My Experience Of Living A Reclusive Life – And Factors You Need To Consider

Since moving to the USA, my late wife and I have led an unusual lifestyle, one that is almost hermit-like, so in this article, I’m going to talk about some of the factors to consider if you are thinking about following in our footsteps.

Before I get started, for background, I live on a 20-acre property that has almost no neighbours (and none whom I know or talk to), 12 miles outside a small rural town of about 6,000 inhabitants, and the house is effectively on top of a mountain, 5,600 feet above sea level.

This photo shows a 360-degree panoramic photo, taken from just in front of the house, where you can see how isolated the property is:

Note that some of what follows (which is in no particular order) I have touched on elsewhere, such as in this article about living under lockdown, but this goes into a lot more detail.

Shopping

The last time my wife and I went out into town to go shopping was March 2007, and even then, we would only venture out about once every three months to stock up on food for ourselves and our dogs, and other household necessities.

It was an all-day affair, and once we were done, the car (which was an SUV) was full to the gunwales, but we preferred to have these occasional massive shopping days than going to the shops once or more per week for shorter visits, especially because of the travelling time from home to the nearest town, which is probably a 20-minute drive, give or take a few minutes.

Since then, we have bought at least 95% of what we need online – primarily from Amazon, but from many other retailers too.

More recently, a friend has bought fresh produce and other groceries for me once a week.

So, if you want to live in the middle of nowhere, as I do, then you need to be sure that you can obtain what you need, either online, or in whatever local stores exist should you decide to return to civilization every so often.

Buying online can, of course, mean you are paying more for items because of the shipping costs involved – one reason we have always liked Amazon because being a Prime member is more than worth it, given how much stuff we’ve bought over the years.

This became more difficult for us because we decided years ago to try to eat organic / non-GMO food only, which limits your choice of online retailers. There is more choice now than there was ten years ago, but some foods do take some tracking down.

We actually used to have a food-delivery company called Schwan’s deliver frozen foods every fortnight, but we stopped using them when we went organic because almost none of their food is organic, or even healthy.

You also have to be more careful about planning – Amazon has usually been reliable when it comes to deliveries, although less so now than they used to be (and it’s not only because of the coronavirus scare that is still ongoing as I write this), but some online stores do not ship so quickly.

And, of course, it’s not only food – everything is bought online, including household appliances, clothes, dog food, entertainment, medical supplies, and more. (Note that, for me, medical supplies means natural supplements, etc. and not prescription drugs, which I don’t use, but if you do, this could be a significant issue.)

Food

Following on from the above, it’s possible you can grow your own food, given the right circumstances (e.g. interest, conditions).

I have always disliked gardening intensely. My father used to say I’d feel differently when I had my own house – but he was so very wrong.

I do get that there is a huge difference between doing maintenance work such as mowing the lawn and weeding, and growing food you can actually eat, but for me, I’d only resort to that if I absolutely had to.

For most of the past 13 years, I’ve spent all my waking hours working on our various businesses, so the sort of time you’d need to put in to grow food would have been a serious issue. (Not necessarily an insurmountable one – it’s really a matter of priorities.)

On top of that, there are a few other issues to bear in mind.

One is the weather – it’s very dry here, the temperature can range from -15 F to over 100 F, and it’s incredibly windy (because I’m on a mountain top).

Having said that, I know that there are people who farm out here, so it is doable.

And then there is the wildlife.

Being out in the country, we have always had a rodent problem – not just mice but pack rats too. It’s not been as bad as it used to be, but they are still out there, and they are, of course, opportunists.

And then there are other animals around, including a load of rabbits (or hares, I’m not sure), coyotes (who may or may not steal fruit and vegetables), and other critters too, I’m sure.

Lastly, there is the ground itself – it’s super-rocky up here, and I’m not sure why. The earth itself is really hard to dig, by hand, so you’d probably need some form of equipment to do a good job of it.

