In 1854, Henry David Thoreau published what many consider to be his magnum opus, Walden, a collection of 18 essays written in isolation at a small shack on the edge of Walden Pond. Although it received little attention in Thoreaus time, Walden has been lauded since the early 20th century as an influential piece of writing on labor, individualism, and nature.Of course, Thoreau neglected to mention in his essays that his wild, off the grid life was actually quite tame. While he lived in his famous cabin which sat on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson his mother frequently helped him with laundry and brought him food. In fact, the cabin was only about a 20-minute walk from his family home.So, while Thoreaus writing certainly remains influential and inspirational nearly 200 years after its publication, the man himself was hardly the embodiment of off-grid living.The nine people on this list, on the other hand, truly embraced the hermit lifestyle, living off the grid in the untamed wilderness and surviving entirely on their own.Willard Kitchener MacDonald: The Hermit Of Gully LakeWillard Kitchener MacDonald, a.k.a. The Hermit of Gully Lake.In late 1944, Willard Kitchener MacDonald was conscripted to go overseas and fight in World War II. Instead, MacDonald jumped from a troop train and began living his life in a secluded hut by Gully Lake in Nova Scotia where he remained for nearly 60 years.Well, its one of the things about miracles is they sometimes happen, MacDonald said in a 2007 documentary about his life, Willard: The Hermit of Gully Lake. I believe in miracles.While the exact date of the beginning of MacDonalds isolation is unclear, most people who knew him assumed that he initially fled into the woods to avoid being captured for deserting the war cause. Perhaps, they theorized, he then simply fell in love with the lifestyle, as he remained at his small Gully Lake cabin even once the Canadian government granted amnesty to deserters in 1950.What is clear, however, is that MacDonald felt he needed very little to survive. He inherited his fathers love of music and built himself a guitar while living in his isolated cabin. He had little else in the way of entertainment. FacebookA 2007 documentary about MacDonalds life and final days was released on YouTube a few years after his death.For meals, MacDonald caught fish, hunted, and foraged for mushrooms and plants that grew in the woods surrounding his crude abode. The only possessions he kept with him were several books, his own writings, his guitar, and a rifle.Unfortunately, MacDonalds cabin and belongings burned in a forest fire in 2003, just one year before the hermits death.Following the fire, MacDonald reluctantly moved into a cabin that Colchester County officials had built for him. However, he fled into the woods once more when his friends tried to convince him to seek medical treatment against his will. Several months later, on June 27, 2004, a search party discovered MacDonalds remains in the wilderness.Chris McCandless, The Man At The Heart Of Into The WildX (Twitter)Chris McCandless was the subject of the book Into the Wild and its later film adaptation.In 1996, author Jon Krakauer released his book Into the Wild, which chronicled the shocking and strange life journey of Chris McCandless, a man who ventured into the Alaskan wilderness in 1992 and never returned. His body was discovered by a pair of moose hunters on Sept. 6, 1992, inside an old, rusted bus just outside of Denali National Park, a notable landmark frequented by countless travelers, trappers, and hunters. But something stood out to the hunters: a note written on a page that had been torn from a novel was taped to the buss door handle. The note was dated August ? and signed by Chris McCandless. When the hunters investigated further, they found McCandless emaciated body inside the bus, which sparked a years-long investigation into the circumstances that led to his death. X (Twitter)Chris McCandless in front of the old bus that he turned into his temporary home.What the investigation revealed was that McCandless had hitchhiked from Carthage, South Dakota, to Fairbanks, Alaska, under the false name Alex, telling a local electrician named Jim Gallien that he planned to live off the land for a few months, per Krakauers book. Although Gallien expressed concern about McCandless ability to survive in the cruel Alaskan wilderness, the young man stubbornly insisted that the electrician drop him off at Denali National Park. Gallien even offered to drive McCandless to Anchorage to pick up more supplies, as he was severely under-equipped for his endeavor but McCandless refused. When he was last seen alive on April 28, 1992, McCandless was carrying nothing more than a light backpack that held some personal items, a 10-pound bag of rice, a Remington semi-automatic rifle, and a pair of rubber boots. McCandless plan was to go on an extended hike westward to the Bering Sea, but less than 30 miles into his journey, he stopped at the rusted bus where his body would ultimately be found.For 16 weeks, McCandless used the bus as his camp and kept a detailed diary of his time in the woods. At first, he seemed to find some success hunting and living off the land, but his last month of entries revealed a desire to return to civilization. Unfortunately, an overflowing river caused by the melting snow made his path back impassable, and he started expending more calories than he could take in each day. He grew weaker, and his diary entries became simple marks to show the passage of the days. Then, 132 days after McCandless was last seen, the two hunters stumbled upon his body. He is believed to have died from starvation two weeks before he was found.The post 9 Hermits Who Left Society Behind To Live In Solitude, From The Caves Of Australia To The Wilds Of Alaska appeared first on All That's Interesting.