Although I am not living on an island, it sometimes feels like it.
Unless I make the three mile trek to town I hear no human voices. The only footprints around the house are from feathered or furry friends. I don’t mind the isolation, or should I call it insulation? Insulation protects from outside perils.
Without the moon nights have been pitch black. It is a joy to see the sun rise in the morning. Some days there is fog drifting down from the mountains, slowly burning off, giving way to a breath-taking scenery. Those moments make up for the long, dark nights and gray, rainy days.
“The isolation spins its mysterious cocoon,
focusing the mind on one place, one time, one rhythm– the turning of the light.
The island knows no other human voices, no other footprints.”
M. L. Stedman
I have not read Stedman’s “The Light Between Oceans”, which is apparently a novel about a couple living in a remote lighthouse.
”There is something that appeals to the human psyche about lighthouses because of their isolation. Their presence offers up a marvelous set of dichotomies the human imagination likes to explore – darkness and light, safety and danger, stasis and movement, isolation and communication”, she says.
I have read Bob Kull’s “Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes”, which is a diary about living alone for one year on a remote island off the Patagonian coast. He took his doctoral dissertation very seriously. At age 55, he traveled to Chile with enough supplies to study the effects of deep wilderness solitude on a human being, himself.
“We experience the earth as a stranger we know we should protect for pragmatic or ethical reasons, but until we individually transform our consciousness and come to experience non-human beings as family and the earth as our home, we are unlikely to relax our demands for comfort and security and make the changes necessary for our survival, joy, and sense of belonging.
Bob Kull
His dissertation is available online. It’s an easy and interesting read. You can also learn how much stuff you need to bring to survive for one year on an uninhabited island off Patagonia.
Bearly 
Thanks for Kull’s link – sounds interesting. If you’re only 3 miles from town, it sounds like you’ve got the best of both worlds. Solitude for reflection and living in nature (but proximity to people/supplies when you need or want them). Although I daresay it would be a hard slog to town in mid winter.
Another lovely image at the top of this post.
I do the trip once or twice s week. When there is too much snow or ice, I wait 🙂
Great photo and post, loved the quote from Kull
Thanks. I hope my posts make somehow, somewhere a difference.