If all of this sounds like one big excuse as to why I don’t grow my own food, you may be right. But as I said, I have no inclination to do this, I struggle in the summer heat to do anything at all, never mind back-breaking work outside, and I’m currently in the fortunate position where I don’t need to grow my own food.

But if you are keen on gardening, then this is definitely something you should consider doing, especially if you are health-conscious and want to know exactly what you’re eating.

This is obviously somewhat easier for those who lead a vegetarian lifestyle, but even if you’re still a meat-eater, it’s possible, of course, to have livestock – assuming you’re also willing to do the butchering part yourself too.

Storage

Another aspect related to food is suitable storage – when we used to go out for our quarterly shopping trips, there was a lot of frozen food and perishable food.

Fortunately, at home, we had plenty of fridges and freezers – a fridge/freezer in the kitchen, a standalone freezer and a fridge/freezer in the pantry, a standalone fridge in the mudroom, a fridge/freezer in the mudroom, a standalone freezer in the AZ room, and three mini-fridges dotted around the house.

And they were all almost always overflowing.

Since we stopped going out to do our shopping, and we bought online, suitable storage was still an issue, albeit less for frozen foods.

The problem here is that, when you buy online (e.g. on Amazon), you often have to buy products in cases (e.g. a 12-pack of canned soup). (They do have Amazon Pantry over here, where you can buy individual items, but it’s fiddly and more work.)

Some of the food we had to buy in semi-bulk quantities did need to be refrigerated or frozen, while others (e.g. bags of pasta) need to be stored safely because of the rodent problem.

That’s why my wife bought up what seems to be the entire country’s stock of airtight storage containers – it’s simply not safe to leave anything out that could easily be compromised by inquisitive and hungry wildlife (and to a degree, that includes my own dogs too).

The good news is that the house is large enough – more than large enough for just two people – but if you were to live in something smaller, then this might be more of a big deal.

We actually considered, for a while, moving into something such as a tiny(ish) home, a container home, or even an RV, for various reasons – but still on our existing property – and we thought about doing that knowing that the house would still be there, right next door, so we could still use the existing fridges and freezers and storage space.

I’m actually still wondering whether I should do this, although my storage needs now that I’m by myself are much less than they used to be.

Utilities

When you live somewhere as remote as I do, you need to be aware that you may not have much of a choice, if any, when it comes to utility providers, and by that, I mean electricity, gas, phone, Internet, television, mobile / cell phones.

For each of those, there is one company available around here, and their services are not great, not even close in some cases.

By way of example, I have one choice of mobile phone provider, and I’m right on the edge of the nearest cell tower’s coverage, so reception is patchy to non-existent.

As for electricity, again, there is one company who invests as little as possible in their infrastructure (because it’s really not worth their while with such a sparse and remote community as this one), which is presumably why I get frequent power outages.

And then the Internet – again, a single provider, with speeds that people who live in the big cities wouldn’t tolerate. Typically, I get less than 5 Mbps down and 0.25 Mbps up, which is frustrating when you’re working from home, relying on the Internet for your income.

While it’s true that we could have gone with a satellite Internet service, it’s still relatively expensive, I’ve not heard great reports about them, and on the various occasions when we have enquired, they have not had spare capacity available in this area anyway.

Finally, water – like most people out here in the sticks, we get our water from a well that’s on our own property.

I know that people back in England, where I’m from, are probably envisioning the sort of well you’d see in the old western movies, but it’s not that primitive – the water is drawn up by an electric pump into a temporary storage tank.

The plus side is that the water is not fluoridated, but the downside is that the water is somewhat dirty – there’s a lot of iron content, for example, and it’s very hard too.

We have several water filters built into the water supply to the house, but it’s far from ideal.

And getting work done on the well, as we had to a few years ago, can be very expensive – our well is about 400 feet deep, but some around here go farther down than that, so specialized equipment is required.

Transport

Although we chose not to go out over a decade ago, not having transport adds further complications to this lifestyle.

As I said, we used to have a car, but it was unused for so long that it hasn’t worked for years, and may even be beyond repair.

