Historical hermits have often reflected a religious motive, as have modern counterparts. Here are six religious men hermits, followed by non-religious.
Benedictine monk and hermit Dunstan Morrissey (1923–2009) founded Sky Farm Hermitage in 1977, in Sonoma, California. Sky Farm served as his dwelling, adding several cottages for retreatants over the years. After his death, two hermits have managed Sky Farm and continue to offer retreats.
Richard Withers (b. 1955) is a canonical hermit living modestly in a poor Philadelphia neighborhood. He adheres to a religious schedule but also engages in social and charitable work in his neighborhood.
Priest and hermit Charles Brandt (1923–2020) resided within old–growth forest on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, in Canada. Once an ornithologist, Trappist monk, and active book conservator, Brandt remained an avid photographer and naturalist, offering meditation retreats at his cabin. He is author of Meditations From The Wilderness: A Collection of Profound Writing on Nature as the Source of Inspiration (1997).
Daniel Bourguet (b. 1946) is a French Protestant hermit of the Reform sect, a former pastor and university professor, author of over two dozen books on Christian topics, none particular to eremitism. When studying as a youth, Bourguet felt a desire for solitude, discovering that his superiors approved of his aspiration. He spent time at a Trappist monastery and Dominican community before undertaking solitude at his own hermitage in a wooded area of Cevennes, southern France.
Bourguet lives in a single–room log cabin completely off grid, including the absence of media, yet like a starets, visitors seeking his counsel are numerous and regular. Bourguet has served as prior of the Order of Watchers, a virtual network of spiritually–minded hermits.
Maxime Qavtaradze (b. 1954) can be counted a modern stylite. The Georgian Orthodox priest lived alone atop Katskhi pillar, in a cottage adjacent to a chapel, 130 feet high (forty meters), from 1993 to 2015. Maxime would lift by pulley supplies prepared by fellow monks, though he descended the pillar twice a week. The pillar and chapel date from the tenth century; accessing the top of the pillar was forbidden by Patriarch Ilia II to preserve the site.
Norman Davies is a Jewish contemplative living in Malaga (Spain) as a hermit. He describes his daily life as “the practice of a dedicated and intentional prayerful lifestyle akin to solitary monasticism or eremitism. This is decided rarety in Jewish history and in twenty–first century Jewish practice it is virtually non–existent.” Davies, a former music teacher in the UK, cites Philo of Alexandria and the Essenes as ancient models, acknowledging the influence of his pre–conversion life as a Carmelite monk.
Motives among solitaries may converge around creativity, as Anthony Storr noted in his book Solitude: A Return to the Self. Two examples of creative hermits are Valerio Ricetti (1898–1952) and Manfred Gnädinger (1936-2002).
Ricetti, an Italian immigrant to Australia, arrived as an adolescent. He found work on steamboats. One day chancing upon a series of caves he decided to dwell in one. Over time he enhanced the caves via galleries into adjoining rock to create finished masonry passages and rooms, adding a water well, ample gardens, and wall iconography. Ricetti lived like a hermit. Injured one day, he was discovered by a passer–by, taken to hospital, and his dwelling–place revealed. Visitors praised his creation and he discovered the Italian community around Griffith, New South Wales, where he lived. Ricetti was interned with other Italians during World War II, put on road maintenance crews, where he shared his building skills, and returned to dwell in his cave after the war. In 1952, beset by mental illness, Ricetti returned to Italy, where he died shortly afterwards. The cave is today called “Hermit’s Cave,” maintained on the provincial registry for historic architecture.
Born in Germany, Manfred Gnädinger settled in Camelle on the coast of Galicia (Spain) in his twenties. He took up residence in a seaside hut, sculpting rock and driftwood in Gaudi–like configurations, dubbing the coast that displayed his works his museum. Man, as he was called, tall, long-bearded, and gaunt, lived a simple hermit life, with a small garden and neither electricity nor running water. He sculpted scores of figures and filled hundreds of notebooks with thousands of artistic sketches. Thirty years later, a horrific oil spill from the off–shore British tanker ship Prestige destroyed all of his work, bringing down all the sculptures and coating the beach and shoreline past his hut in thick black oil. Man was distraught. He died a month later. His “museum” has since been partially recovered by the village and preserved in commemoration of the hermit–artist.
