#shocking absolutely no one im being insane about smirkes fourteen

[the-acer-scientist]

the Galapagos affair was a failed lonelyvast ritual, in this essay I will…

y’all know that episode of tma where literally all Oliver Banks wants is a gods be damned nap and some peace and quiet and the only way to get there is to go slightly south of the middle of Absolutely Nowhere? buckle in, and come with me as I ramble about that time in history where a real person had the same idea. disclaimer: my only source is a mostly-remembered version of the documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, so please do not quote me on anything

friedrich ritter, in 1929, left everything and everyone he had ever known save for one shipload of supplies and a ‘friend’, dore strauch. you see, his ultimate goal was to escape the shackles of society once and for all. he and dore were going to Return to Nature, really do their best to revert to pre-civilization. and the best place to do this, of course, was Floreana (one of the smaller Galapagos island).

imagine, for a moment. you, a shack of a house, a woman you brought along (mostly to monologue about philosophy at), and 173 square kilometers (67 sqmi) of island. for the rest of your life. 75 kilometers from your nearest neighbor and 960ish km from the mainland, nothing but undiscovered forests and open seas. as far away from society as it was possible to get. sure, it sounds lovely from here. everyone has those moments of ‘gods, I just wish I could get away from it all’. but realize this: there was no coming back. there was no chance of speaking to another human being except your roommate for the rest of your entire life. a decision that big, that irreversible, and especially that the decision was to stride into the unknown? tell me there’s not buckets of fear in there. when I call this Vast, I’m not just talking about the location.

in addition, tell me that the lonely didn’t prey upon the both of them. ritter was already Lonely, no one wants to get that far away without a reason, and he was exactly the kind of pretentious philosopher who believed that everyone is born alone and dies alone. dore, however, was not Lonely before she left. dore was only looking for an adventure, for variety, and to stay with ritter both as a friend and because he was ‘helping’ her with her MS. but, he failed to mention before they left, he did not actually think all that much of her. if I am remembering the documentary correctly, one of the other eventual inhabitants of the island recalled that ritter’s personal journal contained nary a single kind word about dore. tell me that’s not another layer of being Lonely, to be considered with contempt and disapproval by the only other person you’ll ever have contact with.

and, ironically enough, the Loneliness of it all was in fact taken down by a news article. the press got ahold of the story of the two people who were determined to abandon the world, published it, and lo and behold, the two were joined by an entire family in 1932, then soon after by a self-declared baroness and her two,,,, listen I don’t want to call them manwhores but I can’t think of a more classy term right now so we’re going with it

and of course, as humanity is wont to do, drama broke out and the perfect isolation of the tiny volcanic island was shattered.