The Way of the Hermit: My Forty Years in the Scottish Wilderness; London: Pan Books,2023; The Way of the Hermit: My Incredible 40 Years in the Wilderness; Toronto: Hanover Square Press, 2024, by Ken Smith with Will Millard.
From the outset, Ken Smith (b. 1947) indicates that his motive for being a hermit is not religious or spiritual. Early factors include introversion, his working class origins, indifference to schooling. At 15 Smith quit school to work for the UK Forestry Commission; he enjoyed the solitary outdors in later job.
The decisive event was a harrowing incident in his late twenties living in native Derbyshire, when a gang of skinheads assaulted him to the point of near-fatal brain damage requiring four operations, two months of hospitalization and ten months without working. Recovered and re-entering society, Smith soon became disillusioned by the values and priorities of the world around him, concluding that "I knew I needed to escape that system and all its trappings, as quickly as I possibly could." He worked outdoors a while longer, scrimping and saving for his exit.
The first venue was travel to northwestern Canada and Alaska to experience wilderness living, in part inspired by reading Richard Proenneke (1916-2003), the American hermit and survivalist, author of One Man's Wilderness: An Alaska Odyssey (1973). Returning to the UK, Smith tramped about the country a while, staying in a series of bothies in northwestern Scotland, before resolving to live in a wildness cabin of his own. But Smith had no property. By chance he learned the name of the landowner of the largest estate in the Treig area, and petitioned him for some land for constructing a log cabin for himself.
Not only was Smith granted permission but he was even given employment as a ghillie, that is, a ”manservant” attending to the estate owner’s hunting and fishing expeditions and their guests —— plus oversight of all aspects of estate land maintenance. Smith readily accepted, soon constructing his log cabin by hand, and over the years perfected his survival skills: hunting, fishing, foraging, gardening, construction, wood-chopping —— and walking (the latter including walking twenty-five miles one way to a village shop for supplies).
The rest of the book describes the "way" of the hermit, or, perhaps, the way of the solitary-minded wilderness survivalist. The Way of the Hermit is chock-full of anecdotes, ruminations, insights, and practical wisdom, lived advice about wilderness, nature, winter survival, and lots of stories. Ken Smith is a modest, congenial, and reflective host to the reader, generously offering a unique and thoughtful memoir.
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