aliveness, but the lesson, apparently, has yet to sink all the way in. There are times when I surrender and relax into the moment just as it is and then light and peace flood my soul. But it is a very short and subtle slip from Ahhh thank you! to Aha, gimme me more! Spiritual Greed. And I still frequently slip into judging this project from a social perspective and project those judgments outward: I need to figure out how to trigger these shifts of consciousness in myself at will, or I won’t have anything worth bringing back with me to share; won’t have anything worthy of a Ph.D. thesis; won’t have accomplished anything to make all my effort and all your support worthwhile. Shit, no wonder I have knots in my back and neck. But more frequently now, too, there are times of just letting myself be here in the moment, experiencing the world and myself as part of it just the way we actually are and trusting in the process and in the power of solitude to teach and to heal. Times when I softly sigh and remember that there is nothing I need to do, or can do, to be worthy of existence. Like all the rest of creation, I just am.

There are also, at times, small unexpected adventures. This is from the journal entry for June 11:

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A thin winter sun hung low in the north as I left camp to head down to the bay where I had originally planned to spend this year. Chill day with the mountains looming against the gray sky. Lovely trip down for the first while. Was nice to have seat back in boat, motor working fine, sea calm and glassy, not too cold. Figured I would make the 14 mile trip in a bit over an hour. But about half way down, a breeze started coming up the channel from the south and the water got a bit choppy. Not bad, just not completely smooth like it had been and I had to slow down some. Then about 8 or 9 miles from here, things began to get wild. The wind picked up and shifted to the southeast. I started having second thoughts, but figured I would keep on for a while and see if it passed since I have never seen really nasty weather come from that quarter. It got worse and I seriously considered turning back since if it got too nasty I might not make it home for the night. But I have intended to go down to the bay before winter strikes and now that I was on my way I wanted to get there so I wouldn’t have a pending trip hanging over my head as something I still needed to do. I kept going. It got worse. Then I saw coming across the channel toward me a dark line of wind blown water completely awash in white caps; much worse than the soup I was already in. Oh shit, I thought, this is not good and I am not at all sure I want to be here. That’s when I got out of the seat and down onto my knees on the floor in the middle of the boat to lower the center of gravity; physical and spiritual too. The channel doglegs along there and by now the wind was not hitting me right head on, but more from the side and I was worried that I might flip. The waves were, I guess, maybe 3 feet, very steep and breaking with lots of white caps and spray. I decided I really better turn back even though I was only about a mile and half from the bay by this time. I turned around and started for home. Quite quickly the water calmed down appreciably now that I was moving with the wind and waves rather than against them. Even in these conditions I would be able to make it home and knew I would be unhappy if I had gotten this close and turned back unnecessarily. So I turned toward the bay again. It didn’t seem so bad now and I figured maybe the worst had passed; ahead I could see blue sky on the horizon low over the southern hills. But it started to rage again. I was getting completely drenched with spray and thinking that this would probably be a pretty good time to be wearing my life vest, but I wasn’t about to stop concentrating on the sea and let go of the tiller to put it on. I just kept going and finally turned the corner into the small bay. The wind was blowing right into it, but since the mouth is partially blocked by an island, it was much calmer inside.
When my plans don’t work out, I often have trouble letting go of what I wanted to happen and staying fully engaged with what actually is happening. Since I tend to want things to be perfect, I always like to be sure that what I have is better (for me) than what I don’t have. So I was hoping that on seeing the bay again I would think it not so nice as the spot where I have settled and that there wouldn’t be a good view of the mountains. Wrong. It is lovely. Tucked into a bowl of hills, and while there isn’t a view of the wild mountains I have here, there is a view of closer lower mountains that are beautiful, too. A condor soared low over the hills as I entered the bay. Ah. There is a lesson here I think. I can’t base my letting go of what I don’t have on a justification that it wouldn’t be so good anyway. I just have to choose to be with what is. If I had gone down there, it would have been great. But there would have been problems there too - like this wind blowing straight into the spot where I would have built my cabin.
