As our video call struggles to find a connection, I see that John King’s profile picture is Gandalf; his wife’s sons called him that when they first met, he says. As a long-haired, white-bearded trainee druid, it probably comes with the territory.
It was actually Lynn, King’s wife, who started him on the druidry path. They met at a yoga class that King was teaching, aged 61 (he had worked as an architect, retiring early). Smarting from a recent, painful divorce, he had no interest in a new relationship (“I didn’t want anything to do with women; I’d had enough”). There was an attraction, though, and they started dating and talking about Lynn’s interest in nature-based spirituality. King had had “a connection to the spirit” throughout his life, discovering Buddhism in his 30s, but was sceptical when Lynn mentioned druidry.
Gradually, though, something shifted. “I would think: ‘She’s ringing bells for me.’” They attended a druid gathering at Glastonbury. “It was such a lovely bunch of people. It’s very egalitarian – you get everyone from princes to paupers.” King began studying druidry. A year and a day after they met, they married in a handfasting ceremony (a register office one came later).
Ask how the Hertfordshire-based pair ended up moving to the tiny, virtually uninhabited Scottish island of Eilean Shona and they will answer: “A little bit of druid magic.” In 2014, when King’s centenarian aunt, whom he had cared for, died, it felt like the time for a new beginning. “Lynn said to me: ‘We have no need to live here; where do you want to live?’ King said New Zealand or Ardnamurchan in Scotland; Lynn vetoed New Zealand, so they set their sights on the remote Highland peninsula. Magic intervened at the festival of Imbolc, marking the start of spring. “It’s a time to plant seeds,” King says. “So I printed out a map of Ardnamurchan, folded it up and planted it during the ceremony, with an intent.” A few weeks later, King found a cottage on Eilean Shona, took Lynn to visit and quickly decided to take the plunge. “When we got back, I went on my computer and looked at the map that I buried; where I had folded it was Eilean Shona. There’s a synchronicity about the whole thing.”
They moved in June 2014, knowing that they would be reliant on their own resources. The tiny stone cottage they rented was two miles from the island jetty down a stony track and a two-hour journey from the nearest shop. It had no electricity, central heating or phone line. “We had a fuel stove in the living room; we used candles; we had a gas cooker and gas-powered refrigerator.” Washing was done in plastic buckets: “I imported a mangle from the Amish in the US.”
Lynn, whom King teasingly called “five star” when they first met (“She was living a five-star life”), cooked; King would transport fuel by boat and quad bike to the cottage several times a year. “The first December, it was about -6C and I remember spending a day in wet snow bringing in half a ton of coal and thinking: ‘Bugger this for a game of soldiers!’”
Still, they were up for the challenge. King had a talent for logistics, honed in his architectural practice; the yoga meant he was “flexible and strong”. But it was his passion for climbing that made him think life off-grid was possible. “I climbed until I was 62. Climbing gave me the confidence to step into a space where I didn’t know if I could do it.”
His only struggle, he says, was the darkness: the north-facing cottage lost direct sunlight from the end of October to early March. For Lynn, it was the difficulty communicating with her elderly father: “There was at least a 20-minute walk to a mobile signal and a 40-minute walk to an internet terminal.”
Despite that, it was “a time of healing, renewal and personal growth”, King says. “An opportunity for us to step out of the normal world and do our own thing.” It was also an intensely spiritual experience, living enmeshed in nature. The one thing all druids agree on, explains King, is that “the natural world is alive and we are an intrinsic part of it. Interacting with nature in that visceral way, you saw the truth of that start to come out.” Life on Eilean Shona was governed by the tide, the light and the weather. “You’re intimately concerned with that: you watch the pattern of the waves, you see what the sunset is like, you walk outside and you sniff the air.” It allowed his perception of the natural world to broaden and deepen, he says.
The pair left the island in 2017 after three and a half years, conscious that their intensely physical island existence would not be possible for ever. They still live in remote Ardnamurchan, as closely connected to nature as ever. Their home borders an ancient oak wood; pine martens and red squirrels visit the garden; golden and sea eagles fly over and King has shared the nearby burn with an otter. Bathing in it is a vital daily practice. “You step out of the door, you’re stark naked, you’ve got bare feet. You immediately switch into what’s happened. This morning it was -3C, another day it’ll be hot or cold and wet; mud will squeeze up between your toes.” He swam in the darkness at 7am through this winter. “You look up and the moon is shining across the water at you; you look through the trees and all the stars are sprinkled above you. That’s when the magic happens.”
Now 73, King is continuing his druidry studies, which involve a three-grade mentored course of self-directed study, exploring the elements and connection to nature; he is in the third grade, considering how to engage more actively with society. His blog explores his druid life and “meeting nature on nature’s terms”.
The couple have no intention of moving again: Ardnamurchan allows them to live in harmony with their beliefs. “It’s a gentler life,” King says. He would like to be buried on their property. “But there’s not enough topsoil!”
Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?
