T. C. McLuhan quotes Stephanie Kaza’s The Attentive Heart: Conversations with Trees, wherein Kaza relates her travels among Pacific Northwest redwood trees. The passages will resonate with those who seek out solitary places:
I am looking for the cave tree, a tree I once encountered by accident. Underneath this large redwood there is a small dirt chamber big enough to stand in. The entrance is easy to miss; the tree looks as solid as any other from a distance. I ache to climb into this secret hollow today and hide from the world of thoughtless violence. I want to go deep into the earth and sit in the roots of a Tall One. I am hungry for the stillness and wisdom of caves.
A related Hermitary entry is “Don McLellan, Humboldt Hermit.”
This sentiment is very close to that expressed by Rilke in the ninth of his “Duino Elegies”:
Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely
in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all
other green, with tiny waves on the edges
of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze) –: why then
have to be human — and, escaping from fate,
keep longing for fate? …