Idle Days in Patagonia
A collecting trip to Patagonia ended by a gunshot wound, and the enforced stillness that followed turned into a study of what happens to a mind with nothing to do.
Hudson set out to collect birds in Patagonia, was disabled by a gunshot wound, and spent the enforced stillness watching the desert instead. The result is less an expedition account than a study of what happens to a mind with nothing to do but attend.
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Maria Popova
Not long after turning thirty, determined to make a name for himself as an ornithologist, Hudson set out on a yearlong observing expedition from the pampas to Tierra del Fuego, across the austere scrub and cold canyons of the Patagonian desert. Recounting the experience a lifetime later in his altogether magnificent 1893 book Idle Days in Patagonia (public domain), he reflects on the spirit in which he entered upon the adventure:
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