Choosing to live as a hermit
I would be interested in hearing what women think about this idea of living as a hermit.
“The biggest obstacle to the hermit life is the need to fund it,” said Karen Karper-Fredette, a former hermit, who parachuted back into society to marry and to publish Raven’s Bread, a hermit newsletter. “People with these ideals are content with a simple life, but you do need to have a place to live, and that can be hard to finance.”
In 2001, Raven’s Bread did a subscriber survey, About half of their 132 respondents said that they lived in rural areas, half in urban areas. About 60 percent reported earning less than $20,000 a year. More than half said that they had begun living as hermits in their 40s or later, leading Karper-Fredette to conclude that the eremitic vocation is largely a second-half-of-life phenomenon.
if you move to a nondescript area of uninhabited land, all you need is freshwater, and some basic tools, an axe, a knife and some flint is all i took with me when i became a hermit for a year once i finished school, i used to axe to kill rabbits for food, and to cut up fallen tree branches, i carved utensils with the knife, got clay from the stream, and eventually built a shelter that i plan on returning to. for a year i lived out there, it cost me $100.
Except they aren’t doing it for a year. Embracing something as a long term way of life is not the same thing as doing it for a year, to get the “experience,” and moving on to do something else.
I want to know how to do this without an income. I’m turning 40 next year…funny…but I’ve wanted to do this for years.
I suppose the closest I could get is to find an online job – work from home. Rarely leave my room. cut off the phone & tv, close curtains, get rid of all useless possessions. avoid people at all costs. Yes, sounds real good to me.
Perhaps this isn’t so much hermitude as it is self-imposed house arrest…
it’s easier to do once you are retired, family grown up etc
i would very much so like to know how the basics of living like this without any income, not neccessarily to be a hermit, but to live completley unreliant of economical society, funny enough im only 18, i can’t imagine waiting another 20 years for freedom from the financial world.
contact with people isn’t something that bother’s me, but going hungry in a world rich with the oppurtunity for self sustenance because i dont have a piece of paper in my pocket with a number on it is ridiculous. (im reffering to money, just in case its not obvious)
The definition of hermit is certainly open to new interpretations. When the word was first widely used, the option of living alone or in seclusion was not feasible for anyone outside of a religious order. But now, with more and more people living alone, the religious affiliation is no longer needed or necessary. Given the dramatic changes in our society over the last 20-30 years I think that becoming a hermit, or living as a hermit, needs to be redefined as a healthy, positive lifestyle choice, and one that is perfectly acceptable for anyone to make.
I am living as a hermit right now, while paying off student loans and saving for a hermitage of my own in the next 5-10 years. I am a live-in care provider for an adult foster home in Oregon. The owner pays for my rent, utilities – basically everything. I spend a little each week on food that I want, or I can eat what is in the house that the owner buys. My entire monthly check goes into savings and in 5 years (which I turn 40) I will be able to purchase a small piece of land where I can then go and live in a hermit shack, off the grid. It will be close enough to town to walk/hike to the library and store for books and supplies, hopefully on a lake on the Oregon Coast. It rains enough over here so water collection won’t be a problem. Plan to grow my food, fish and raise chickens. I don’t want to be around people, or work a job after I turn 40. I want to just live off my land, day to day and try my best to close out the world. I’ve also considered giving away my laptop and my van and just squatting on public land. There are alot of woods and forests up here in the North West. Lots of room still to stretch out – would be just a little easier I think if I owned land so I could grow food instead of hunting and gathering.
Thank you for posting on my blog. It sounds like you have a solid plan. I lived on five acres in Bend in the early 1970’s. Sold it to go to college in Eugene. Wish now that I had stayed on the land. Good Luck!
I’m glad to find your blog. I’ve been thinking, I want to live as hermit (if my wife agrees to live as hermit too) after all the kids graduate from college.
I was wondering, in order to survive in the wild, what skills I need to learn? Also, how to avoid wild animals?
Thanks to “hermit” for the idea of place to live (North West).