The Italian Robinson Crusoe

 Mauro Morandi, an Italian gym teacher who abandoned the modern world and lived for three decades on a tiny island off the coast of Sardinia, had a real-life adventure story that made him known as a latter-day Robinson Crusoe.

Mauro Morandi on Budelli

Part adventurer, part hermit, part conservationist, Mr. Morandi attracted international fascination with a story that in its most dramatic moments seemed drawn from shipwreck epics of centuries past. The story began, however, squarely in the modern age, and with the eminently modern problem of midlife ennui.

A native of the north-central Italian city of Modena, spent his early career as a physical education teacher but grew unhappy in his life and work. His principal, he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa, would sometimes look at him with a “scowl.” When an opportunity arose to take early retirement, Mr. Morandi jumped at it.

In 1989, the year he turned 50, he did something that even many of the most restless middle-agers would lack the gumption to do. He bought a catamaran, abandoned life as he had known it, and set sail with some friends for Polynesia.

The island Budelli with the Spiaggia Rosa

They got only as far as the Strait of Bonifacio, between the Italian island of Sardinia and the French island of Corsica. By some accounts, a mechanical failure forced Mr. Morandi to stop for boat repairs; by another, he spotted an opportunity to make money showing tourists around the islands that dot the strait and form the Maddalena archipelago.

In either case, he found himself on Budelli, a tiny island off the northern coast of Sardinia that is famed for its lustrous pink sand. Mr. Morandi felt immediately at home, having found in the place — as he put it — his own personal Polynesia. Budelli at that time was privately owned and was looked after by a caretaker who, Mr. Morandi came to learn, was days from retirement. Mr. Morandi’s arrival on Budelli at that point appeared foreordained. He agreed to take over as guardian, and for 32 years, except for occasional visits with his family in Modena, he never left.

Spiaggia Rosa on Budelli

Mr. Morandi made his residence in a shelter constructed during World War II and was often described as a hermit. But the truth was that he had his share of company — sometimes more than he wished for — especially when the summers brought sunbathers to Sardinia and the surrounding islands. Mr. Morandi defended Budelli’s fragile beaches from their invasion and kept its paths clean. More welcome to Mr. Morandi were tourists who were interested in the island’s ecology, for whom he served happily and expertly as guide and ranger.

He also received visits from friends, who brought food and other goods to supplement the provisions he obtained from the nearby larger island of La Maddalena. But often it was Budelli itself that provided for him. Mr. Morandi described eating seagull-egg frittatas, making stews from nettle, asparagus and chicory, and foraging for mushrooms.

He told Slate magazine that one winter, the wind howled in a way that he had never heard before or since and the waves reached a height of 18 feet. “I realized that humans are nothing against nature,” Mr. Morandi said. “Even with all of our technology, we are nothing but small ants.”

Mr. Morandi had a clock but did not look at it, he told Il Messaggero. He simply went to sleep when he was tired and awoke with the sun. He grew to know Budelli in intimate detail, to notice the gradations of color that distinguished one sunset from the next and to sense the tides that made the shore an ever-changing beauty. He shared that beauty with people around the world after Budelli was equipped with an internet connection. Despite his long years beyond the reach of modernity, he took easily to social media, regularly posting photos of Budelli’s flora and fauna. In time, Mr. Morandi became an island attraction of his own, often compared to the titular castaway of Daniel Defoe’s 18th-century novel “Robinson Crusoe.”

But in time, life changed. In 2016, Budelli became part of a government-owned national park. Officially, Mr. Morandi was no longer permitted to reside on the island. An online petition supporting his request to stay attracted nearly 75,000 signatures. In 2021, Mr. Morandi relented and moved to an apartment on La Maddalena, later returning to Modena, where he died in January at the age of 85.  When he died, he wished for his ashes to be scattered in the waters of Budelli.

Mauro Morandi was born in Modena on Feb. 12, 1939. He described himself to CNN as a “rebellious child” and said that he ran away from home for the first time when he was 9. He participated in the student protest movement that swept Italy in 1968.  He had three daughters but revealed little of his family life.

After his years as a gym teacher, Mr. Morandi ran a vintage clothing shop but could not escape the pull to turn away from society. He sailed along Italy’s Po River before venturing into the Adriatic and then on his aborted venture to Polynesia.

In 2020, as the world shut down amid the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, CNN interviewed Mr. Morandi about the nature of solitude. “The most beautiful, dangerous, adventurous and gratifying [journey] of all is the one inside yourself, whether you’re sitting in the living room or under a canopy here in Budelli,” he remarked. “That’s why staying at home and doing nothing can be really hard for many.”

Mr. Morandi was the subject of the book “The Guardian of Budelli: The Story of a Man and His Deserted Island,” which he co-wrote with Antonio Rinaldis. He had a theory as to why he inspired such interest, and it went beyond the curious tale of a man alone on a deserted island.

“I’m the living proof that a second, new life is possible,” he told CNN. “You can always start all over again, even if you’re over 80, because there are other things you can experience, a totally different world.”

Adapted from The Washington Post