If not creativity or overt belief, other contemporary hermit men are motivated by a personal response to the world.
Scottish–born Jake Williams has been a sailor, musician, handyman, and hermit. Williams lives in the Scottish Highlands, in the middle of a forest, where he contrives everything from tools to gardens using found objects recovered during expeditions to distant urban areas. He is the subject of the 2011 documentary film Two Years at Sea and continued media attention.
Sometimes the lure of escape overcomes the potential hermit, as in the example of Masafumi Nagasaki (b. 1936), who once worked in a factory in Osaka, Japan, dreaming of living on a deserted island. One day in 1989 he left civilization behind to live alone on the deserted Japanese island of Sotobanari (Okinawa Prefecture). He lived without electricity, water (except rainfall), animal food—or clothing, given that no one ever visited the deserted island.
Nagasaki is the subject of several news reports and films, wherein he would insist he wanted to live out his life on the island. But in 2018, a passing boater noticed him and notified authorities. Nagasaki was involuntarily removed from the island, placed in public housing, and refused permission to return to the island.
Italian–born Pietro Lentini sought to escape years of dissipation, becom-ing a hermit in the Umbrian region of the Apennines, on Mt. Aspra, in Valnerina. He found a ruined dwelling, furbished it—acquaintances later helping in the task— and lives there in silence and solitude, lacking running water and electricity, now with a solar-charged mobile phone gifted to him for emergencies. Occasionally Lentini descends to the town for provisions. He pursues a makeshift Christianity of his own crafting and frequently plays a worn flute. Lentini is seventy years old.
Since 1965, Chilean–born Faustino Barrientos lives alone on the shores of Lake O’Higgins in Patagonia, southernmost Chile. His dwelling is the remnant of a boat cabin. He lives from herds, livestock, and supplies from a boat that passes every ten days. He has no electricity, but uses battery–powered short wave and ham radios. Barrientos visits the nearest town every few years, riding by horse the twenty–five miles over mountains to exchange his animals for food and batteries. The inhabitants think he is crazy. He expresses no spiritual or other motive for his hermit lifestyle.
In 2001, Canadian researcher Robert Kull journeyed to a tiny deserted island in southern Chile to begin a year–long experiment in solitude wilderness. Kull had recently earned degrees in biology and psychology, and was scheduled to pursue a fellowship in behavioral studies in British Columbia, specifically interested in the effects of deep wilderness solitude. He convinced his doctoral faculty to accept his project, assembled food, clothes, supplies, and tools, and embarked. While pursuing observations and notes, Kull developed a routine of meditation; in his last months on the island, he quit reading and writing to concentrate on meditation, listening, stillness, and observation. Kull attributes the gradual realization that the self and all of nature is sufficient and sacred to the simplification undergone by the self–sufficiency and solitude he was able to experience. Kull recounts his year in his book Solitude: Seeking Wisdom In Extremes (2008).
Neil Ansell lived alone in Penlan Cottage in the rural isolation of Wales for five years, without car, phone, clock, or fossil fuel. In 2011, Ansell published a book on his solitude years, Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills, imminently observant while self–effacing about his routines and the wild creatures that shared his forest. Ansell observed birds, grew food, and foraged. The silence outside reflected a growing silence within. Interior monologue quieted to a whisper, then fading away entirely. While he had not practiced meditation beforehand, Ansell notes that he came to under-stand the Buddhist concept of no–mind. The self becomes as much a part of the landscape as a stone. Ansell’s five years were cut short by a virus he contracted, perhaps carried by bats or mice.
David Glasheen (b. 1943) enjoyed an elite and privileged life as a mil-lionaire stock broker in Australia until the 1987 stock market crash wiped out his wealth. Glasheen decided to quit society, eventually moving to deserted Restoration Island, where he learned to fish, cook, and survive with a poor solar–powered internet connection and an annual boat trip to buy supplies. He was frequently visited by journalists and old acquaintances; his wife divorced him as soon as he fell into poverty. Seventy–seven year old Glasheen has published a memoir titled Millionaire Castaway celebrating over twenty years of solitary life.
