Welcome back for the third week of our reading and discussion of Sylvain Tesson’s The Consolations of the Forest. This week I’d like to offer a few more questions to consider and discuss while you are reading the book:

• What is Tesson’s relationship with Lake Baikal?
• How does he feel about the local people who make the area their permanent home?
• What sacrifices does Tesson make?

While thinking about the way of life in the six month time frame of this book, there are several ways to reflect upon how this choice would affect your own life:

• Some of the items Tesson brings with him include pasta and tabasco, tons of acetaminophen, cigars, icons, vodka and several types of axes, what provisions would you bring for six months in the taiga?
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover by Lawrence, Tales of a Lost Kingdom by L’Homme, In Cold Blood by Capote, The Story of My Life by Casanova, A Sand County Almanac by Leopold, The Thousand and One Nights, Ecco Homo by Nietzsche, and Walden by Thoreau are in his cabin reading stock, what books would you bring?
• How would you feel about a loved one making a choice to live out of contact for six months?

Tesson begins the book by writing “I promised myself before I turned forty I would live as a hermit deep in the woods” (p.1). 

• Have you ever set any far reaching goals for yourself? Were you successful?