Where to Go When You Just Want to Be Alone

Thoreau headed for the woods. Bowles fled to the desert. The Indigo Girls went to the mountains. We humans disappear into wild and secluded places when we need to reset: to lap up the landscape, shape our thoughts, and feel the perspective-giving stab of strangeness, even menace, of a place unmoored from the familiar. Fortunately, there are a growing number of remote retreats that don’t require Outward Bound–level survival skills.