Hiding.

 A Welsh poet once hid in Welsh woodland during a guerilla rebellion.
He is called Llywelyn ap y Moel, he died c. 1440, and this is his verse:

By God, you’re a fine Wood, hillock

Of Grey slate…

A fort, a warrior’s playground,

A bracken glade, a snug lair -

How strange would be the summer …

If I were left without you

Where the weft of your twigs knits

Your hills…

My great house, my settlement.

Faultless nurture, it’s been good

To have you for my safeguard,

Sweet close and veil of refuge

…

Like a dark tent overhead:

My bed is snug in safety,

Your branches overhead me

Are no turf-topped villein’s den-

Fine, with the porridge eaten!

Better than bardic travel

For one anxious to do well

Is to strip a Saxon’s harness

Off him in this pleasant place,

To scare with din and mischief,

…

To our side all good fortune,

All reward to Owain’s men!

This poem is called ‘To the Greyrock Woods'; the poet was also a rebel. He is close to the wilderness, emphasising its importance to his campaign and the optimistic attitude it engenders amongst him and his comrades: ‘to our side all good fortune..’ It was necessary that these words were heard by both the rebels and their enemies - all ought to believe it true. In reality, the rebels surely experienced difficult times whilst living wild.
Note that Llywelyn’s hiding place is not a cultivated wilderness, thus the wilderness was not being transformed into any literal ‘fortress.’ After all, Llywelyn worries at the thought of his surroundings becoming less wild; say, the leaves falling from the trees to expose his ‘snug lair:’ ‘How strange…If I were left without you/Where the weft of your twigs knits’ Llywelyn says to his wilderness.
On the other hand, although the wilderness remains largely untendered by the rebels, Llywelyn describes his den in terms of civilised domesticity; it is an unkempt wilderness, a ‘wood’ and ‘hillock,’ but it is simultaneously a ‘tent,’ a ‘house,’ a ‘bed’ and a ‘settlement’:

My great house, my settlement.

Faultless nurture, its been good

To have you for my safeguard

Sweet close and veil of refuge   

Ultimately, the rebels in Llywelyn’s poem have not attempted to urbanise the wilderness, because it is only through the unruliness of the wild landscape that they are able to defeat the enemy. Yet the rebels have grown accustomed to their hideout, and are grateful for its ruggedness, and have attributed domestic details to it. After all, there is perhaps no better parody of the domestic town dwelling than the image of a rebel enjoying a cosy bowl of porridge in the middle of the wilderness; Llywelyn’s den is ‘fine with the porridge eaten!’

* * *

   Medieval escape from the stresses of life?
In Welsh folklore, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelfth century Historia, the wizard Merlin tires of the attention he receives from Welsh townsfolk, and as a result yearns to go and live in the forest in order to experience the solitude found there: ‘when Merlin saw such crowds of people there… He went mad; and once more…desire[d] to go off to the forest’. To hide.

* * *

Thickets of dense, untamed Welsh woodland, where sunlight struggles:

Modern scene from the Wye Valley. Domesticating the wilderness?

                Photos by R. Morris.