dk:


What a spot to grow up in! Anderson Valley (& Cloverdale) is an incredible, isolated place. A local told us the first paved road came into Anderson Valley in the '50s -- now they've got a WI-FI hot spot at the Hendy Woods Visitor's Center -- oh, well, it's still a somewhat-isolated spot in today's world.

dk, did you ever visit the Hermit's Huts at Hendy? Now here is a guy who did some ultralight living from the '50s to the early '80s, hiding as a hermit in wood huts in the redwoods (Hendy Woods) up behind the tiny town of Philo.

We had heard about the hermit while hiking in Hendy (enough of the alliterations) from a retired schoolteacher from Sea Ranch, who said the hermit had fled from the KGB, although I'm not sure that's completely accurate.


In the 2nd hut of Petrov the Hendy Hermit.

The huts -- or maintained reproductions -- are a short hike from the road and have a small informative plaque nearby. The hermit was Petrov Zailenkov, born in about 1924 and died in August of 1981. He is believed to have jumped a Russian trawler in the 1950s, finally ending up in the redwoods for almost 2 decades in the isolated Anderson Valley, where he lived until he died of cancer (in a hospital in Ukiah).


Board about Petrov near his first hermit hut.

Petrov avoided people, always afraid of being sent back to Russia. He did befriend a few hikers and campers, and stories about him appeared in area and San Francisco papers when he died. What a beautiful place to have been a hermit.