There is a gentle passage in Joseph Brodsky's sublime essays on arrival, place, and unpacking ourselves where he writes about landing in Venice and feeling perfect anonymity, where no one knows him and he knows no one. There is something about the oft-traveller; he empties himself to make space for new.

Sylvain Tesson (born April 26, 1972) is a formidable French travel writer with experiences hiking across the Himalayas, biking around the world, and following the path of Gulag escapees, all in attempts to stress-test society's limits and boundaries. In crossing these boundaries, he shoves aside a few of his own.

Norway, mid-winter light without a filter. "The sepia gloom of an arctic afternoon in midwinter invaded the rooms and was deepening to an oppressive black," Nabokov once wrote. Snow provides an apt companion to solitude; it forces one to wrap up and sit down.

In The Consolations of the Forest, Tesson fulfills a self-promise and retreats to a cabin in the woods on Lake Baikal. He avoids useless materialism and addresses what psychologist Rollo May called "the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them."

It's funny: you decide to live in a cabin and envision yourself smoking a cigar under the open sky, lost in meditation ... and you wind up checking off items on supply lists like an army quartermaster. Life comes down to grocery shopping.

Tesson brings supplies and plenty of books, reduces stimulation, amplifies solitude, and writes astutely about being interrupted by humans—devastated by it, in fact: “What I came here to escape has descended on my island: noise, ugliness, testosterone-fueled herd behavior.”

Like many who find themselves in vast solitude and angry at the insensitive interruption, Tesson's intensely observational eye swims between the vast and the minute (reminds me of physicist Alan Lightman's contemplation of the universe and its stardust) and winds everything together in meaning.

Respecting insects brings joy. Taking a passionate interest in the infinitely small helps guard against an infinitely mediocre life. For the insect lover, a puddle can be Lake Tanganyika, a pile of sand that takes on the aspect of the Taklamakan Desert.

Buff tip of a camouflaged moth. Photograph by Joshua Burch.

I've spent much time alone, and this book resonated. The desire to withdraw and renew, certainly. But other aspects felt too on the nose: "In the depths of the taiga, I changed myself completely." How do you change completely? Do your beliefs change? Your manner of interaction? Indeed, to change would be, at the very least, to deny the compulsion to write another book about solitude.

That being said, Tesson's underlying message rings true:

We alone are responsible for the gloominess of our lives. The world is grey because of our blandness. Life seems pallid. Change your life, and head for the cabins. In the depths of the woods, if life remains dreary and your surroundings unbearable, the verdict is in: you can't stand yourself!

As a lifelong introvert and seeker of empty spaces, I've found being alone isn't about avoiding others. Nurturing and sustainable solitude allows others to flow through us and remain unaffected, yet have empathy. I cannot strike that balance, nor can Tesson.

"Open Space" by Clare Millen. Using repeated application and scraping, Millen forms structures on the canvas. "I work in layers -" Millen articulates, "I am led by what is revealed and work intuitively until I feel the piece is complete."

Read on the sustaining and self-evolving powers of solitude in Lynne Schwartz's delightful Ruined by Reading or Mary Oliver's Upstream. Read more on the nature of creative alienation in Anna Deavere Smith's Letter to a Young Artist. And finally, my study of meaning ensconced in small things.