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 Aug. 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.”
