WHAT LIFE IS REALLY LIKE WHEN YOU’RE A HERMIT
It’s the grainy photo that launched a thousand theories: the so-called “wolf man” spotted beneath the sandstone caves in Harz, northern Germany, clutching a rock in his right hand and makeshift spear in the left.
While rumours of a hermit stalking the region have bubbled since 2015, the image released last week is the first to seemingly confirm such suspicions, with hikers telling German tabloid Bild that the figure “looked dirty and behaved like a stone age man from a history book.” He ran off before anyone could find out more.
There are also rumblings that it could be a prank. Yet real or otherwise, it has piqued public fascination: harking back to centuries-old lore (heightened all the more coming from a country that is one-third forest, and birthed the Brothers Grimm), while proffering the fantasy of cutting free from the trappings of modern life for good.
It’s “an extraordinary shot; there’s no two ways about it,” says Will Millard, an explorer who has spent months living both solo and with tribes in the likes of southeastern Papua and Sierra Leone, and co-author of The Way of the Hermit. “It’s a nod to the old Romulus and Remus mythology, which is really beguiling, and very romantic.”
Hermits or eremites (Christian recluses), defined as “a person living in solitude”, are thought to date back to Ancient China around 80 BC, where individuals would take to the mountains, often while fleeing political persecution. Early Christian examples abound from third century Egypt, where Paul of Thebes, or Paul the First Hermit, was believed to have lived alone in the desert from the age of 16 to (yes) 113.
Later iterations would include the Victorian affectation for “ornamental garden hermits,” who were paid to tend to and live at the bottom of a statesman’s land: one parliamentarian offered £500 for a seven-year gig, which came with the stipulation that his recruit would wear a goat’s hair robe, eschew shoes, and never cut his hair, beard or nails.
More recent hermits – who are almost exclusively men – have spent decades solo in remote locations including atolls in the Southwest Pacific, the canyons of central Arizona, and downs near Swanage, Dorset, where one man was discovered seven years after his death in 2005.
Christopher Thomas Knight – known as the North Pond Hermit – remains among the most famous cases to have lived without human contact for decades, spending 27 years pilfering from cabins in Maine’s Belgrade Lakes until 2013, surviving winters as cold as -32 degrees.
“It’s extremely hard living, when you’re somewhere that can get quite cold and closed off,” Millard, who presented My Year With the Tribe says, adding that the “wolf man” of Harz looks to be covered in soot – a tactic also used by tribes in Papua, who keep warm by rubbing pig fat, and then soot, on their skin.
He recently wrote a book with Ken Smith, known as the Hermit of Trieg, who has spent the past 40 years alone in the Scottish Highlands. “It’s amazing to be around people like that, because they’re really special humans,” he says of his most recent subject. “He has been able to do what he’s done and live the life that he’s had and thrive.”
Fulltime hermit-dom isn’t quite as whimsical as it might seem, though: survival skills are non-negotiable. “Most of Ken’s time is spent cutting logs and readying himself for long Scottish winters; he’s got a garden, where he can grow his own vegetables, and that makes an enormous difference,” Millard says.
Smith is perhaps not a hermit in the conventional sense – he makes contact with the outside world now and then, including via letter, with a typical turnaround time of three weeks. But living and fending for oneself alone cannot be underestimated, Millard adds.
The month-long periods he spent solo were “brilliant; I absolutely loved it… there’s a hell of a lot of pleasure, especially when you get it down well, and everything works in your favour. But then of course, things can go wrong. And when things do go wrong in those environments” – such as Millard developing cerebral malaria in West Africa - “they can go very wrong, because you are on your own.”
The physical intensity of fending for yourself is also subject to unavoidable constraints. It’s something he has discussed with Smith, now 75, who is “getting older; it’s as simple as that.”
Transitioning away from a self-constructed world you love, “where every day is really exciting, and you don’t know what you’re going to see and what animals you’re going to encounter, and live cheek by jowl with the weather” cannot come easy; the prospect of returning to civilisation, or even an old people’s home, is one Smith has said “sounds really boring. He’s like, “what am I going to do, sit in the pub and drink, or watch TV all day?”
It poses ethical questions for those in hermits’ orbit too, Millard adds. “How much should we interfere in the autonomy of these remarkable people’s lives?”
Significant challenges aside, Millard firmly believes that dabbling in solitude is “really good therapy for the soul – and I think that a lot more people should do it, and should indulge that little hermit inside.”
The simplicity of shutting oneself off entirely from bills to pay and emails to answer – as well as keeping alive the possibility of escape – is “quite appealing,” and even “comforting,” he thinks (not to mention the financial benefits of departing with modernity during a cost of living crisis).
The urge lies “deep within us,” says Millard. For most, however, a grainy image will be as close as it gets.
Would you choose to live alone and become a hermit? Tell us in the comments below.
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