In the late 19th century, an itinerant New England vagabond regularly traversed a 365-mile circuit that took him through most of western Connecticut and New York. Starting in south-west Connecticut he moved through New Haven County and along the Connecticut River, across northern CT, through Litchfield County, into New York and along the Hudson River Valley, and back to his starting point in CT.
He humped the entire journey on foot at a pace of about ten miles a day, took what he could from nature and relied on the goodwill of townsfolk for whatever else he needed.
His name is enshrined in a pantheon of New England folkloric figures. The residents who beheld him came to call this strange wanderer Leather Man.
Leather Man took his name from the strange garb he wore: a thick, baggy coat, trousers, boots, and hat, all a self made derelict patchwork of leather weighing over fifty pounds. He carried all of his worldly belongings in a large leather satchel, which included among many other things, a hand-made axe, crudely hewn pipe for tobacco, food and other provisions and a black Catholic bible translated to the French.
Rainfall, snow or sunshine, he knew every square mile of the woods and trails of Connecticut and Westchester County New York better than many people know their own property lines. I imagine he did a lot of thinking, meditating, reflecting along the trails he walked. I imagine that despite the smile he reportedly wore around his peers he suffered to himself silently, reciting litanies and his own personal gospels to walls of dark, empty caves.
There is always the possibility he was just another psychologically damaged transient, unable to function in the larger social context, but I just can’t agree with that. Evidence suggests that he was literate, quite possibly very intelligent, and given his French accent, worldly at least to some extent. The bible suggested he was a Christian and the worn cover that he referenced it often.
He was described by 19th century NY and CT residents as kind and polite, if not intensely private and reclusive. He would ask for nothing from people but food, or water: the most basic elements for survival. They would offer him the loft of their barns, or in some cases even a warm bed in their homes but he always declined, preferring instead to sleep under the star-lit roof of the many caves that dotted the route he traveled. He carried many tools, all handmade, was knowledgeable of woodcraft and survival in the outdoors. He was recorded to have purchased items in foundries and grocery stores, meaning he found some form of employment here and there. He was almost entirely self-sufficient.
He stopped often in towns for provisions, and while he crossed paths with many different people I can’t help but view him as a man apart, amidst but never among. He chose to communicate with a series of hand gestures and grunts usually;
Yes.
No.
Food?
Thank you…
When people approached him with personal questions or otherwise anything outside common pleasantries, he would ignore it or abruptly change the subject.
His unwillingness to speak about his past and where he came from suggests to me that there is something shameful, or otherwise too painful to relive from his life. His constant movement additionally suggests to me that he was either trying to get away from, or pursue something connected to it: things, concepts or people that only existed to him as intangible ideas that either haunted or just barely eluded him.
Several accounts stated that he often mumbled to himself, sometimes in French, while others in English—tinted of course with the brogue of a man from, it was determined, Southern France. So, he could speak.
It was often speculated that Leatherman’s hermetic and nomadic existence coupled with his “vow of silence” was self-imposed, a kind of personal penance. I can understand this to a certain degree as being a manifestation of some kind of guilt, or desire for privacy, but then…WHY was he so approachable? Why did he move through the lives of Connecticut residents the way he did, allowing himself to come so close…Only to shy away?
It always seemed to me that, rather than a conscious choice to separate himself from the larger human context, indicative of some kind of deep-seeded paranoia or distrust of people, it was a position he had no way to change, waiting in the cold at humanity’s window. Did he know how to knock? Did he forget how? Did he know he could? Did he know he had every claim to the warmth of human contact?
If not, what happens to a man to make him forget? What could frighten shame or traumatize him so much that the basic threads of commonality he shares with those around him are severed?
The few chromy photographs that have survived of him capture a kind of feral element in his eyes, like a raccoon in daylight—a man that had lost his nature somehow. But he maintained all of his humanity and was in no way volatile; children were hardly frightened of him, and instead relished the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the old Leatherman once a month or so, and adults were no different. Notices were posted urging him to come out, join functions, or answer questions. In the end it wasn’t fear of persecution that sent Leatherman on the low-roads, but popularity. It was as though he was afraid of being accepted. But why? Was he afraid he would disappoint or hurt them? Or maybe that he would be disappointed or hurt by them?
In 1888, a particularly harsh winter slowed the Leatherman’s movements. He was found in one of his caves, dead due to a combination of cancer and overexposure to the elements.
...
I often leave my house and hop in my car with no real destination in mind. I don’t know what I’m looking for, and I barely know when I’ve found it, but I like the freedom inherent in just going. It’s a way to organize my thoughts. I walk the same city blocks I have many times before, sometimes the silence of the streets is such where I can hear the nuances of each step, my breathing, heartbeat. It’s hard not to feel almost incorporeal. I stop off for a drink, or coffee. I usually have a book with me. Sometimes the book is just a ruse.
It’s funny…It indicates I am occupied, and want my privacy, and yet I take it to a public place. There are plenty of other more solitary spots to read but I choose ones soaked in the steady banter of people, and I in the middle, or just to the periphery of their comings and goings. In the midst of people sometimes, it’s as though we want to be sought out, yet we remain unseen.
I can’t always say the things I want to say to certain people. All the depth of my feeling comes out as just mumbling or stammering, cloaked in layers of metaphor and uncertainty, indecipherable as a fractured Rosetta stone. It can be a real problem.
I’m certainly no “man of the land”, ascetic or hermit. I have no dark past, nor am I damaged in any way. I have my quirks and eccentricities, “homeless cave-dweller” not counted among them. But I just think that, with the possible exception of a very blessed few, we all collectively share these kinds of experiences, at least at some point in our lives, and should understand this man's life in context to our own
If at any time you’ve ever found yourself somewhere on the fringe in life, walking the miles alone with your thumb in the air;
If you’ve ever felt yourself more a ghost haunting the world around you than a presence acknowledged in it;
If you’ve ever slowly stitched a coarse layer of armor over your skin out of self preservation and to hide your scars from people;
If you ever perceived a kind of impermeable layer between you and the ones you most care about, or the world around you;
If for days on end you’ve ever felt you must keep moving, that you couldn’t sit still for another moment for fear your mind will catch up with the rest of your body;
Then, be the trail paved with gravel or dirt, you, like me, have walked at least a day, a week, month or in some cases even years in the shoes of the Old Leather Man.
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