The remains of stone houses were slowly crumbling into a rocky beach. Where there had once been thatched roofs, peat fires and people speaking Gaelic, there were now only ferns bobbing in the wind.

I was walking along stone walls, looking for signs of recent habitation. Finding none, I hopped down and marched across the moor. Four startled herons beat their wings. The animals, empty hills and crumbling stone houses all felt postapocalyptic, as if the countryside were being reclaimed by nature. And yet on Ulva, a small island off the coast of Scotland, it’s the people who are doing the reclaiming.

In 2025, the idea of settling anyplace other than Mars might seem anachronistic, but the people on Ulva are pioneers of a different kind. They are giving new life to places left behind by the industrial and agricultural revolutions, imagining a 21st-century settlement built not on extraction but on connection — to nature, vegetable gardens, art, community and a life away from screens.

I came to Ulva wondering if, by establishing something new by resurrecting something old — small, self-governing communities — we might find an antidote to the atomization, disempowerment and environmental degradation of modern life. What I found was messy, incomplete and inspiring. If places like Ulva succeed, they could offer a model for reversing rural flight, re-establishing local democracy and revitalizing local economies not just in Scotland but anywhere.

In 2017, Jamie Howard, whose family had owned the island for several generations, put all roughly 4,500 acres of Ulva up for sale. With the help of land reform laws and Scottish government funds, a community group from the neighboring Isle of Mull (population: less than 3,000) bought the island for around £4.5 million, or about $6 million. The goal was ambitious: to repopulate Ulva and rebuild its economy.