Were Mountain Men Aspies?

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A mountain man (someone who would go into alone to an uncharted area to explore or to make a living and didn't mind a solitary existance) Watching Jerimiah Johnson yesterday made me wonder about this; I feel someone like him would be diagnosed as on the spectrum today. For a person to go alone and not mind sounds like aspie traits to me.

Very possible that many of the mountain men of the old west were aspies. Read a quote by one who partnered up with another more famous guy (maybe he was talking about Jerimiah Johnson) who said "that I trekked through wilderness for 100s of miles with so-and-so, and he never once spoke a word to me. Now thats what I call good company!" So both must have been aspies.

There may well have been a higher percentage of Aspies there, but the first "Mountain Man" on the island where I used to live was there so that he would be hard to attack by surprise, having fled a gang in the US. Currently, the most hermit-like man I know by far is my best friend. He seems quite NT and intelligent; he just prefers most animals to most people, likes working outdoors, and feels overwhelmed in a city.

I don't see Grizzly Adams as being an Aspie-type character. He's just some guy who wants to get away from civilization and commune with the animals.

There's much more to being Aspie/autistic than wanting to get away from civilization.

From where I came from, yes and no.

Yes, it'll likely be people who cannot cope well with the modern standards of living.
Maybe people with nowhere to go except hide, likely with ruined past lives.

Also no. There are really people who lives in the mountains alone.
Some are rumored to be witches or shamans, usually in rural places, likely as someone who would choose to commune with nature.
Some are actually displaced tribespeople and actually know too little of the modern world to function there.
Some are actually been born up there...


I can see the appeal though.
But it's not necessarily about AS.
I acknowledge the fact that some of us are asocial, some of us are social, and some of us cannot handle being in overwhelming places regardless of the desire for solitude, and some of us simply can do with stressfully hostile environments.

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I live in a town with under a thousand population, an hour from the nearest traffic light. I met a young woman from the direction of no traffic lights, and she was quite overwhelmed at having more than one store/post office to search for things. There are people even farther north who think that seeing the Sun rise on Christmas would spoil the soft light of tradition.

Some mountain may have been, some definitely were not. Many western legendary figures went through prospector/trapper phase before going to become sheriffs and even local politicians.

Some mountain may have been, some definitely were not. Many western legendary figures went through prospector/trapper phase before going to become sheriffs and even local politicians. Not that aspies cant be sheriffs or local politicians as well, but not all mountain men were either life long loners nor had aspie traits. But some probably did.

Listening to this old paranormal radio host talking about "ferial humans"/bigfoot and the possibility of them being mountain men with dementia keeps coming up. The host keeps bringing up autism and has some outdated/ableist views on autism but it's making me wonder if the regular mountain men/women were/are autistic people who desired to live away from society and became mountain people. Went to look up the possibility of Mountain People actually being autistic was a thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n03KxjVCds
Here's the show if you're interested. But the host is a little outdated and ableist.

I wouldn't rule out that at least some of them might have been autistic or adjacent.

There are days that I want to move to the Bavarian Alps and leave the madness of society behind.