The act of withdrawing into landscape has a long history. From medieval hermits retreating into wilderness for spiritual purification to the British Romantic notion of genius loci—Wordsworth’s meditative walks in the Lake District and John Clare’s tender gaze upon the fields—place has long been a generator of emotion and meaning (Norberg-Schulz, 1980: 5, 18).

 

Thoreau’s Walden transformed solitude into an ethical and political act: retreating to nature was not escape but a means to recover moral clarity and autonomy (Thoreau, 2004). In our time, writers like Robert Macfarlane (The Old Ways, 2012) and Nan Shepherd (The Living Mountain, 2011) extend this tradition with ecological awareness and critique of anthropocentrism.

 

In my practice, “withdrawal is also a political stance.” Keeping distance preserves critical vision; silence becomes another form of participation. This retreat is not absence but a different mode of presence. It acknowledges that, in an age of over-connection, solitude is both rare and necessary.