Every April, when Monticello was "enlivened by the reanimation of birds, flowers, the fields, forests & gardens," Thomas Jefferson left his mountaintop on a three-day journey in search of "the solitude of a hermit."[1] His hermitage, which he had designed himself, lay on his Poplar Forest plantation in Bedford County - "the best dwelling house in the state, except that of Monticello; perhaps preferable to that, as