I filled the gas tank even though it was still 2/3 full (didn’t want to take any chances of running out of gas out there), put on my life vest, tucked the camera into the water proof bag with the survival gear, hoping the zip locks had kept it dry, said a final good-bye to the bay, and headed back into the teeth of the storm. This time I was going directly into the wind and waves until I could get out of the bay and round the corner. I ran over some drifting kelp and it fouled the prop. Happily I was still in semi-protected water and hid behind a rock to clear it. Out I went. Holy shit it was nasty out there. This is the kind of sea I have often looked at from the point by my cabin and thought, woof, I’m sure glad I’m not out in that. And now I was. But the boat and motor handled it fine. I turned the corner and headed home with wind and swell coming from my rear now. Since it seemed calmer, I resumed my seat. I started to surf down the waves, and, worried about digging the nose of the boat in, decided to slide my seat more toward the back of the boat. I have a 4 foot extension handle on the outboard, and usually sit near the bow to balance the weight better and allow the boat to plane easier. The seat had jammed between the 4 hp outboard and the survival kit and in freeing it, I accidentally jerked loose the kill cord that I keep attached to my wrist. The idea is that if I ever should accidentally fall over board, the motor will kill and the boat won’t keep going without me. It would still be very unpleasant in the cold water and difficult to get back in with all my wet clothes and rain gear, so I am very careful, but at least I would have a chance. If the boat kept going, I would simply be dead unless right next to shore. The kill cord worked perfectly. The motor stopped. Unhappily, I was not too far from shore and the wind and waves were pushing me toward the rocks. I reattached the cord and tried to put the motor into neutral to start it. It had jammed in gear. Damn! But I knew just what to do since it jammed in gear a few days ago. I lifted the motor and turned the prop by hand to free it and then the motor started easily. Whew. The going was easier now that the bow was riding higher. I tried to stay in synch with the waves rather than going faster or slower, but still went surfing now and then. My GPS shows my max. speed at almost 22 mph. Then, within about 5 or 10 minutes, all of a sudden, the sea was flat glassy calm again. Just a very gentle swell moving the surface of the water. Huh? Did I dream all that? No, I have my life vest on, and in spite of being encased in hat, rain gear , rubber boots and rubber gloves, I’m pretty damp and cold. I looked behind me and the sea was still dark and wild; wind blown and roaring with white caps. And the same blue sky hung low over the southern hills. Wow. When I got home I got out the charts and it looks like there is a long valley coming down between mountains to the east side of the channel in that area, so it may act as a wind tunnel. I wish cat could talk to ask him if it was rough and blowing here. I came skimming home over the same glassy sea I had left on. How strange the day. It seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but I can’t figure out for what. And just when I am trying to let go of this addiction to excitement and adventure, a day like today happens and I realize that this is the stuff that makes for good storytelling. Who wants to sit and hear about how I was here bitching and moaning with pain and despair for days on end? Hi ho.
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And this is so... I have noticed that I see more wildlife and feel more wild life if I just stay quietly near my camp than when I head out in the boat exploring. For long quiet hours I sit and watch the endlessly shifting play of light and movement over the face of the sea, or close my eyes and listen, and the infinitely subtle sounds of the water carry me deep into the present moment. And then, I am no longer just Bob Kull in Chile; like the animals and trees, I am a boundless and integral part of this flowing landscape, living in a place called Here.

It is late at night now as I type this and tomorrow is solstice. I will light a fire and heat rocks for the sweat lodge I’ve built just at the high tide line. I usually sweat on the full moon or in conjunction with the sweats at the Long House at UBC so I can continue to participate in their circle. But tomorrow is special; tomorrow the sun starts south again. As you read this, I may be sitting naked and joyful by the edge of the sea.

Often, mixed in with all the internal mono/dialogues, songs arise and linger in my mind: the Navaho prayer song, Now I Walk With Beauty; and in hard times, Kingston Trio’s, Sloop John B; in the times of trust and faith, the reggae, Every Little Ting Gonna Be Alright; and in moments of surrender and acceptance, from Ecclesiastes via the Byrds, To Everything, Turn Turn Turn, There is a Season; sometimes, flying in the boat over glassy water, motor humming easily behind me, mountains ahead and blue sky above, the Simon and Garfunkle song, I Am a Rock, I Am an Island. But of course I am not. I am not truly alone out here at all; there are the animals, and the Spirit and there are all of you. I very deeply feel and appreciate your support and send this message to share just a little of what has been going on with me. I hope all is well with you in your lives. I pray for you daily. Take good care. Love Bob

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