Living alone in nature is the kind of decision that looks great on paper. You could move away from the pressures of city life, to somewhere with a lower cost of living and more privacy. You could enjoy scenic views all year round, and adopt a simpler way of life. It's not hard to see the appeal of this at all. But what happens when that all goes wrong?
Paul Kingsnorth is a distinguished writer—his novel The Wake was longlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Gordon Burn Prize. His books help develop an awareness of place and history, so it's not hugely surprising that his latest book, Savage Gods, is about his own rural existence. Savage Gods is in part about Kingsnorth, his wife, and their children moving to western Ireland. He writes, "In my country a small house and a field is beyond the means of anyone who doesn't earn much money or who refuses to get into debt to chase a dream." It's a feeling that anyone who's looked longingly at rural tiny houses miles from anyone else can relate to.
But Kingsnorth is aware that this is only part of the story. "Because I am not a real farmer, I have to make my money in other places," he writes, "I need the Internet or the Dublin-to-Holyhead ferry and sometimes both to put food on my family's table." To make matters worse, Kingsnorth's isolation(隔离) results in a crisis of confidence in his own writing abilities—which becomes one of the central themes of Savage Gods.
Kingsnorth isn't the only writer to make time spent in a vivid countryside landscape sound less enjoyable than one might expect. The French writer Sylvain Tesson takes this to what may be its most extreme point in his book. He lived alone for six months. His book includes impressive descriptions of the landscape and what it's like to experience depression in the middle of such a landscape.
Some books neatly remind you of the appeal of such an existence, while others make the drawbacks central to their accounts. In Names for the Sea, Moss summarizes the attraction of wilder places. "We'd come for the landscape, for the pale nights and dark shores, rain sweeping over trees and bushes," she writes. From that, it's not hard to see why a life in nature—even with its potential downsides—still appeals to so many.