Now that I’m by myself, it’s sort of academic because I don’t have a valid driving licence these days anyway.

But for emergencies, which, so far, I’ve thankfully not had, I would have to rely on my friend to drive me into town and back, because there is no public transport of any type – not even in town, never mind out here, and I’m not aware of any taxi services either, although it’s possible one or two do exist. It’s just that I’ve never needed one (yet) and therefore haven’t looked – but I’m assuming it wouldn’t be cheap, given it’s 12 miles in each direction just to get to my house from town.

It’s possible you might consider 12 miles to be doable on a bicycle, but I wouldn’t recommend it, given the state of the roads around here (the one I live on isn’t even made up, but the public roads are not that great) and the drivers are on the crazy side too.

Health

When you choose to live outside of normal society, you need to be even more careful about your health, because popping to the doctor’s or dentist’s requires a lot more planning than it usually would – and I think my nearest hospital may be as far as 30 miles away. (This is exacerbated for me because my dogs have never been left alone, so I am very wary of leaving my property and consequently stressing them out.)

The last time either my late wife or I went to the doctor was in 2006, although to be fair, we stopped going for reasons other than our decision to become recluses.

The same concerns go for our dogs – we’ve had as many as eight, and currently I have three.

We do our best to keep our dogs as healthy as we can (e.g. giving them high-quality feed), and there has been a single occasion during the past 13 years when we’ve needed a vet.

Fortunately, because this is a rural area, with lots of farms and smallholdings, there is at least one vet who will make house calls.

It goes further than just day-to-day health though, and this has become even more important since my wife died – I try to be ultra-careful all the time (as people should in any case, I suppose) not to do anything stupid where I might injure myself.

Not only do my dogs depend on me – I practise free-feeding, so there’s always food available for them to eat whenever they want, but what’s in the bowls would only last for so long – but if I were incapacitated and couldn’t get to a phone, I might not be found for up to a week, since my friend brings my grocery shopping every Monday.

I often do have my phone with me, but not always, so calling for help may not be an option.

This is why I’ve given my friend a key to the lock on the gate, just in case he calls and I don’t answer.

If you were to live like this, then you would need to consider how you’d obtain support in an emergency.

Work

When I moved here in 2005, from England, I gave up a well-paying job with a major British household name, and my late wife and I had always planned to work for ourselves from home.

Jobs around here aren’t that easy to come by, especially for somebody like me who has spent most of his post-school years working in information technology, so the Internet has been crucial in this respect.

It took around two years after I arrived here before we managed to create an online business that made money.

After that, we tried lots of other things, many of which didn’t work, but one, which we started in 2013, did, and it did very well for about five or six years, at which point I had to shut it down because of circumstances beyond my control

I still have a couple of businesses I run that pay the bills, so I’m OK (for now).

But the key issue here is, assuming you’re not wanting to live this type of lifestyle because you’ve retired, that you have to decide how you’re going to make your money.

There are, of course, many options for making money online these days.

Starting your own business is a common one, which is something I discuss here, but other avenues include gambling (which is somewhat risky), trading / investments, consulting, writing, and all manner of Internet marketing activities (e.g. affiliate sales).

In my experience, you should pick something and run with it, because it is so easy to get distracted by what’s referred to as shiny object syndrome – the temptation to buy and try everything you ever see advertised, which means you start tons of projects but tend not to finish any of them.

Money

Since we do not have easy access to our local bank, you need to think about how you’re going to be able to buy what you need online and, most likely, make deposits (if you’re working from home).

Of course, these days, we have credit and debit cards and electronic funds transfers available, but it’s still something you should consider carefully.

I almost never use cash these days, but I do need to write cheques and, occasionally, deposit them, which is, once more, where my friend comes in, because he will go to the bank for me to perform simple transactions such as these.

Another option is to mail these things – we have a mailbox that is about a quarter of a mile up the road, but for many years now, my friend (whom I first met because he was my mail carrier) has brought mail and packages to the house for me.

