I find it a bit annoying that the Smithsonian article takes most of its content from Lost in the Taiga by Vasily Peskov, but doesn't make it clear upfront that his work was already translated and published in English, back in 1992, making it seem like the contributor did more work. (In particular because I'm connected to the translator.) Unfortunately the renewed interest seems to have led Amazon used-book-bots to send its price sky-high.

Not that it matters, really, but I never once thought the contributor did any work of bringing something not already in English into English, just of putting it into article form. What is weirdly missing, and no doubt super galling, is a proper credit to the translator -- I wound up with the impression that Lost in the Taiga was written in English in the first place, since the citation is the 1992 Doubleday edition but no translator is mentioned.

My dad and I used to fish west of Waterville, Maine and heard about this guy - that was easily 15 years ago. I thought of him as an urban legend but there's nothing too urban in that area.

I think that might count as a folk tale.

My thoughts are not totally worked out here. I feel that there is a tradition in a lot of different cultures of supporting hermits. I also feel like this guy probably has some untreated mental problems, but then again it's not like that system works in this country. Their pretty clearly just going to send him to prison where he'll die or get worse, so I feel we should of just left him in the woods.

In my mind he was up there with the "Green Man" who supposedly had been electrocuted but lived to terrorize teenagers driving at night in the South Hills of Pittsburgh (without actually harming anyone, of course).

I also feel like this guy probably has some untreated mental problems, but then again it's not like that system works in this country.

The system for not treating mental problems is great.

6: I'd never heard of that before. It's on the internet, so it must be true.

I also feel like this guy probably has some untreated mental problems

He spent 27 years in the woods and apparently the only human voice he heard in that time was Rush Limbaugh. If he didn't have them before...

Maybe the sane response to Limbaugh is to hide in the woods.

I agree with Asteele.

The weirdest part of the story is that he doesn't have a beard.

2: That makes sense.

11: Why should he? If he's stealing from campsites and houses, he must have an adequate supply of razors.

There was a guy lived wild in the woods around the area where I lived, too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/460137.stm

I know those woods well, all round that area, as that was where we went as kids.

I expect it's fairly common, minus the summer camp bit, which does add a bit of Scooby Doo.

12.2: Stealing a razor might be easy, but shaving with cold water isn't. Also, people who are outside all the time tend to go for beards in my experience.

AUGUSTA, Maine -- Even for the officers who found him, it's hard to believe that Christopher Knight lived alone in the Maine woods for 27 years until you meet him or see the campsite where he lived for so long.

What's even crazier is the story of his brother's near-death experience and the talking robot car he partnered with to fight crime.

One of my fave YA books, The Outlaws of Sherwood, describes in some detail how Robin Hood and his band camped in Sherwood Forest to avoid detection. Similar to how the Maine hermit did it, although obviously they didn't have propane and Marian would bring them provisions, cammie cloth, etc. etc. I keep telling my kids all the useful things they could learn if they would just read more ...

15: True, but I've done it, and think it wouldn't take too long to get used to, depending on the type of razor. It does seem like a beard would have been warmer; OTOH, it might attract more attention.

There's also Rogue Male, on the same topic.

I know a fellow who lives in the urban woods. He does not burglarize anything, to the best of my knowledge. He gets food stamps and some other minimal government benefits, has a storage locker, and does a variety of volunteer activities. He's not really a hermit at all -- very gregarious and loquacious in fact. It's rough to sleep rough around here, of course, but he dresses warmly and has decent camping gear. I'm sure there are plenty of other people in similar situations -- see Dwelling Portably for examples. You just don't read anything about the mentally healthy, non-substance abusing ones most of the time.

I was disappointed to see that the article makes no mention of a hockey mask.

I assumed he was sneaking into the campsite sanitation blocks to use their hot water to shave. Which is CHEATING.

There was a piece in the paper a few years ago about someone who was working in the City and sleeping under a hedge in Buckinghamshire. He had a gym membership, so could shower and wash regularly, and he just wasn't prepared to pay central London rent (and quite liked sleeping outdoors).

Rogue Male is the obvious parallel, and a fantastic book.

(Trivia point: John F. Kennedy was reading it the night before he was shot. So was Lee Harvey Oswald.)

Not at all related, but a good song: "Panther In Michigan".

There was a piece in the paper a few years ago about someone who was working in the City and sleeping under a hedge in Buckinghamshire. He had a gym membership, so could shower and wash regularly, and he just wasn't prepared to pay central London rent (and quite liked sleeping outdoors).

I remember hearing about twenty-somethings doing this in Silicon Valley during the tech boom.

20: I know a fellow who lives in the urban woods....It's rough to sleep rough around here, of course....

We know the "fellow" too, Natilo. Really, it's OK - although camping on the National Mall during Unfoggedecon is deprecated.

