The lessons that the man who lived for a year only with his cat on a remote island of Chilean Patagonia learned

“He told me to tie a rope to my tooth and the other side to a door, closed it strongly and continue with my life. And he added that 'people have taken teeth alone for centuries. Sun it.'”

Although Patty was worried, her message sought to motivate Kull to continue her trip.

The cabin did not have a heavy door that he could use, so the man tried to do the same but tying the thread to a rock. The fear of pain did not allow him to launch it.

“What I did was to tie the end of the rope to the leg of the table, nailed to the ground, and I simply took my tooth with the neck muscles. It hurt much more to think about it than to do it,” he says.

It was the year 2001 and the American was in a doctorate at the University of British Columbia, in Canada.

As part of his dissertation, he traveled to a remote Chilean archipelago to investigate what it is to live in isolation in the middle of the extreme climate.

His stay in solitude was full of metaphors, such as the sick tooth. Of course, it does not urged people to perform medical procedures by themselves, but for him, the situation showed him how we often ignore our potential.

“When these things happen, a part of you always thinks: 'I need to be close to a dentist or be close to other people,” he says.

Many people, he says, fear loneliness.

“Because one of the challenges of loneliness is that it forces you to face what you ignore,” he says.

However, for him it was a learning process and thus told the BBC outlook program.

Kull, who is currently 79 years old, grew in poverty in a rural area in southern California.

His bed was in a hall of his house, so he had no privacy. Although he does not describe abuse, he affirms that his parents judged him constantly. The only thing that linked his family was the love for nature.

“Every summer Sunday, in the afternoon, we did picnics. That was what kept us together,” he says.

From there also his interest and constant search for loneliness was born.

“In a way, my childhood was idyllic, but I did not understand this at all. I just felt that there was something wrong in me. So cross the road, climb the spike wire fence and disappear in a forest of trees, grasslands and a stream, and simply be alone, it was a great blessing to me,” he says.

And he adds: “It was the only place where I could relax and be the one I really am. I think that was where this love began to be alone in the non -human world.”

Once adult, he left his house as soon as he could. After traveling in the US, he moved to Canada to avoid being recruited for the Vietnam War.

There he had multiple jobs: in a fire department, in a sawmill, in maintenance, under construction and even took a photography course for two years.

He also lived an existential crisis.

“I had become a macho man, who got drunk in the bars and damaged everything his hands touched,” he says.

“I felt something empty, my life was simply empty. I needed to spend time with myself,” he adds.

Then he decided to spend his first long period in solitude, in the midst of the nature of northern Canada.

For three months, he fished and hunted in a forest in the province of British Columbia. And one of those days, near a beach, saw the traces of a bear. His adventure became a terrifying experience.

Now he had to face his fear or return to life in society. It was decided for the first.

“One night, I left the fire behind, I walked to the forest and lay down on the ground in the middle of the dark. I was there for a while and listened to a bear coming to me. I scared myself, I was on the verge of panic,” he says.

He remained motionless, because before the presence of a wild animal, any false step could have meant death.

Without any purpose, because he had no one close, he began to ask for help. And then he surrendered: “If a bear needs to eat me, so.”

Experience deeply marked his life. The bear never came and does not know if it was real, but understood that he had achieved something essential: a spiritual surrender that connected him with something bigger than him.

“I had the fantasy that this would be my life, full of light and astonishment. This was what I had been looking for: a feeling of spiritual presence,” he says.

After this experience in nature, Kull continued traveling and even offered a sailing and diving course in the Dominican Republic.

Later, he was hit by a drunk driver, spent a year in a hospital in Montreal and suffered the amputation of one leg.

This painful experience led him to study biology, environment and psychology at the University of McGill at age 40. In the doctorate, he turned his interests, and instead of studying the world around him, he began to analyze himself.

“I realized that the animal I really wanted to study was myself,” he says.

The idea of the last hope arose, an archipelago in southern Chile far not only from tourists, but from people in general. A place, as the government of the South American country, “fierce and extreme” warned him.

“I told the Chileans that I knew the cold, I had lived in western Vancouver in Canada,” says Kull. “But I really had no idea what the cold climate is. That place in Chile was the most windy on earth,” he adds.

The Chilean Navy helped him arrive with his entire team and settled on a small island that he didn't even have a name. There was no one tens of kilometers away.

He carried a long list of materials: food, construction tools, a fishing rod, a kayak and an inflatable boat, propane, stove and communication equipment.

And, in addition, a cat that would help him identify if his fishing remained cool, but that became the mimad companion of Kull, for whom he would catch shellfish and take care of the inclement inclementians of the south of the world.

The first months were overwhelming.

He slept in a tent that one night was flooded by the tide, forcing him to move all his things and then build with his own hands a high cabin on posts to avoid wet soil.

“My plan was to staple the canvases, I carried 2,000 staples, but they were the wrong size. I had to nail them one by one with a hammer, with my fingers cracked by the cold. I did not stop hammering and curse,” he says.

In his improvised home, Kull could face the hard Patagonia a little better.

Who could not escape inside those canvas walls was of himself.

The strong wind and humidity spoiled the wood and canvas booth, so Kull spent the days occupied with repairs.

“Simply, I lived day by day, although it was quite busy, because you always had to make repairs. But beyond that, I also had to go fishing, looking for firewood with the chainsaw, cutting that wood for the fire,” he says.

He also continued with his meditation practice at established schedules.

“On Sundays they were my rest days. At that time of the week I did nothing structured, not even meditating or any work, I was just there,” he adds.

Precisely, that moment of the week was “the most difficult.”

Kull thought that during his year Patagonia would feel like in those three months that spent in the Canadian forest, “interwoven” with the world.

And there were moments like that. But then, especially on Sundays, it fell “in a deep depression, anger, feeling of loneliness and alienation,” he says.

However, loneliness, in addition to helping him discover his potential, as happened after taking his tooth, or surrendering to the moment, as happened in the Canada forest, he also gave him a third great teaching: acceptance.

“I think that the most important lesson I learned was equanimity, accepting things as they are,” he describes.

This idea came to him while visiting a glacier he had seen on his Patagonia maps. He was even more isolated, far from his little cabin and the cat that accompanied him.

“In the same way that I cannot control the outer climate, but I can learn to live with him and not feel so bad when it is cold or rain, it occurs with the inner climate,” says Kull.

“Sometimes inside it is sunny and heat, sometimes there is fog there is already a storm.”

“It seems nonsense, right? The statement that things are as they are, is so basic. And, nevertheless, we dedicate a lot of time and energy to deny reality, to deny that things are as they are. Or to fight against reality,” he continues.

Kull spent a year and peak in Patagonia, until her friend Patty arrived with the Chilean Navy to look for him.

He assures that he was already accustomed to loneliness, and that he was in no hurry to end his adventure.

“When Marina's ship came to look for me, Patty was with me, but I went to the stern and simply sat down and watched how the island disappeared in the distance,” he recalls.

He comments that for him, last hope had become a “home.”

He currently lives in Vancouver, Canada. He still has moments of whole loneliness.

“A month went by camping alone. I drive to the north and then pay a pilot to take me to a remote lake with his hydrote and leave me there,” he says.

Where is this lake? He refuses to say it.

He doesn't want anyone to interrupt his loneliness.

The original interview with Bob Kull was conducted by the BBC outlook program. You can listen to the English version here. The story was adapted to text by Ronald Alexander Ávila-Claudio.

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