When I was a teenager I loved reading Thoreau, esp. about Walden. After a couple of years of teenage angst, wishing I too, was divorced from society and lived in complete isolation, I learned:

Thoreau lived less than 0.5 miles (20 mins) walk from a train station and civilisation and he was surrounded by tourists in summer. He visited his MOTHER almost DAILY (what a great survivalist, indeed). The book is written about a year spent on the pond (owned by a friend) but in reality it took him TEN years to write the book (much like my PhD, lol - but I'm not claiming otherwise!!). He often held parties and attended them.

If ever there was a man who could write raptourously because he lived alone "off the grid, in isolation'' but his mother STILL DID HIS LAUNDRY it was Thoreau - the ultimate mummas' boy. This is an excerpt from Walden- one that captured my independent teenage heart (I've since lived way more independently than Thoreau):
''I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to it's lowest terms." - As long as Mummy still does my laundry.....

Another one is Eckhart Tolle - Mr "I was down to my last penny and spent a year in isolation" - I'll write another post about his luxurious year free loading - one we could only hope to experience.