The American hermit whose realm stretches from China to Ireland, on ‘a different way to live’
- Ivy League-educated Vietnam veteran Dan Hummel has spent most of the past 46 years alone, having left Nixon’s America in 1969 never to return
- He’s divided his time between the windswept wilds of Ireland’s Atlantic coast and the mountaintop delights of Dali, in Yunnan province, southwest China
“I’ve always been into locations. Places have guided my life more than people, family or friends,” says Dan Hummel, his American accent still strong, as laid back as the man himself. “Maybe that’s why I find myself mostly alone the past 46 years, living between two beautiful settings: this stretch of rock jutting into the Irish side of the Atlantic, and the wilds of west China.”
I am visiting Hummel’s stone hermitage in West Cork, Ireland, to understand why an Ivy Leaguer from a wealthy family of Pennsylvania academics chose almost half a century of tough living in such far-flung locations.
“I left America just as Nixon was coming in,” he says, referring to the United States president who entered office in 1969. “I could see it was going nowhere good. And I was right.” The rare Irish sun has scalded Hummel’s bald head red, and his long beard rages white in the wind. “I could have had a decent life there, but it’s just not a nice place to be.”
Hummel graduated as a geography major from Dartmouth College, which is among the oldest universities in the US. Fellow alumni include poet Robert Frost, children’s writer Dr Seuss, one-time US vice-president Nelson Rockefeller and former treasury secretary Henry Paulson.
This was in 1963, when military service was compulsory; Hummel joined the navy with an eye to a posting in Japan. Based at an officer-training school in San Francisco when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he was keen to leave by the time he shipped out on the USS Surfbird a few months later.
Hummel’s quiet base in Japan afforded him many days to explore the countryside on his motorbike and learn the language, at least until 1965, when the Surfbird was ordered to take part in Operation Market Time, the US Navy’s effort to stop the flow of troops and weapons by sea from North Vietnam to the South. It was an uneventful mission, but one that made Hummel a Vietnam veteran.