26: Well, I did live sort-of outside for awhile when I was younger. It was pretty mellow though, as I was authorized to be on the land and it wasn't way out back of beyond or anything -- I could hear the cars on the freeway every night when I went to sleep. Other than a few windfall apples, I didn't steal anything.

There is not enough fernet in San Francisco to convince me to sleep outside during the warmer months in the DC area. Them giant cockroaches would probably just pick me up and carry me away!

Between this, our governor, and the Zumba prostitute, we've been getting some really good coverage here lately.

Can we move the 'and' to after 'this'?

Presque Isle, in Erie PA, has a story of a similar guy, Joe Root, who basically lived on the peninsula when it was mostly just woods and dunes. When families would come to picnic, he'd come out and entertain the kids with ventriloquism and nature lore, which led to getting goodies from the pic-a-nic baskets.

Anyway, the relevant part of the story to 5 is that they did, in fact, commit him (reputedly so that he couldn't claim ownership of the land of which he'd been the sole inhabitant for decades), and he died in an institution.

Or so I've heard. No idea how true it is.

Wiki suggests that it's true, although their sourcing leans on the same restaurant menu that mine does. But I'd forgotten there was a picture of him, and apparently the records of his commitment are legit.

So that's why there so many places named Presque Isle! Presqu'île.

Jroth, your right, we shouldn't leave him in the woods, but leave him the woods. Maybe he could charge campers or something.

My wife was raised in the back woods of Maine. Once, when we were driving out to see the house she grew up in, she waved to a particularly undistinguished section of forest and said "out there is where the hermit used to live."

This is all very My Side of the Mountain to me.

Reminds me of the Utah Mountain Man, who was also recently captured.

Vagabonds are different from hermits, of course. Still, there is some commonality.

There was a student who lived on the NYU campus for a year (maybe?) taking advantage of the showers at the gym. I think he slept in the library.

Sounds like my sophomore year.

Isolation.

Vagabonds are different from hermits, of course.

Higher hourly consulting rates, for one thing.

Travel costs take up most of the difference.

The bit about listening to Rush Limbaugh made me think of "But surely a hermit who takes the daily papers is not a hermit in whom one can repose any confidence". (Arcadia)

Would it be better if they got a weekly current events magazine?

The moon was a wisdomatic pristocratic vagabond. Bad vugum .

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/04/27/infamous-mont-mountain-man-comes-up-for-parole/

That's an awful story.

Do well adjusted people become hermits? Or only those driven mad by small talk?

The village in Scotland where my grandfather retired had a hermit who lived in a cave in the hills. He occasionally came into the village and interacted with people. He was generally well liked and everyone respected his desire to mostly be left the hell alone. I don't think he was mad per se, just very odd and probably suffering from some mental health issue or other. I suspect that before the rise of the crazy-industrial complex his was the fate of a lot of people suffering from mental illness.

Less tardive dyskenesia.

49: there was a hermit who lived up in the woods in the area of the Highlands where I used to go on holiday as a kid. He had a small disability pension that he used to buy food with, and he used to come down out of the hills in winter and play chess with the youth hostel staff. During the stalking season he acted as a sort of informal stalking consultant to the estate staff. Not crazy at all, as far as we could tell; he just liked it up there. Very good at chess, too.

"Stalking consultant" is going to become my go to example of the divided-by-a-common language thing.

My Dad was friendly with the guy who used to own this:

http://forresterfamily.org/index.php?template=torwood
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/denny/torwoodcastle/index.html

He lived alone there for decades, doing slow (and somewhat eccentric) restoration on the ruins. I'd guess he was something of a hermit, although he was friendly enough (although not intimate) with some of the young hippy guys (like my Dad) who lived locally. Very occasionally he came to our house to watch TV [gymnastics, which he'd coached in his youth], but in the castle itself he had no electricity or running water, and he spent a great deal of time alone there.

The guy himself had been a Swordfish pilot in WWII, and bought the castle with the money he had when he left the services.

Do well adjusted people become hermits?

In 18th century England it was fashionable for the ruling class to build picturesque grottoes as "hermitages" in their parkland, and hire guys to live in them as picturesque hermits. They got free board and lodging (in the hermitage) and a reasonable wage by the lights of the time, and all they had to do for it was wave to his lordship's friends while they were walking in the park.

For people of an introverted disposition, this was a pretty damn good job. So yes, well adjusted people were lining up to become hermits

55: hence my reference to "Arcadia", which has this as a central plot point.

Rogue Male rules; the movie with Peter O'Toole also rules; the sequel, Rogue Justice, is not as great. Household's other novels are pretty good.

This guy is probably about one more bad day away from jail or hermit living.

Really, I can't recommend Rogue Male, in either version, too highly.

Also related to the publicly, if not notoriously conflictedly, eremitic, The Seven Mountains of Thomas Merton is an interesting biography.