Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Wild and Tranquil
    Wild and Tranquil
    Wild and Tranquil
    Ebook60 pages44 minutes

    Wild and Tranquil

    By Alastair Batchelor

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    This story is about solitude in the face of impending extinction. A man past middle age decides to turn his back on a doomed society and set himself up in a bush camp far away from the civilization that has systematically encroached on and decimated the planet’s environment.
    The atmosphere was becoming so polluted breathing was difficult and every day, sapped each individual life force, the rainfall was so acidic, instead of nourishing the plant life as it always had, it caused green leaves to shrivel and the roots to die. The oceans no longer supported their former abundant, thriving sea life and lapped onto the shores in listless, oily slurps.
    Our character packed his four wheel drive with all the equipment and supplies he could carry and retreated into the mountains and dense bush land of New Zealand’s South Island, in its largely wild and almost unexplored South Westland. Here the mountain streams were less polluted and the leaves on the vegetation still green. Even much of the animal life still survived and he was still able to awake each morning to the bird’s early chorus.
    The book follows his years of solitude and introspection as he carves out an existence in the wild and how a chance visitor in the night gives some purpose to his life. Perhaps there is something in this writing most of us can relate to in some stage of our lives.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlastair Batchelor
    Release dateMar 3, 2018
    ISBN9781370487257
    Wild and Tranquil
    Author

    Alastair Batchelor

    Born 1941 in Dunedin, New Zealand. Moved to Thailand in 2004 where he worked as a teacher and manager at an English Language school. Alastair and his Thai wife live in a rural area about 150 km from Bangkok and enjoy being part of the local community. Although the years are catching up. he still enjoys getting out on a Kawasaki sports bike and feeling the wind in his hair, stopping frequently to observe, photograph and video the nature around us. A student of human nature, Alastair feels, living in a grass roots community, offers a far greater opportunity to get to know his neighbors as real people

    Read more from Alastair Batchelor

    Related to Wild and Tranquil

    Related ebooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      A granny OLD TIME

      Jan 17, 2021

      Schools and early childhood centres are so close to re-opening, you can probably smell the freedom from here. This is not because we don’t love our kids or don’t love having them around, it’s just… ooh, a bit of quiet between breakfast and dinner wou

      3 min read

    • Article

      Feeling Myself

      May 27, 2022

      Feeling Myself
      4 min read

    • Article

      Run Your Own Race

      Oct 27, 2023

      Run Your Own Race
      4 min read

    • Article

      How I Demolished My Life

      Dec 28, 2021

      How I Demolished My Life
      11 min read

    • Article

      Exhaling

      Dec 7, 2021

      Around me are fifty or so men, in whose company I will sit and be silent for ten days. I eye them discreetly, wondering who among them is going through a crisis. Who, like me, has a family. Who’s single, who’s been dumped, who’s poor or unhappy. Who’

      52 min read

    • Article

      Soft Living

      Jan 1, 2023

      Soft Living
      5 min read

    • Article

      On Healing

      Sep 4, 2020

      In 2016 my partner and I bought a wooden cottage on 10 acres of land, on an ecotone where the woodlands meet the foothills of the mountains. The area had been logged relentlessly in the 1950s. One by one, the tall trees of the old growth cedar forest

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Creative Hero’s Journey: 5 Reasons You Should Write Your Book, Paint Your Picture, Sing Your Song

      Dec 9, 2021

      Estimated reading time: 10 minutes — I used to be a professional disease hunter, a board-certified surgical pathologist. I was the M.D. in a white coat who stared at your skin (or breast, brain or bone, etc.) biopsy under the microscope and let your

      6 min read

    • Article

      Winning Letter

      Mar 31, 2023

      ONE of my lecturers told us we shouldn’t rely on hope to get us through difficult times because it creates a false sense of security. I got it but I just can’t accept the idea that life without hope is better. So many stories in this edition show why

      5 min read

    • Article

      Sabrina Cohen-Hatton

      Sep 20, 2021

      Sabrina Cohen-Hatton
      5 min read

    • Article

      Angela Scanlon

      May 16, 2022

      Angela Scanlon
      5 min read

    • Article

      Confessions Of A Good Man

      Aug 4, 2019

      Confessions Of A Good Man
      7 min read

    • Article

      Self-edits

      Jun 19, 2021

      My favorite place to write at home is a quiet reading nook with large, sunny windows overlooking the yard. The section it faces is fenced, so even though the rest of summertime Alaska is bursting with new life, this tiny corner of the state remains p