Since 1989, Mauro Morandi (b. 1939) has lived alone on the Italian island of Budelli, near Sardinia, a national park. Morandi has assembled solar panels, collects rainwater, makes furniture out of driftwood, and takes photographs of the island, enough to fill a book. Morandi gives occasional interviews, displaying a confident and relaxed perspective on solitude and self–sufficiency. A gentle skeptic, he nevertheless keeps up with family, acquaintances, and the world via mobile phone and social media. Pressured by national park authorities, Morandi quit the island April 2021.
Many other men have pursued a hermit life, in a variety of places around the world: British–born Brendon Grimshaw (1925–2012) moved to an island of Seychelles, East Africa. Pedro Luca (b. 1937) has lived in a cave in Argentina for the last forty years. New Zealander Tom Neale (1902–1977) spent sixteen years alone on a South Pacific island, more a survivalist than hermit. “Pete” has lived in a cave off the Kaikoura coast of New Zealand for over thirty years.
Russia counts many hermits beside the media–famous Agafia Lykova. For reasons suggesting a criminal past, “Viktor” moved to Siberia sixteen years ago to live in solitude, while Nikolai Gromov (b. 1947) presents the strange case of having left to the Siberian taiga in fear and remorse that he had slain his wife in a pique of drunkenness. Twenty–four years later, Gromov returned to his old dwelling. His wife had not been killed after all, but had died in an accident during Gromov’s self–exile. Gromov remains alone with the burden of his history.
Some apparent or aspiring hermits reveal pathological motives. Carlos Sanchez Ortiz, a young medical doctor, disappeared from his home in Spain, to be found twenty years later in a Tuscany forest in Italy. Mushroom pickers who crossed his path passed information on to a European missing persons organization. His family was contacted, describing then twenty–six year old Carlos as severely depressed. They prepared to visit him, if only for a short meeting, but the forest hermit had disappeared again.
A similar motive may have impelled Filipino Mang Emigdio. He took off suddenly, abandoning wife and children, when a typhoon destroyed their home in 1987. Emigdio was found living in a mountain cave, refusing to leave, his pitying family and villagers helping him eke out a solitary life with regular visits.
Wilderness solitude is not equated to survivalism by hermits. The case of Chris McCandless (1968–1992) remains perplexing and elusive. McCandless may have grown up suffering childhood trauma, but its effect was, typically, unnoticeable to others. He expressed an enthusiasm for nature, outdoors, and wilderness when young, also demonstrating a strong empathy for homeless people with whom he sometimes mingled in Washington, D.C., offering them food, clothing, and comfort, in the shadow of the comfort-able suburban home where he grew up with his parents. Over the years, his favorite reading was Tolstoy and Thoreau.
Upon college graduation, McCandless announced to family and friends a planned road trip. He had just given away his savings of $24,000 to charity, and disappeared, traversing the United States to end up in Alaskan wilderness. McCandless was intent upon plunging into wilderness survival, though he carried no food or gear, nor had acquired survival skills, only an expanded idealism. At first he attended to an evocative journal paralleling Thoreau’s, but the late entries change tone. His successes had waned in just four months. He foresaw a fast–approaching fate.
As McCandless biographer Jon Krakauer notes, McCandless had a copy of Louis L’Amour’s memoir Education of a Wandering Man, a page quoting from Robinson Jeffers’s poem “Wise Men in Their Bad Hours”:
Death’s a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made
Something more equal to the centuries
Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness.
On the other side of the page, which was blank, McCandless penned a brief farewell: “I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all!” McCandless died from starvation or food poisoning, at the age of twenty–four.
The case of Christopher Knight (b. 1965) is described in Michael Finkel’s 2017 book The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit. Knight spent twenty–seven years in a wooded camp in Maine close to tourist and visitor cabins, from which Knight stole food and provisions with great deftness. The biographer’s dogged interviews and identification of details reveal Knight to be a classic recluse (versus hermit). Knight was eventually caught, publicly rued his thievery, and has slipped into obscurity.
The Book of hermits: the history of hermits from antiquity to the present / Robert Rodriguez
