For Sale – 81 Acres of Peace and Quiet in Amery, WI

AMERY – It's an unusual real estate posting for sure: Hermitage For Sale

This lovely piece of Wisconsin countryside, 81 acres near Amery, in Polk County, has had only one full-time resident for the past 10 years. She is Sr. Kristine Haugen, OCDH, a Carmelite and a consecrated hermit.

The 52-year-old is the last of the sisters who founded Mt. Carmel Hermitage in 1980. It's an easy one-hour drive from the Twin Cities and people come for retreats, for solitude or for spiritual direction.

It's very hard work maintaining peace and quiet, more than a full-time job, but Haugen objects when asked if she is "closing up shop."

"I wouldn't put it that way," she said. "I'm allowing someone else to take over. It takes more than one person [to run the hermitage] and someone who has a vocation for it."

Haugen has found it hard to live a life of solitude, silence and prayer while keeping up the retreat facility. She houses retreatants in five small cabins. She herself lives in a six-bedroom, six-bath split-level house, which was built to accommodate the original sisters. There's a chapel in the house, a library and conference room. There is also a freestanding chapel surrounded by Stations of the Cross laid out in the woods. There's another chapel, attached to one of the cabins. Both are available at all times to retreatants who come to Mt. Carmel to live quietly in the woods and experience a little of the life of a hermit.

But it's not easy to say exactly what a hermit is. "There is no rigid definition," Haugen said. "The calling is individual. To be alone is the best way for me." Unlike living in a cloister, which Haugen did when she first entered a Carmelite order in St. Paul in 1977, living as a hermit has its own peculiar demands. "In a cloister, sisters are enclosed like a desert in a city," she said. "Their solitude is protected with fences. The hermit has to create the environment herself." The goals of both lifestyles are the same: prayer and union with God. But as a hermit, Haugen has chosen to live without a community.

The hermitage came into being and continues to exist with the help of Dennis and Luella John, who along with Haugen serve as the hermitage's nonprofit corporation board of directors. The Johns gave part of the land – about half of the current hermitage – to the original group of four or five Carmelite sisters in 1980. At the time it was part of a large farm. Why would anyone give away valuable real estate? According to Dennis John, who was a Realtor at the time, the Carmelite's leader, Sr. Immaculata, responded to a real estate ad which he had placed on behalf of Polk County property owners. Immaculata wanted to acquire the land to establish a hermitage and asked John to pass along her offer. "Would you ask them if they'd give it to us?" she said. The owners found it a deal they could easily refuse. However, John could not, and since he and his wife also owned property in the area, he picked up the ball. "I figured I could give them part of ours," he said," [Immaculata] was looking for something and we had it. What better use of the land?"

Haugen was part of Immaculata's original group of hermits. They made the property their home for about seven years and then sold it to a group of priests in 1987. "We wanted more solitude," Haugen said. But the priests couldn't make a go of it and returned the property to the Carmelites in 1993.

Now the property will be passed on again. "It's time to step back into more solitude," she said. "When the call for deeper prayer comes [try to make] an environment free of distractions."

Haugen was not raised to be a hermit. She was one of seven children and received the call to the religious vocation while a student at the College of St. Scholastica in her native city of Duluth, MN. In her work as a sister, she's supported herself by sewing church vestments and with her art, watercolors and note and greeting cards. (Sold on www.hermitagearts.com).

She has had a legion of volunteers who have helped her maintain the grounds and buildings of the hermitage. "People are willing to support you if you're living a life for God," she said. Members of the Knights of Columbus and retired men and neighboring farmers have been especially generous, Haugen said. "But I wear them out," she said.

The Johns still own the property adjacent to the hermitage on the west side. They have been members of St. Joseph in Amery since 1967. "Sr. Kristine needs to sell [the hermitage] for fair market value," Dennis John said. The asking price is $425,000. He said there is a wildly successful Lutheran youth camp in the area and thinks the hermitage has so much potential for similar evangelical use. "The diocese should look at this [property]," he said.

As for Haugen, she is waiting for the right person, or persons, to buy the property and hopes it will remain a place of prayer.

"I'd like to just step into the horizon," she said, onto a smaller, more manageable plot of Wisconsin soil, secluded, but not too remote from a city, with white pines and birch trees. People have told her: ‘Sister, you're so fussy.’ "No I'm not," she says. "God can do anything."

Editor's Note: For information on the hermitage, contact Sister Haugen at (715) 268-9313

Aerial View of Property
Approximately 80 acres of wooded land located on 897 US Hwy 8 Amery, WI Perimeters marked in red.

HERMITAGE ARTS • 897 US Hwy 8 • Amery, WI 54001 • Email