Background
On the occasion of their honeymoon, Thor Heyerdahl and his first wife Liv determined to escape from civilization, and to "return to nature". They nominally had an academic mission, to research the spread of animal species between islands, but in reality they intended to "run away to the South Seas" and never return home. The couple arrived at Fatu Hiva in 1937, in the valley of Omo‘a. Finding that civilization, albeit on a vastly reduced scale, was still present there, they decided to cross over the island's mountainous interior to settle in one of the small, nearly abandoned, valleys on the eastern side of the island. There, they made their thatch-covered stilted home in the valley of Uia.
Read more about this topic: Fatu Hiva (book)
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—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)