“Why do I live alone?
This is crazy. It is lamentable. I am flawed, I am nuts. I can’t help it. Here I am, now,…happy as a coot. The
whole business of saying I am flawed is a lie. I am happy. I cannot explain it…Freedom, darling. This is what
the woods mean to me. I am free, free, a wild being, and that is all that I ever can really be. I am dedicated to
it, addicted to it, sworn to it, and sold to it.”
* * *
“Why do I live alone?
It is the freedom in me that loves you… Darling, I am telling you: this life in the woods is IT. It is the only way.
It is the way everybody has lost. …It is life, this thing in the woods. I do not claim it is real. All I say is that it is
the life that has chosen itself for me.”
Thomas Merton