The Good Life. One of my favorites too.
Posted on 04/23/2010 2:06:25 PM PDT by maine-iac7
Richard Zimmerman, known to all as Dugout Dick, succumbs at 94
Known as the "Salmon River Caveman," Richard Zimmerman lived an essentially 19th century lifestyle, a digital-age anachronism who never owned a telephone or a television and lived almost entirely off the land.
"He was in his home at the caves at the end, and it was his wish to die there," said Connie Fitte, who lived across the river. "He was the epitome of the free spirit."
Richard Zimmerman had been in declining health when he died Wednesday.
Few knew him by his given name. To friends and visitors to his jumble of cave-like homes scrabbled from a rocky shoulder of the Salmon River, he was Dugout Dick.
He was the last of Idaho's river-canyon loners that date back to Territorial days. They are a unique group that until the 1980s included canyon contemporaries with names like Beaver Dick, Cougar Dave and Wheelbarrow Annie, "Buckskin Bill" (real name Sylvan Hart) and "Free Press Frances" Wisner. Fiercely independent loners, they lived eccentric lives on their own terms and made the state more interesting just by being here....
(Excerpt) Read more at idahostatesman.com ...
In a few years people like this guy will be required to earn enough money to buy into Obamacare.
Au contraire...He'd be given a pill ;o)
Just shows how dangerous it is to live without the material blessings of civilization and modern medicine. Obamacare would have enabled him to live a full life. (/sarc)
Does the reporter think we wouldn't have figured that out on our own?
BTW - been meaning for some time to tell you that I really like your ID name - great take-off
Ping.
LOL
However, given to-days level of independent thinking - he probably thought it prudent.
Other than that, I was thinking he did a much better job than what we usually read today.
The Good Life. One of my favorites too.
No one owns their property anymore. Try not paying the governments property rental tax and see what happens.
Governments hate that.
Read the biography of Sylvan Hart, “Last of the Mountain Men” by Harold Peterson, years ago. Interesting group of people. Fascinating lifestyle, if you could do it. We will find out after a few more years of what is going on!
THANK you! I may just paint him
More power to this guy, but living alone, no telephone, no TV, no internet, I don’t see any books. What did he DO all day? I’d be bored stiff.
here’s one
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Mountain-Men-Harold-Peterson/dp/0960356665/ref=pd_sim_b_3#noop
Are you female?
A sculptor, using mainly California serpentine, he found a mountainside of it way off the beaten track and just went in and built a really great house - heated with a iron stove made from an ocean buoy - that burns huge logs.
To visit him requires going as far as you can with a 4-wheel drive then hiking 4 hours over mountain trails and streams to a meadow where he picks you up in an 8-wheel drive Italian truck and off you go to again.
They grow their own food, of course. He makes his own carving tools.
With his shoulder length blond hair, his muscled frame resulting from his rugged lifestyle - particularly carving out and hauling great chunks of stone back to his place - he looks like the Hollywood idea of a Mountain Man.
He kept losing his dogs to mountain lions - until he got a Rhodesian Ridgeback. No more problems.
He did, however, become a very successful sculptor - so was no longer financially imperiled. It was rather strange to go to an opening of one of his shows, like in Los Angeles, and see him in that setting - knowing where and how he lived.
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