Sylvain Tesson found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin in the middle taiga, on the shores of Lake Baikal, for six months. From February to July 2010, he lived in silence, solitude, and cold. His cabin, built by Soviet geologists in the Brezhnev years, was a cube of logs three metres by three metres, heated by a cast iron skillet, a six-day walk from the nearest village.