And it’s a good job he does, because there are days when I receive so many large packages that I would have no way of getting them back to the house, even if I did meet my mail carrier down the road at my mail box.

Isolation

Another crucial aspect of this lifestyle is how comfortable you are living in virtual isolation.

Neither my late wife nor I are social animals – we’re not the sort to want to go out for entertainment, we’re not party people, we don’t enjoy small talk, and we don’t frequent restaurants and bars.

We lived and worked together 24 x 7, which I know many people would find immensely difficult – and probably are doing given some of the lockdown policies that are still in effect.

But it worked for us – really well.

We never had the sort of marital arguments you hear so much about, and while we didn’t always agree on business direction issues, they were always rational discussions.

And if we did have minor disagreements, once they were sorted, that was it – we never, ever brought them up again.

One reason for this is that, when we first met online, we ended up spending a lot of time talking (via Skype) – anywhere from 4 – 12 hours per day, seven days a week – so we knew each other (e.g. our principles, our likes, our dislikes) really well.

If we hadn’t considered ourselves so compatible, I wouldn’t have moved out here in the first place.

In terms of the people we spoke to face-to-face, then for my wife, that was literally only ever me.

And in my case, I see my mail carriers – my friend, and two other members of his family who run the mail route on other days of the week. This may be as few as just one day a week, when my friend brings my groceries, or it may be as many as four or five times, depending on how much I’ve ordered online.

Other than that, I only see the occasional person, such as FedEx and UPS drivers, and people like plumbers and the guy from the Propane company – but I can go for weeks, even months, without seeing any of these people.

The key point here is that, while I know people are being stressed out by the current social isolation practices, this has been our preferred way of life for almost 15 years.

So, you need to be really sure that you are happy to live like this.

Personally, now that my wife has died, I consider myself fortunate that I have always enjoyed my own company (that’s part and parcel of being an introvert, I guess), I am easily able to entertain myself and am therefore rarely, if ever, bored, and I have my dogs for company.

Now, if you wanted to live in a similar manner, there is nothing to say that you couldn’t go out once in a while, either to town for a meal out or to the cinema, or visit neighbours (if you have any) – it’s simply not what we ever wanted.

I will admit that I miss the conversations my wife and I used to have, but for the most part, seeing my friends each week when they bring the mail, even if we can only chat for a few minutes because they are at work, keeps my topped up in terms of talking to other people.

Noise

Somewhat allied to the above issue about isolation is the fact that, where I am, it’s really quiet.

For us, this is what we wanted, but for some people, especially those used to living in larger towns or cities, this quiet could be eerie and uncomfortable, at first perhaps.

There is a very small amount of traffic we hear, but the roads near us are not busy and are not major thoroughfares to anywhere in particular.

I do have a few other houses within sight of my own, but I almost never hear any sounds coming from them.

There are animals that make a bit of noise – dogs in nearby houses, birds singing, and crickets / cicadas.

Most of the animal noises I do hear are my own three dogs, who bark at who knows what.

There are no urban noises, no church bells on a Sunday morning, no distant chatter of neighbours talking over the fence, no emergency vehicles – just the occasional plane or helicopter that passes overhead, but that’s a rare event.

And that’s why I like to sit out on my back porch – anywhere from around dawn to as late as midnight in summer time since it’s so warm – and just sit and look at the view, taking in the peace and tranquility (which makes it a great place to practise Boketto).

Conclusion

Choosing to live this type of life requires a lot of thought, both about the practicalities (e.g. shopping, transport, services) and about the mental aspects (e.g. how sure are you that this will suit you).

For us, it was as close to perfection as we could have hoped to find (although better, more reliable service providers would be great), but it’s not for everybody, of course.

And, to be fair, I’m not sure we really thought through all these issues as thoroughly as we perhaps should have done – but we’ve made it work in a manner that fits our needs.

If you have any other questions, or think there’s an aspect of this lifestyle I’ve missed out or not covered well enough, please do let me know and I’ll try to update this article.