Thor Heyerdahl’s Fatu-Hiva: Return to Nature
An Epic adventure challenges man’s ability to return to nature in the most remote corner of our world.
Archaeologist and explorer Thor Heyerdahl’s Fatu-Hiva: Back to Nature came out in 1974, but tells of the real-world experiment of he and his wife, Liv, challenging humankind’s ability to live as one with nature during a fifteen-month stay in the Marquesas Islands, between 1937-1938. The book was first published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin.
I was introduced to the book by a friend, who picked it up as required reading in the Cook Islands while circumnavigating the globe with his wife.
The wanderlust inside me simmered with these opening words:
“Back to nature? Farewell to civilization? It is one thing to dream of it and another to do it. I tried it. Tried to return to nature. Crushed my watch between two stones and let my hair and beard grow wild. Climbed the palms for food. Cut all the chains that bound me to the modern world. I tried to enter the wilderness empty-handed and barefoot, as a man at one with nature.”
In the beginning, the Heyerdahl’s found the island life a paradise. They even opted in for a second year on the island, instead of returning to the civilized world. An abundance of breadfruit trees and readily-available unpolluted water allowed for much of life’s necessities.
The charm, however, soon wore off as they faced the reality of elephantiasis-bearing mosquitos, torrential weather, mudslides, and unfamiliar tropical diseases. Eventually, the two found it impossible to live among the local people and ended up sheltering in a seaside cave, anxious to return home.
By the end of the adventure, Heyerdahl bitterly concludes:
“There is nothing for modern man to return to. Our wonderful time in the wilderness had given us a taste of what man had abandoned and what mankind was still trying to get even further away from. ... Progress today can be defined as man's ability to complicate simplicity. ... Nothing in all the procedure that modern man, helped by all his modern middlemen, goes through before he earns money to buy a fish or a potato will ever be as simple as pulling it out of the water or soil. Without the farmer and the fisherman, modern society would collapse, with all its shops and pipes and wires. The farmers and the fishermen represent the nobility of modern society; they share their crumbs with the rest of us, who run about with papers and screwdrivers attempting to build a better world without a blueprint.”
Even today, this island guarantees visitors a stop-off at one of the most remote places in the world. Without an airstrip, guests can only arrive by boat. Approaching its vertiginous reliefs and verdant vegetation, visitors are awe-struck by its otherworldly appearance. Once ashore, there are simply the two peaceful villages of Omoa and Hanavavae, connected by a single road.
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