in all of my work-at-home weeks, i always reach a point when i think, "today, i shall bathe and get dressed and go forth among people. i shall put these sweatpants and this t-shirt that i've been wearing day and night for the past 3-4 days into the laundry basket and put on real clothing--like tights and a cheery dress. i shall behave like a human being today." it helps if the sun comes out. because cloudy, windy, rainy days only promote my hermit-like tendencies.
and then i was reminded of a place that could well be termed hermit heaven. it's called meteora and it's in greece. it's inland in north central greece, in a strange moonlike landscape, where these porous, harsh, rocky hills suddenly stick up out of the flat plain.
in this strange and rather mysterious place, monks built countless monasteries, high on the peaks.
eight-ten of them are still in operation and open to the public (if you like to climb), but there are many ruins around on outcroppings that look like they must have been impossible to reach. they are, to my imagination, impossibly romantic in their isolation.
there are countless more little caves hollowed out in the hillsides, where individual hermit monks went to be on their own. undoubtedly wearing the same thing for days on end and muttering to themselves and resenting intrusions, much as i do around here.
although i'm not fond of heights, i'm attracted to the idea of being somewhere where the only way to get there would be a ladder like this...
because you could see whoever was coming quite a long ways off. and the sheer difficulty of it would put most intruders off.
i've been there twice, but feel its allure pulling me back, probably due the amount of time i spend alone, but also because it's a wonderful and mysterious place. maybe that's where we should go this summer.
but first, i should probably get dressed.
