Solitude

So, the mountain hut is where I'd like to be, but in reality probably would never get to. And after the bushfires in Victoria the past few weeks, would it be a good place to be?

I'm fascinated by the monastic, retired, eremetic, simple living idea. A small living space, few possessions, contemplating life while working a small vegetable patch... Hmm, probably a bit idealistic.

One of my favourite "mountain hut" stories is by Kamo no Chōmei (鴨長明: 1155 – 1216), titled "Hōjōki" (方丈記: The Ten Foot Square Hut). This is the description of the hut:

If I compare it to the cottage of my middle years it is not a hundredth of the size. Thus as old age draws on my hut has grown smaller and smaller. It is a cottage of quite a peculiar kind, for it is only ten feet square and less than seven feet high, and as I did not decide to fix it in any definite place I did not choose the site by divination as usual. The walls are of rough plastered earth and the roof is of thatch. All the joints are hinged with metal so that if the situation no longer pleases me I can easily take it down and transport it elsewhere. And this can be done with very little labor, for the whole will only fill two cart-loads, and beyond the small wage of the carters nothing else is needed.

Now hidden deep in the fastnesses of Mount Hino, I have put up eaves projecting on the south side to keep off the sun and a small bamboo veranda beneath them. On the west is the shelf for the offerings of water and flowers to Buddha, and in the middle, against the western wall is a picture of Amida Buddha so arranged that the setting sun shines from between his brows as though he were emitting his ray of light, while on the doors of his shrine are painted pictures of Fugen and Fudo. Over the sliding doors on the north side is a little shelf on which stand three or four black leather cases containing some volumes of Japanese poems and music and a book of selections from the Buddhist Sutras. Beside these stand a harp and a lute, of the kind called folding harp and jointed lute. On the eastern side is a bundle of fern fronds and a mat of straw on which I sleep at night. In the eastern wall there is a window before which stands my writing-table. A fire-box beside my pillow in which I can make a fire of broken brushwood completes the furniture. To the north of my little hut I have made a tiny garden surrounded by a thin low brushwood fence so that I can grow various kinds of medicinal herbs. Such is the style of my unsubstantial cottage.

(from http://www.humanistictexts.org/kamo.htm)