Wendell Berry sees vital connections between practicing solitude, cultivating personal wholeness, and participating in community.

True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation.

One’s inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of one’s most intimate sources.

In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.

— Wendell Berry in What Are People For?: Essays