Sylvain Tesson

A meditation on escaping the chaos of modern life describes the author's self-exile in a wooden cabin on Siberia's Lake Baikal, where he wrote about the region's harsh beauty, resilient populations, and tragic history.

Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga

The Consolations of the Forest

Vivian

Sylvain Tesson found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin in the middle taiga, on the shores of Baikal, for six months. From February to July 2010, he lived in silence, solitude, and cold. His cabin, built by Soviet geologists in the Brezhnev years, is a cube of logs three meters by three meters, heated by a cast iron skillet, six-day walk from the nearest village. To live isolated from the world while retaining one's sanity requires a routine, Tesson discovered. In the morning, he would read, write, smoke, or draw, and then devoted hours to cutting the wood, shovelling snow, and fishing. Emotionally, these months proved a challenge, and the loneliness was crippling. Noting carefully, almost daily, his impressions of the silence, his struggles to survive in a hostile nature, his despair, his doubts, but also its moments of ecstasy, inner peace and harmony with nature, Sylvain Tesson shares with us an extraordinary experience. 'Beautifully written restrained; a song of the taiga, its harmonies resonate for a long time in the mind of the reader.' Le Nouvel Observateur

The Consolations of the Forest Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga

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