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By Root 249 0

without the supports of civilized life—without other people, without jobs, TV, theaters, restaurants, or libraries to help channel his attention. One interesting example of this type of person is a woman named Dorothy, who lives on a tiny island in the lonely region of lakes and forests of northern Minnesota, along the Canadian border. Originally a nurse in a large city, Dorothy moved to the wilderness after her husband died and their children grew up. During the three summer months fishermen canoeing across her lake stop at the island to have a chat, but during the long winters she is completely alone for months on end. Dorothy has had to hang heavy drapes on the windows of her cabin, because it used to unnerve her to see packs of wolves, their noses flattened against the windowpanes, looking at her longingly when she woke up in the mornings.

Like other people who live alone in the wilderness, Dorothy has tried to personalize her surroundings to an uncommon degree. There are flower tubs, garden gnomes, discarded tools all over the grounds. Most trees have signs nailed to them, filled with doggerel rhymes, corny jokes, or hoary cartoons pointing to the sheds and outhouses. To an urban visitor, the island is the epitome of kitsch. But as extensions of Dorothy’s taste, this “junk” creates a familiar environment where her mind can be at ease. In the midst of untamed nature, she has introduced her own idiosyncratic style, her own civilization. Inside, her favorite objects recall Dorothy’s goals. She has stamped her preferences on chaos.

More important than structuring space, perhaps, is structuring time. Dorothy has strict routines for every day of the year: up by five, check the hens for eggs, milk the goat, split some wood, make breakfast, wash, sew, fish, and so on. Like the colonial Englishmen who shaved and dressed impeccably every evening in their lonely outposts, Dorothy also has learned that to keep control in an alien environment one must impose one’s own order on the wilderness. The long evenings are taken up by reading and writing. Books on every imaginable subject line the walls of her two cabins. Then there are the occasional trips for supplies, and in the summer some variety is introduced by the visits of fishermen passing through. Dorothy seems to like people, but she likes being in control of her own world even more.

One can survive solitude, but only if one finds ways of ordering attention that will prevent entropy from destructuring the mind. Susan Butcher, the dog breeder and trainer who races sleds in the Arctic for up to eleven days on end while trying to elude the attacks of rogue moose and wolves, moved years ago from Massachusetts to live in a cabin twenty-five miles from the nearest village of Manley, Alaska (population sixty-two). Before her marriage, she lived alone with her hundred and fifty huskies. She doesn’t have the time to feel lonely: hunting for food and caring for her dogs, who require her attention sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, prevent that. She knows each dog by name, and the name of each dog’s parents and grandparents. She knows their temperaments, preferences, eating habits, and current health. Susan claims she would rather live this way than do anything else. The routines she has built demand that her consciousness be focused on manageable tasks all of the time—thereby making life a continuous flow experience.

A friend who likes to cross oceans alone on a sailboat once told an anecdote that illustrates the lengths to which solitary cruisers sometimes have to go in order to keep their minds focused. Approaching the Azores on an eastward crossing of the Atlantic, about eight hundred miles short of the Portuguese coast, and after many days without sighting a sail, he saw another small craft heading the opposite way. It was a welcome opportunity to visit with a fellow cruiser, and the two boats set course to meet in the open sea, side by side. The man in the other boat had been scrubbing his deck, which was partly covered by a foul-smelling, sticky yellow substance. “How did