Hello friends, this is the second part of my two-part tale about moving to a remote cabin in northern Minnesota during the height of the early pandemic. In case you missed part 1, which will offer some context, you can read it here.
“I am here alone for the first time in weeks to take up my “real” life again ... Friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone after in which to explore or discover what is happening or has happened.”
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
For all my life, I fantasized about being alone, particularly if it was in a remote, wild place.
It was (and still is) something I both like and criticize about myself. I was an independent woman! I didn’t “need” anyone! This often led me to, for example, move to a new place because it represented independence, or break up with perfectly nice boys because they wanted too much of my time. Even deciding to take on a dependent of any kind–my cat, Aurora, who I found on a deserted road in the woods as a kitten–felt like a massive identity shift. Plans, relationships, and social obligations only seemed like an interruption of my truest life, which was being solitary.
Considering this, I thought two weeks of quarantine in a cabin in the woods would be a productive, enriching time of aloneness, the kind I fantasized about. I had no job and no social obligations. I didn’t have to leave the house. What a dream.
However, it was far from fantasy and far from productive. It was really effing hard.
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