Last night, I watched the 2022 documentary, Geographies of Solitude, directed by Jacquelyn Mills, available for streaming online on CBC Gem. In the listing, it is described as: An immersion into the rich landscapes of Sable Island and the life of Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived over 40 years on this remote strip of sand.
I’ve known about Zoe Lucas and her connection to Sable Island for many years. I first read about her in an article – I believe it was probably in Harrowsmith Magazine in the 1970s. I’d already possessed something of a fascination with the remote island. A “Sable Island – Graveyard of the Atlantic” map, annotated with many shipwrecks, hung on the wall at our family cottage back in the 1960s. Then I learned about the dozens of horses that lived on the sliver of sand dunes which lies far off the southeast shore of Nova Scotia. As a teenager, I longed to go there — to see the horses, of course! According to Lucas, it was the horses that attracted her to visit the island for the first time in 1971.
There’s much more to this film than geography and the horses. Lucas has spent her lifetime there, studying the ecology, collecting specimens, recording her observations, picking up beach trash to be analyzed, and many other tasks. It’s been a life of extreme solitude. Dustin Chang has written a very good review of the film for Screen Anarchy. It provides a good overview. Here’s a link to his review.
Runtime is about 104 minutes. Here is a link to watch the film on CBC Gem.. Unfortunately, most CBC Gem media is region restricted, so this probably can’t be viewed online from outside of Canada.