      2 min read

    • Article

      Heart To Heart

      Jun 17, 2021

      Heart To Heart
      5 min read

    • Article

      Oops! I Did Him Again

      May 20, 2021

      This Special Collector’s Edition roughly marks a one-year anniversary since the details of my love story, ‘I fell in love with the Devil’, a story of personal growth and the life lesson for the ages when it comes to protecting your heart and loving y

      4 min read

    • Article

      Heart To Heart

      Aug 11, 2020

      Heart To Heart
      4 min read

    • Article

      Wild Days

      Jul 27, 2020

      Wild Days
      7 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      Getting on Life’s Conveyor Belt: One Woman’s Journey of Transforming What Wasn’t Working into What Was Meant to Be

      Jul 15, 2021

      Estimated reading time: 4 minutes — Sometimes I literally stop what I’m doing, look around and wonder, has it only been one year or has it been a lifetime since everything changed?  If you had told me, “A year from now Katie, you will be living at y

      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Feb 16, 2024

      I loved the article ‘How to make friends as an adult.’ I am halfway to 60, and over the past few years my friend group has diminished quite drastically, mainly due to factors such as immigration, change of life, age and, of course, the after-effects

      4 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Inventions of Witches

      Oct 30, 2017

      The Inventions of Witches
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Brand-new ending

      Jan 29, 2022

      A Brand-new ending
      7 min read

    Reviews for Wild and Tranquil

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Wild and Tranquil - Alastair Batchelor

      Wild and Tranquil

      By

      Alastair Batchelor

      Published at Smashwords

      Copyright 2015

      Alastair Batchelor

      This eBook is licensed for your personal

      enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to

      other people. If you would like to share this with another person,

      please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are

      reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased

      for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and

      purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of

      this author.

      Please note

      Any comments you would like to make regarding

      this book or any of those listed at the end of this one. Refer to Alastair:

      alnee@hotmail.com

      Reviews are always appreciated and provision

      for these is available on the Smashwords Author page. Thank you.

      Table of Contents

      Forward

      Chapter 1 A Family Around Us

      Chapter 2 A Visitor in the Night

      Chapter 3 Getting Acquainted

      Chapter 4 A Visit to Civilization

      Chapter 5 Replenishing Stores

      Chapter 6 Realization

      Chapter 7 A Never Ending Sunset

      Chapter 8 The Day Fades

      Foreword

      Not much light penetrated this gloom and the little which did, was softened and absorbed by the dark greens of the ferns, moss and lichen covered stones. Sheltered by massive and ancient trees from winds and deflecting all, but the heaviest of rain, it provided an ideal place to establish a bush camp. The position was far enough away from the gurgling, tumbling stream to make sure it was not washed away by one of the flash floods, which born of violent rain-storms high in the mountains, came roaring down the valleys behind a two meter high wall of water, carrying trees and boulders before them. Think, a terrifying tsunami contained between the steep walls of ravines. Strong enough to pick up a D7 Caterpillar bulldozer and deposit it miles downstream, there was little warning, just a grinding and rumbling as huge boulders and uprooted trees were tumbled together.

      In winter, the snow didn’t settle here under the trees and hanging moss, it was still cold, but the banked fire and earth sod walls helped to keep me alive. Meat from deer, wild pigs, sheep, rabbits and goats kept reasonably fresh, or at least edible so long as it was hoisted high enough in the pine trees, while flour, salt, sugar and similar could be protected by keeping them tightly wrapped in a tin and a plastic container buried in the bank.

      Cooking was not much of a problem. A Maori oven was dug into the bank and an open fire with its chimney constructed from stones and clay collected from the stream carried away the smoke. My living and sleeping space was kept dry, this time with several sheets of corrugated iron found behind an old abandoned mine and furniture contrived over time from whatever materials came to hand. Crude I suppose, but comfortable. When I found some more discarded piping from another derelict site, I would have running water, not that it was much of a problem to just walk down to the stream.

      I had thought that time would be the greatest burden, but surprisingly there was always something to do. Hunting for wild game, collecting bird’s eggs, setting snares for eels and fishing took up a lot of time. Then there was always wood to be cut and stacked ready for cooking and stave off the all too frequent cold spells. I had to keep busy, or the dark brooding thoughts that were never far away, would descend like a tangible, suffocating black cloud to destroy me.

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1