Friends of Adam Davis, the young man from Maine who was found dead in a Billings garbage truck last weekend, describe him as a talented poet with wanderlust who brought gifts to his high school English teacher years after graduating.

"I have a piece of Christo's gates from Central Park. ... I have a favorite handwritten simile from T.C. Boyle that Adam got for me at a reading in Boston," wrote the teacher, Alexander McLean, in a recent e-mail.

In the years after he graduated from Orono High School a year early, Davis, 22, would occasionally show up at McLean's kitchen table to talk about poems, adventures and books.

"He fell in love with poetry as a freshman and charged forward," McLean wrote.

But McLean said the adventure tales were often censored for his ears.

"(He) just didn't seem to have any moderating force in his personality," he said.

Davis was found Saturday morning in a city garbage truck in Billings, where he probably experienced a terrifying death after falling asleep in a downtown Dumpster on a night when temperatures dropped to 18 degrees. Police think he was trying to crawl from his sleeping bag and out of the truck when he was killed by the operation of the machine.

After spending the summer in Virginia, Davis reportedly was on his way by bus to Astoria, Ore., where he planned to work on an organic farm that is part of a network known as World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF). Two days before his death, he sent an e-mail to a close friend, apologizing for being out of touch over the summer.

"I had been thinking of wwoofing for awhile because seemed peaceful and a good way to keep a roof over my head and be someplace without snow ... I am planning (if everything goes well) to stay out in Astoria until December at which point I shall return for a long visit to Maine … I know it has been self-centered of me to not keep in contact for so long … I don't really know why but I've just sort of been in my own world," Davis wrote.

How or when Davis arrived in Billings remains unknown. But he inquired about public housing with the Billings Housing Authority on Oct. 8 and was told it would take at least eight months to qualify, according to Deputy Police Chief Tim O'Connell. He was also referred to the Montana Rescue Mission, a place that he said he did not want to stay, O'Connell said.

Just a few days before that, Davis was in Grand Forks, N.D., where University of North Dakota police arrested him on Oct. 2 after they found him passed out near a road. He was released Oct. 5.

Davis reportedly was a well-read young man, one who began attending poetry readings and auditing classes at the university while he was still in high school. He was enrolled as recently as last spring as an English major at the University of Maine, where he was in and out of school over the past three years. He impressed instructors as a "precocious" student who excelled in upper-level classes meant for more advanced students.

A lack of money and a desire for adventure led him away from the university repeatedly.

"College was not real enough for Adam. He was also estranged from his family and on his own since high school," said one of his professors, Terrell Crouch.

When Davis left school for the last time, he had just finished an advanced poetry workshop and he reportedly spent a few months in New York City, but he left after he was badly beaten in an attack.

"He was going to New York to be a poet, which was something that he actually could have been," said Steven Evans, an associate professor at the university.

A half-sister, Annie Withington, 18, said his plan to work on a farm in Oregon was supposed to be a "nice mindless break for him after New York City." She had not heard from him for most of the summer, which he spent in Virginia Beach. Then, last week he called and e-mailed to tell her that friends had bought him a bus ticket to Oregon and that he would be home for Christmas.

When Davis' body was discovered by the driver of the garbage truck early Saturday, he had little with him, O'Connell said. He did not have any identification but carried court papers with his name on them from the Grand Forks Correction Center.

Even when Davis was a teenager, after finding refuge at his grandparents' home, he would often take a Friday bus alone to New York City for a free poetry reading, said his aunt, Katherine Davis-Dentici. Later, his travels grew broader, but he always came home.

"He was going to be the great American poet, and he felt he needed to travel to experience that," she said.

Davis-Dentici last heard from him a few days before his death. She had recently insisted that he call her collect after he lost his cell phone.

"He always thought he was going to be all right," she said.

Contact Kahrin Deines at kdeines@billingsgazette.com or 657-1392.

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