A young boy finds a clearing while exploring the wilderness and meditatively observes the nature around him.

A college professor goes on a wilderness retreat to better connect with some ideas of American Literature, but his plan backfires and turns into a learning moment for his students.

In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

When an older woman seeks reprieve from her motherly duties on a day of solitude in the woods, an unexpected slip changes her life forever.

When an old woman sees her son straining to leave to see the world, she remembers her husband doing the same many years earlier. In a fierce battle pitting love against discovery and adventure, she does her utmost to set him free.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

While he pens an excuse to withdraw from a community project, a biology professor reflects on other times he avoided confrontation and ruminates on unresolved dilemmas in his life.

A research psychologist visits a peculiar asylum patient who recounts his life story. The patient warns the researcher about how obsession with the pursuit of knowledge can make one lose sight of their humanity until it is unsalvageable.

As an elderly woman grows increasingly distant from her husband, she finds solace in nighttime walks through the woods with a wolf born from her imagination—that becomes quite real.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.