Atop Loon Mountain, there were a number of things to do. We reached the top just before noon, when the Mountain Man was scheduled to talk. There were log benches for seating and a walkway built above one side of the seating area, so people could stand above and look down. In front and to the side was a small wooden cabin. Apparently the Mountain Man isn't just some park employee paid to perform for kiddies, which is what I was expecting. He's the real thing, hired by the park staff to talk to people about his way of life in exchange for whatever occasional things he might need.

A minute or two after noon, he emerged from his cabin. He had a long beard, mostly gray; his stature was fit and strong. He carried a walking stick as tall as he, and on it many intricate designs were carved. He later explained what each design was -- vegetables underneath the ground, trees, rain, sun -- and that he carved them himself, some from pictures but most from his imagination.

His appearance was impressive and commanding, but his voice did not match his look. He was warm and congenial, smiled broadly, and spoke with a pleasant voice. His accent was unusual, formulated partly by influence from his mother, who was Scottish, and partly, I'm sure, by a lack of regular contact with other people.

His introduction was brief. He said the folks at Loon Mountain wanted him to meet with folks and talk about his way of life, and he agreed, and so he opened the floor to questions from people in the audience.

In the summer, he lives in that cabin atop Loon Mountain; in the off-season he goes back to his regular home, a cabin he built himself "away over the ridge." Takes him half a day or so to make the trip through the woods. He didn't build the cabin on Loon Mountain. When someone asked if he had, he said, "No, if I had, I'd have done it right."

Someone asked what he does when he gets ill. He said he doesn't tend to get sick and that he hadn't been sick for a number of years. But when he does feel sickness coming on, he knows what herbs to gather to treat himself. His father apparently taught him how to do that.

He is not unfamiliar with the outside world. As a kid, he was taught to read and write. He reads in his free time, mostly books about the earth, the solar system, and so forth. Since doing his talks on Loon Mountain, he's been the recipient of a lot of mail, and he reads and replies to them all. He's been invited to people's houses for meals before and has been to various cities in New England -- Boston, Hartford, Providence, and so forth. Someone in the audience asked if there was anywhere in the world he'd like to go, and he talked about what he's read about the tropics, and how there are areas in Brazil, plateaus in the mountains, where no one has ever been. He said he'd like to visit there.

Someone else in the audience asked if he wanted to change lifestyles and live as others do. No, he said. He doesn't see the point. "I visit folk's houses, and I see something and ask what it's for, and they say it's not for anything, it's just to have. It doesn't make any sense to me."

What is his relationship with the animals of the forest? "I don't take critters in as pets, no. If critters come along, I put them in the stewpot." Moose is his favorite meat, he said, and Leen and I concurred. Moose steak is delicious.

Does he fear bears? No, black bears are not aggressive, as many portray them to be. Black bears are more afraid of you and will be more inclined to run away when startled than attack. The way to deal with bears, he said, is just to know where their territory is, respect it, and leave them alone.

Does he keep a diary? "No. I remember what I did."

What happens when he gets old? "I'll probably shrivel up and die!" he said with a grin.

Darleen wondered if he had a social security number. I asked. He laughed and said, "No." Someone else in the audience joked that I was from the IRS. If I were, the Mountain Man said, I could take some of the dead squirrels he's got in a pot inside.

He owns no money and has no use for it. He harvests what he needs from the land and trades for what he can't get. He collects crystals from the earth as trading material. You get to know where to find crystals, he said. "I've seen folks walk right over crystals and never know it." When he trades crystals for supplies, there are no set prices. He hands over whatever crystals he's found throughout the season, and he gets what supplies he needs for the upcoming season in return.

He has a couple of friends -- the guy he trades with, for example, and a couple of the folks at Loon Mountain. But in his way of life, he is pretty much alone. He was raised an only child by his parents, who lived elsewhere in Franconia Notch and lived off the land, and back then they knew a couple other families who lived as they did, and occasionally they'd make the day's journey to visit. His parents are dead now, and he has no known living relatives. He does not, in fact, know his own age.

"Are you married?" a woman in the audience asked him.

"Are you interested?" he replied with a friendly grin, and he got yet another laugh out of the audience. He does without electricity but does not do without a sense of humor. "No," he continued. "One of the reasons I agreed to do these talks was the chance to meet some of the ladies. But when they come to understand what it means to live the way I do -- once they discover what it's really like -- they move on. But folks tell me that's good too." At that, the Mountain Man garners more laughter, and Team Hardcore, standing a bit off to my left, cheered and applauded.