Category: Scotland

A BBC News item about 74-year old Ken Smith, who is — as the article headline puts it — “The man who has lived as a hermit for 40 years” in the Scottish highlands. Ken visited the Canadian Yukon when young and was at once attracted to wilderness. Returning to his native UK he considered what region was the most isolated, and settled there, eventually building a cabin and settling into routines of foraging and fishing. Smith is the subject of a BBC Scotland documentary titled “The Hermit of Treig.”

URLs: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-59174870 (article); https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011hp3 (film).

Scottish hermit Jake Williams, now 70, is profiled by Daily Mail (UK). Once a science teacher, Williams moved to forested land in the 1980s, hoping to create a hippie commune, but found himself alone in a rundown cottage, since enhanced by solar panels, windmill, and other gadgets. Williams calls himself a “sociable” hermit who does not avoid people, even calling himself a “phony” and ” reluctant” hermit.

Includes a short video clip: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9189043/Reluctant-hermit-tells-Ben-Fogle-hopes-rent-caravans-propped-trees.html#v-1057422349824838438.

Part of the television series “New Lives for the Wild,” hosted by Ben Fogle.

URL: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9189043/Reluctant-hermit-tells-Ben-Fogle-hopes-rent-caravans-propped-trees.html

In a Guardian piece titled “I ran away to a remote Scottish isle. It was perfect,” Tamsin Calidasa describes her discovery of solitude and the wildness of nature on a remote Scottish island. Her narrative is unique, compelling, and enlightening, and her cultivation of relationship with nature is a key element in her coming to embrace solitude. Excerpt from Calidasa’s book, I Am an Island.

URL: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/jul/26/i-ran-away-to-a-remote-scottish-island-it-was-perfect

The Guardian offers a picture essay on four Scotland hermits, in “Splendid Isolation: In Search of Scotland’s Hermits.” Two of the hermits may be familiar: Jake Williams and Sara Maitland; the other two less familiar: Davy McDonald and Ken Smith.

URL: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/jun/25/splendid-isolation-in-search-of-scotlands-hermits