By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
As a boy, my friends the Utah Trappist monks often told me about wonderful quiet weekends at their hillside retreat called the “Hermitage.” It took almost fifty years, but I finally made it there too. The enveloping silence, punctured by the mysterious calls of the invisible wapiti, enthralled me.
The Hermitage is a one room A-frame cabin nestled in the foothills east of Huntsville, just north of Bennett Canyon in the picturesque Ogden Valley. The monks built it on their monastery property in the mid-1970s. A stone sculpture of an old monk also graces the site (see The old monk in the foothills).
Like the more famous Thomas Merton retreat cabin at Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky (see: Encounters with Silence – Thomas Merton’s Hermitage), the Utah Hermitage was a place where the Trappists could go for several days of individual prayer and solitude. Former Utah monk Father Charles Cummings, who now serves as chaplain for the Trappistine nuns at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in Crozet, Virginia, helped build the Hermitage.
He says construction “took about three or four years, because after the contractors put up the shell, including the large triangular windows, the floor, the varnish on the interior walls and things like that, then they stopped. The monks, mostly three of us, finished the remainder of the interior, including bringing water from the spring, plumbing the bathroom and kitchenette, installing propane heating and lighting and a fireplace. We worked slowly, not full time.”
“I liked the solitude, but for me it was at first a work zone. Wherever I looked I could see work that needed to be done,” Father Charles said. “After many years, the work was completed and I could appreciate going there for solitude, reading, prayer.”
By the time Utah’s Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity closed in 2017, the aging monks had not been able to maintain the Hermitage for several years. It was, once again, a work zone, but this time for new property owners Bill and Alane White. They are trying to preserve the monks’ 1800 acres of land for open space and agricultural uses.
Part of that monastic legacy is the Hermitage, which Bill and Alane have lovingly restored to its former beauty. They invited my wife Vicki and I to stay there during a recent autumn weekend. We jumped at the chance.
Once there, we sipped the subtle and simple pleasures of the Hermitage. Father Charles described them as: “The view from the deck, watching the deer and sometimes the elk, the panorama of mountains and foothills, out of sight of the abbey, indoors the wood fire in the fireplace that provided warmth and some light and dancing flames.”
Sadly, we did not see the wapiti (Cervus elaphus canadensis or Cervus canadensis), the American elk who live in the mountains along the old Abbey’s eastern boundary. Notoriously shy, but compelled under cover of night to eat the delectable alfalfa plants in the valley below them, they were the invisible herd—the invisible herd we heard all night.
Apparently, the whistling and bugle calls of female elk are rare. However, regularly during our Hermitage stay, in the middle of the rutting or mating season, the male elks bugled. (You can hear similar sounds here: An Elk Sounds Off, and a Season Begins). We did not get a lot of sleep, sneaking out on the deck every so often trying (unsuccessfully) to spot the buglers. It was tiring but invigorating.
Bill and Alane White also gave us a small wooden desk that, for many years, was used by the monks at the Hermitage. It is plain, simple, worthless commercially, but now our profound treasure. I sat in front of it writing these next few words.
Like the invisible wapiti, I cannot see the Utah Trappist monks, but I hear them at the Hermitage and nearby. They ring their bells. They chant. They say hello. And they beckon me to continue to seek the eternal reality that eludes my human eyes.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. He is writing a book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah.
