Sky Farm Hermitage, founded by Fr. Dunstan Morrissey, offers cottages for private retreats in Sonoma, California. The Web site offers photos of the grounds and facilities, information for reservations and directions, plus biographies of the resident hermits. URL: http://www.skyfarm.org.
Hawaii hermit, Fr. Louis
We communicated with Fr. Louis, a retired Orthodox bishop living in Hawaii as a hermit, some time ago, so it is interesting to see how his one-page Yahoo! site (originally titled “Phoney Hermits” and still a page there) grew to include many pages of thoughts, rants, and life details. Some all-caps text and lots of religious controversy await visitors. URL: http://www.geocities.com/hermit3712/.
Hermits in Art: Sargent
The paintings of John Singer Sargent exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY) in summer 2000 and later sites included “The Hermit,” painted by Sargent in Italy in 1908 and with the added title “Il Solitario.” An image of the painting can be viewed at the John Singer Sargent Virtual Gallery http://www.jssgallery.org/Thumbnails/Sargent_Paintings1908.htm.
Connecticut hermit
A short Web page (from a local newspaper’s collection of postcards) about George Washington Gilbert, the so-called “Hermit of Ridgefield” in Connecticut, who died in 1924. URL: http://www.acorn-online.com/pc/hermit.htm.
San Bruno Mt. hermit
The San Bruno mountain near San Francisco was home to Dwight Taylor, a hermit, through 1987. The first URL describes him through the eyes of another frequenter of the mountain. The second URL describes his eviction from the mountain after ten years’ residence. Dwight remarked, “I’m a hermit because some people were just born to be hermits.” He reflected philosophically upon his eviction by authorities that he was getting too many visitors on the mountain anyway and that now he could search out a place of great solitude.
URL1: http://www.mountainwatch.org/mountainwire/herstory/besh/#dwight
URL2: http://www.mountainwatch.org/mountainwire/herstory/19870516.htm
Thanks to a friend of Hermitary for submitting this information.