Wandering

I just read Bill Porter's  (Red Pine) excellent book Road to Heaven, Encounters with Chinese Hermits and followed it with Four Huts, a collection of ancient Chinese and Japanese essays on the simple life. Now I'm reading about Ajahn Mun, one of the founders of the Thai Forest Tradition. His story is beyond inspiring. Here is just a taste, from the all-knowing sage Wikipedia:

After ordination, Mun went to practice meditation with Ajahn Sao of Wat Liap in Ubon, where he learned to practice the monastic traditions of Laos. Ajahn Sao taught Mun a meditation method to calm the mind, the mental repetition of the word, "Buddho." Ajahn Sao often took Ajahn Mun wandering and camping in the dense forests along the Mekong River, where they would practice meditation together. This is known as "thudong" in Thai, a name derived from the term "dhutanga", which describes a number of specialized ascetic practices. One of the first long distance thudong was a pilgrimage to Wat Aranyawaksi in Thabor district, Nong Khai Province. At the time, Wat Aranyawaksi was a ruin, an abandoned, overgrown temple in the jungle. Ajahn Mun spent a year in "illumination" in the teak forest around the temple at this early part of his monastic life.
In 1899, Ajahn Mun was re-ordained in the Thammayut Nikaya, a reformed Thai sect which emphasized monastic disciple and scripture study. Having practiced under the guidance of his teacher for several years, and with his teachers blessings, Ajahn Mun went out on his own to search for advanced meditation teachers. During the next several years, he wandered extensively throughout Laos, Thailand and Burma, practicing meditation in secluded forests. Ajahn Mun and Ajahn Sao went on pilgrimage together in 1905 and venerated the Phra That Phanom shrine, a center of Theravada Buddhism for centuries, most sacred to the Lao people.

Thudong alone

Ajahn Mun then wandered alone, onward to the north, to Sakhon Nakhon Province on the highlands of the northeastern Plateau, inland from the Mekong River, into the Phu Phan Mountain Range. Today, a museum to Ajahn Mun is located here in the temple residence of Wat Pa Sutthavat, in the city of Nong Han Luang.
He then wandered on toward Udon Thani, into a region that was a wild forest filled with prehistoric caves. He continued his wandering pilgrimage deeper into the wildernesses of Loei, a land dreaded and feared by the Thai people, who describe it as "beyond" and "to the furthest extreme" of the world. This rugged wilderness along the Mekong consists of mountains, and extremes of weather, both cold and hot.

To Burma

In 1911, Ajahn Mun decided to walk to Burma in search of a highly attained meditation teacher who could help him in his struggle for enlightenment. He walked by stages from northeast Thailand down to Bangkok, through the wilderness mountain ranges. According to Thanissaro Bhikkhu, a student in Ajahn Mun's lineage, "his search took nearly two decades and involved countless hardships as he trekked through the jungles of Laos, central Thailand, and Burma, but he never found the teacher he sought. Gradually he realized that he would have to follow the Buddha's example and take the wilderness itself as his teacher."

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As for me, no doubt remains as to the value of massive doses of meditation in the context of a simple life close to the earth. It's only a question of how to transition to such a life. Personally, I'm doing it the easy way--going to Thailand in less than a month to learn from the pro's.