Habitat for hermits

The poignancy of traditional hermit writing the world over is in the hermit’s contrast of society (cities, temples, palaces) with the freedom of the deserts, forests, and mountains. Deserts, forests, and mountains are not just symbols of the unchanging, but true habitats for a viable life of reclusion. But modern solitaries (and everyone else) have virtually lost this habitat, and with it even the symbols. The danger to the viability of life itself can be gradual or sudden: logging, mining, drilling, spoliation, pollution, dumping, poisoning, radiation. Human menaces have reduced deserts, mountains, and forests to environmentally endangered status. This has effectively reduced the possibilities for wilderness eremitism for moderns to a minimum. And government, corporations, and society would gladly eliminate privacy as well.

After many years of desert eremitism, the hermit Paul is recorded as asking a famous visitor: “How fares the world? What great cities have risen and fallen? What empire now holds sway?” Echoing these questions, we might today add: “And what desert, forest, or mountain is still viable habitat for a hermit?”