The Secret To Contentment An Elderly Hermit in Scotland Discovered

He learnt it the hard way, you don’t have to

When someone chooses to abandon “the real world” to live a solitary life in the wilderness it says two things very powerfully:

These are two feelings most of us can relate to at some point in our lives. Who hasn’t thought about leaving it all behind? What’s not to love about the idyllic log cabin next to a loch in the Highlands?

Of course, the reality, year after year, is different. Blissful solitude can become loneliness. Wonderful isolation can become an impractical inconvenience.

When your nearest mailbox is a 54-mile round trip walk away, you need to be sure you can really hack it.

Ken Smith can hack it. He has hacked it, for nearly 50 years. How he got to where he is, and why he chooses it as a way of life, reveals a key life lesson that we can all take benefit from.

Isn’t is amazing how the list of things we couldn’t possibly live without continues to grow? Imagine life without the internet, or cell phones — we’d really struggle.

And yet. Life was possible, full, and enjoyable before these things became part of life. Less convenient perhaps, but with all these new inventions come downsides as well as benefits.

Interestingly, we don’t even really use cell phones for what they were designed for — calling people — we just like having an always-on mini-computer in our pockets. That brings its own problems.

Ken, in his log cabin up in the highlands of Scotland has everything he needs. He fishes the loch (and this is his top tip for independent living — learn to fish), grows crops, gathers berries and taps trees for sap.

For warmth, his supply of firewood is limitless. He brews his own beer from the ingredients he can grow or gather.

He gets good radio reception so is informed of the biggest world issues via the news should they affect him.

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