David Lidstone, The New Hampshire Man Who Built A Wooden Cabin On Someone Else’s Private Property
X (Twitter)David Lidstone, a.k.a. “River Dave,” was evicted from the property he did not own in 2021.
For 27 years, David Lidstone, also known as “River Dave,” lived off the grid in a New Hampshire cabin. The issue, however, was that River Dave’s cabin was on someone else’s private property — and they wanted him gone.
On July 15, 2021, Lidstone was jailed on a civil contempt sanction relating to a property dispute that dated back to 2016. The landowner was 86-year-old Leonard Giles, and his family had owned the relatively underdeveloped property since 1963. Lidstone was told he’d be released if he agreed to leave his cabin. He argued that the previous landowner in the family had permitted him to live on the property — but he’d never received any proof in writing.
Then, as Lidstone was returning from a court hearing a few weeks later, a fire destroyed the cabin. He was released from jail on August 5, with the judge ruling that Lidstone would have less incentive to return to “this particular place in the woods,” the Associated Press reported.
X (Twitter)David Lidstone’s cabin before it burned down in August 2021.
Quickly thereafter, people across the country offered to help Lidstone, launching fundraising campaigns and offering him places to live. He began reflecting on his hermit lifestyle, saying that he could no longer live that way as “society [would not] allow it.”
“I would have people coming every weekend, so I just can’t get out of society anymore,” he said. “I’ve hidden too many years and I’ve built relationships, and those relationships have continued to expand.”
Still, he wasn’t too upset about the end of his isolation.
“Maybe the things I’ve been trying to avoid are the things that I really need in life,” Lidstone said. “I grew up never being hugged or kissed, or any close contact… I’ve never loved anybody in my life. And I shocked myself because I hadn’t realized that. And that’s why I was a hermit. Now I can see love being expressed that I never had before.”
Mauro Morandi, The ‘Italian Robinson Crusoe’ Who Lived On A Deserted Island For 32 Years
X (Twitter)Mauro Morandi looked after the island of Budelli for three decades.
In 1989, a gym teacher from Modena, Italy named Mauro Morandi decided to set sail on a personal expedition. As fate would have it, his journey came to an abrupt end when he was shipwrecked on the remote isle of Budelli off the coast of Sardinia. But rather than return to his previous life in Modena, Morandi decided to become the deserted island’s caretaker — and he stayed there for more than 30 years.
Morandi wanted to protect the island’s pink coral beach and ensure tourists weren’t doing anything destructive to the ecosystem. In 2020, he recalled to CNN, “Just the other day I chased away two tourists who were trespassing on the off-limits pink beach… Truth is, I’m the only one who has so far taken care of Budelli, doing the surveillance task that the park authorities should do.”
Unfortunately, in 2015, the isle was absorbed by the La Maddalena Archipelago National Park of Sardinia — and the park wanted Morandi gone.
X (Twitter)The isle of Budelli, which is now an environmental and educational site.
The park service planned to turn the island into a center for environmental observatory and education, and they insisted that Morandi had no legal right to remain on the island despite his attempts to negotiate with them.
“All I ask is, if I must be sent away during the renovation works,” Morandi said, “that I can come back after and keep doing what I do each day: guard the endangered pink coral beach, keep tourists at bay, protect the nature. I fear that if I’m gone, it will be the end of Budelli too.”
But despite his pleading — and an online petition with 72,000 signatures to keep him on the island — authorities ultimately decided that Morandi’s time on Budelli had come to an end. He moved to the nearby island of La Maddalena, instead.
“I’ll be living on the outskirts of the main town… My life won’t change too much. I’ll still see the sea,” he said in 2020. “I will leave hoping that in the future Budelli will be protected as I have protected it for 32 years.”
