Aroostook County
26
Wilderness People
Stories of personal North Woods encounters by Dorothy Boone Kidney
F
or 29 years, except winters, my husband Milford and I lived in a cabin in the remote Allagash wilderness of Maine with no neighbors where we tended a dam for the Bangor Hydro-Electric Company and registered canoeists for the Bureau of Parks and Recreation. While there, we became acquainted with, and learned about, caretakers, guides and hermits. The Allagash Region has its share of hermits. A hermit is a difficult person for anyone to attempt to analyze. For reasons of their own they have fled from the outside world and sought refuge in the thick wilderness. They seldom have a visitor, seldom get any mail, and con-
versation is of no importance to them. A hermit named Fred Harrison lived alone for years in the secluded Hudson Pond area relying on his pilot-friend Ray Porter of Patten for supplies and a rare trip out. Porter landed on the pond one day and walked up to Fred’s cabin to pay him a visit. In the well-kept, clean cabin at lonely Hudson Pond he found a penciled note. The note read: I killed myself because I killed my baby dog for chasing a deer. I threw my pistol into the lake after I shot baby dog. I didn’t have enough nerve to shoot myself. I didn’t have to shoot my dog. No one knew she was chasing deer but me. I want to suffer because I think
it was a crime to shoot my baby dog. If you find this, Ray, I’m all done living. I’m on the bottom of the lake beside my baby dog. (The Maine Law stated that game wardens may shoot dogs chasing deer.) Ray Porter found Fred’s body in the lake, one heel caught on the edge of a crude wharf. He tied the body securely then flew back to Patten and notified the authorities. No living relatives could be located. A sad story of the tragic end of a hermit. A man can become pathetically attached to his dog when living alone – so attached that, in Fred’s case, it caused his death. Milford and I knew another hermit,
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