Just you and the mountain, would you?
“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, face only the essential facts of life and see what they had to teach me, lest when he was about to die, he should discover that he had not lived. Jose Diaz he learned this phrase by heart from his bedside book, Walden, by the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau . And with this phrase in mind and his passion for nature he decided to follow in his footsteps and isolate himself in the woods. Leaving “100 days in absolute solitude away from the convulsive rhythm of civilization”.
Armed only with a camera crew he climbed aboard his isolated cabin at 1,500m in the Parque de Redes, in Asturias, a Biosphere Reserve, accompanied only by his horse Attila and for the rooster and hens that he had previously brought up. Just like him, he prepared a small piece of land as a garden, and a tupperware with some food that he left on the shore of a nearby river.
The cabins in the cold winter.
In a situation of self-sufficiency, he completely isolated himself from the world, from technology, The closest thing to human contact was the letters he received and sent to his wife every Monday, he left them in another cabin and when he left his son picked them up. In order not to lose his voice, so that he would not atrophy, he speaks out loud, he speaks with his horse, with his cameras.
Attila and José, intimate.
During the day he would go out to explore the incredible mountains, one of the places with the most wild fauna in freedom in Europe. Díaz chose the best time of the year from September 12 to December 15 (from 2015) , to still catch some almost summer day, enjoy all of autumn and its changing colors and meet the first snowfalls. The images he captures with the drone are impressive.
At night he secludes himself in total darkness in the cabin. At one point when he turns off the light and the camera the screen fades to black. The feeling of loneliness passes through her and she understands a little the hardest part that he endured.
The cabin at sunset.
"Loneliness and isolation are the hardest," he comes to recognize in the documentary. On windy days that feeling was enhanced. "I felt the harshness of loneliness relentlessly," he admits. "And I learned a lot from her."
He left with the main objective of challenging himself, of finding himself, of facing the pain of his brother Tino, whom he lost a few years before; but also with all those purposes that are so latent today in our society: the need to return to the origins, to reconnect with nature, learn again to respect her, the urgency to question the frenetic movement that dominates us, of trying to slow us down, why are we always in such a hurry, of tracking down the real adventurous spirit and to overcome our psychological barriers.
Loneliness is this.
Watching the documentary makes you want to emulate him in some way. To feel that absolute disposition of your time. To change television for the forms of a bonfire. To feel the showers of cold and pure water from the mountain as a moment of rebirth. Seeing it you wonder if you could live 100 days of solitude in the mountain. José Díaz could and he says that he was “happy, very happy”. "Although I cried, I suffered, I doubted, I reneged... I was immensely happy."
Icy showers, surprisingly, were his best moment.