This week I am sitting typing above the treetops surrounding Castle Forest Lodge, near Mt. Kenya. In this paradise I want to unpack, with you, why the prospect of being alone, in a mountain hut, for six-months is appealing. I am not sure when I will go, but by the day I’m getting more interested in the idea. There will, inevitably, be more soul searching before the societal ejector button is pressed. Nevertheless, this week’s email is a planting the seed.
I don’t want anything too posh: A one-room log cabin, with a bed at one end (hard mattress, of course), and an open fire and kitchen at the other. Two windows would do: Enough to let some light in, and heavy curtains to hold in the heat through winter. I imagine a dog or two, and a desk to write at. Looking up, I’d need a mountain range to explore. The immediate surroundings would be cold and green. For practical purposes, I’d need a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and a stream to wash in close by. Everything beyond this, from the solar lamp to the acid tabs would be a luxury.
This vision is most directly born-out of Sylvian Tesson’s day-by-day account of his six-months in the Siberian Taiga. He lived, hermit-like and alone, cabined next to Lake Baikal. Walking, writing, fishing and eating—Tesson wrote that there are only fifteen daily activities to do when alone in a wooden hut. And, the experience of each is deeper (more fulfilling) without the racket of our ‘normal’ lives. No emails nor ten o'clock news; only water-boiling, log-burning and skinny-dipping.
I’ve glimpsed stillness twice. Both times were great. Once, halfway into a ten-day silent retreat in Tushita, above the Kangra Valley in the Himalayas. For a few hours, I sat in ecstasy watching a pack of playing monkeys. It was deep and unquestioning joy. The second time was at a similar stage of a Vipassana, two years later, as I drifted around a nondescript garden. It was equally bliss. My takeaways from both? It takes a lot of silence to reach profound appreciative states.
Now (don’t get me wrong), I’m not keen to head to a cabin for a ‘trip’. If that’s what I was after, I’d return to Houghton Festival. It’s not for the euphoric high: It’s to explore the world of natural experience out there, the experience hidden by the grey world of presentations and pricing models. I spend too much time submerged in this second, Microsoft Office constructed, universe.
In Anthony de Mello’s book Awareness, he tells a story from the Blitz. A man, carrying an unexploded German bomb in a canvas bag, catches a double-decker bus in London. As he’s sitting down, the conductor asks what’s in the bag. “It’s an unexploded bomb” says the man, “I found in my garden, and am taking it to the police”. The conductor responds, “Well, Sir, you don’t want to have that on your lap! Best put it under your seat.” De Mello’s point is: Even when we know things aren’t right, we rarely confront the underlying problems and get to the truth. We put them under our seat. This is as much true in our personal lives as it is with work. Sometimes it takes bold decisions to develop a better understanding of ourselves, as Tesson did in Siberia.
My framework de jour is one never regrets making a bold decision. Going rogue in a cabin is bold, and, to me, it stinks of freedom. In the car on the way here we were discussing freedom as a concept: We concluded that freedom comes from within, not without. One person can work for Deloitte and feel transcendent happiness (ha), their desk-buddy can feel shackled. If freedom comes from within, it’s a personal journey and the solution is personal too. From my experiences with stillness, being quiet with the self (in a cabin, perhaps) would unearth a lot about my own search for freedom. Tesson remarks: ‘To achieve a feeling of inner freedom, you need plenty of space and solitude, to which you must add mastery of time, total silence, the harshness of life and the proximity of geographical splendor. The equation of these conquests leads to a hut’. Suddenly, in light of this, the cabin seems inevitable.