Hermits around the web – Hermitary
news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
An article in New Hampshire Magazine describes the Irish-born “hermit of Goat Island,” James Murdock. Murdock fled Ireland for political reasons, arriving in Boston and taking jobs on schooners up the North Atlantic coast, during which he identified Goat Island in New Hampshire as a potential squatting site. He lived there from 1903 to 1925. The author notes that Murdock’s daughter could not assert ownership. Little today remains of Murdock’s presence there.
The Tablet, a Catholic UK publication, recently offered a useful article on women hermits, authoritatively written by author and commentator Sara Maitland, author of A Book of Silence and How to be Alone. The title is “Palladius mentions 2,975 women living as hermits in the Egyptian desert.” (Full article available to registered users).
URL: https://www.thetablet.co.uk/columnists/3/21026/palladius-mentions-2-975-women-living-as-hermits-in-the-egyptian-desert
A recent film titled Wandering … But Not Lost features Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Master Mingyur Rinpoche. In 2011 he left the security of his monastery to live the life of a wandering yogi. His wandering lasted four and a half years (through 2015) incognito on the streets of India, Nepal and in Himalayan caves. In this film, Mingyur Rinpoche returns to share the insights he gained.
URL (trailer, another source): https://tricycle.org/magazine/mingyur-rinpoche-wandering/
A BBC News item about 74-year old Ken Smith, who is — as the article headline puts it — “The man who has lived as a hermit for 40 years” in the Scottish highlands. Ken visited the Canadian Yukon when young and was at once attracted to wilderness. Returning to his native UK he considered what region was the most isolated, and settled there, eventually building a cabin and settling into routines of foraging and fishing. Smith is the subject of a BBC Scotland documentary titled “The Hermit of Treig.”
URLs: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-59174870 (article); https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011hp3 (film).
Rediff News (India) article titled “Hermit Living In The Forest For 17 Years” consists of two sentences, with two photographs. The article text: “A man named Chandrashekhar was found living in the forest for over 17 years. He was living in his Ambassador car parked deep inside a dense forest area between the villages of Adtale and Nekkareforest in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district.”