Hermit: 'I know my days are numbered' at disputed woodlot

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A former hermit in New Hampshire who went back to live on the wooded property he was ordered to leave realizes that his time there is drawing to a close.

David Lidstone, who just turned 82, is scheduled for a contempt of court hearing Thursday in his tug-of-war with a Vermont landowner over a patch of forest near the Merrimack River that he's called home for 27 years.

A judge issued an injunction in 2017 for “River Dave” — as Lidstone is known — to leave after the landowner, Leonard Giles, sued him. But there have been delays in the case: Besides the pandemic, Lidstone didn’t always show up for court and he’s been in and out of jail over the last year as he resisted the injunction.

“I know my days are numbered here,” he told The Associated Press in a recent interview, a day after he showed up in court to plead not guilty to a trespassing charge on the land. “Eventually I’m going to have to move.”

Lidstone, who became known as a friendly face to kayakers and an advocate for keeping the river clean, wasn't sure what he would do next or where he would go, even though he's had offers of other places to live and more than $200,000 in donations.

Lidstone, a logger by trade, is accused of squatting in a rustic cabin he built on the land in Canterbury. The wooden, two-level A-frame cabin had solar panels, a small, cluttered kitchen with pots hanging from the ceiling, and curtains on the windows. His porch had a footstool with a base made of stacked beer cans. He converted a wood stove into a beehive. He attached lights, a mirror and a pulley for a clothesline to logs supporting the cabin. He also had a vegetable garden.

But while Lidstone was in jail over the property dispute, his cabin burned down in August as it was being dismantled at Giles' request....