A man named Ken Smith, 72, who is globally known as ‘Hermit of Treig’, lived alone as a hermit in the Scottish Highlands for almost 40 years. He has shunned his conventional life and lives in his hand-built log cabin without any electricity or running water. The story of Smith came to the limelight after filmmaker Lizzie McKenzie made a documentary. The filmmaker contacted Smith nine years ago and over the past two years, she has filmed him for the BBC Scotland documentary. In the BBC documentary, The Hermit of Treig, Smith explained that his life changed at the age of 26 when he had met with an attack where a gang of thugs beat him up on a day out. After the attack, Smith was left with a brain hemorrhage and was unconscious for 23 days. Doctors told him that he would never be able to speak or walk.
Smith, who hails from Derbyshire, said that he began to work at the age of 15, building fire stations. After the attack, Smith was struck by the idea of wilderness and traveled to Canada where he walked 22,000 miles on his own before returning to his home. However, things took a tragic turn when upon his return, he came to know that his parents had died while he was away.
“I cried all the way while walking. I thought, ‘where is the most isolated place in Britain?’… Hundreds and hundreds of miles of nothingness. I looked across the loch and saw this woodland," says Smith.
He finally found the right place where he stopped crying, so he started building himself a cabin there to live in. Smith’s cabin has its own log fire; he grows his own vegetables and forages in the woodland for the berries. In addition, the hermit also brews beer and wine. He has also stored 80 gallons of homemade wine.
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