The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

…[L]ocals were enraged by Knight’s actions. The actual items he stole might be minor, but he also took people’s peace of mind. Their sense of security. Some said they were afraid to sleep in their own cabins, afraid for decades. ‘I felt violated, over and over again,’ said Debbie Baker, who has owned a place on North Pond with her husband for more than twenty years. ‘I lost count how many times he broke in.’ Her two sons, when they were young, were terrified of the Hermit. They had nightmares about him.So frequently, in our modernized and “progressive” society, we romanticize the escape into the wild; and while it’s true that people have been retreating to nature for its restorative powers since the beginning of time—Jesus, Buddha, Gilgamesh, St. Anthony—it was really the literature of the Romantic period—Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge – that began to codify the retreat into Nature as a literary, as well as a physical, aesthetic. Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey”, and Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein, who found the French Alps “sublime and magnificent”, and whose “scenes afforded [him] the greatest consolation that [he] was capable of receiving” are but two examples. In the American tradition those carrying the torch of the Romantics begin with Emerson, Thoreau and Muir. Thoreau, who famously moved to the woods because he wanted to suck all the marrow out of life, Emerson’s “transparent eye-ball” and Muir’s near death experiences in a Sequoia and on a glacier all attempt to accomplish the same goal: to find Life by obliterating ego, to find one’s self by seeking Nature. So, what happens when someone seeks out Nature not to return? Michael Finkel’s telling of Christopher Knight’s story, in his book The Stranger in the Woods, explores that question.In 1986, Christopher Knight quit his job, cashed his final paycheck, got in his Subaru Brat and headed south to Florida; he turned around and drove north all the way to central Maine, down one dirt road, then another, until the car could no longer navigate the path. He drove his car as far into the woods as the trail would take him, threw his keys in the center console, got out and started walking. He never looked back.For almost three decades Knight lived virtually unknown in solitude. On a body of water called North Pond, just about smack in the middle of the state, he constructed an inconspicuous camp where he remained, hardly ever leaving except to steal supplies and food. He talked to virtually no one in nearly a quarter century, save a lone hiker and some fisherman, all of whom came upon him accidentally over the course of his tenure in the wild. Outside of those encounters, he never spoke. He listened to the radio, he read, he meditated—if meditation is sitting quietly and simply being—and he came face to face with death; or as he called it, “the Lady of the Woods”. He also committed approximately 1,000 instances of breaking and entering and petty theft. It was how he survived. In so doing, he inhabited a curious space between shunning civilization completely, and being totally dependent on it for survival.This book should be on your shelf for any number of reasons, but one of them is that this book is an incredibly quick read. You won’t need days, weeks or months to finish it. I think it took me a total of six hours, give or take, to digest this, and I don’t really consider myself a speedy reader; in fact, I’m still trudging, after several months, through Michener’s Alaska: I love it, but it’s tedious. Finkel’s book moves with rapidity for two reasons: first, it’s fascinating. How does someone endure nearly thirty years in a tent through twenty-seven New England winters? Additionally, he does this without so much as hardly talking to or touching another human being. He doesn’t take months to prepare for this ordeal, or perhaps years, like Chris McCandless from John Krakauer’s Into the Wild, nor does he take supplies. He had neither a map, nor compass nor food. Just himself. And he wasn’t looking to find himself or some deeper meaning in life like Cheryl Strayed: he was looking to get lost. Secondly, Finkel’s prose is straightforward and lacks the density of academic writing. After all, Finkel’s a journalist and not an academic. He’s much more of a story teller than a story analyst. So, readers will find themselves both engrossed with and gratified by the book’s content and pace.Readers will also identify with Finkel’s admiration for Knight. Imagine living not just alone in the woods, but also in a camp, a tent (not a cabin or shack for shelter), cooking over a propane stove or grill, shitting in a hole in the ground for twenty-seven years. (Knight lived in constant fear of being caught, and so never once started a fire. Not even for warmth. Living through almost thirty… thirty! Maine winters.) Finkel writes with what I interpret as a sense of bewilderment at the length of Knight’s tenure, his ability to survive, and the absoluteness of his solitude:None of these hermits remained as secluded as long as Knight did, at least not without significant help from assistants, or without being corralled into a monastery or convent, which is what happened to the Desert Fathers and Mothers. There might have existed—or it’s possible, currently exist—hermits more completely hidden than Knight, but if so, they have never been found. Capturing Knight was the human equivalent of netting a giant squid. His seclusion was not pure, he was a thief, but he persisted for twenty-seven years while speaking a total of one word and never touching anyone else. Christopher Knight, you could argue, is the most solitary person in all of human history.It may also be hard for readers not to see some chutzpa in Knight’s ability to withstand incredibly difficult ordeals: ‘Once you get below negative twenty, you purposely don’t think. It’s like there’s no atheists in a foxhole. Same with negative twenty. That’s when you do have religion. You do pray. You pray for warmth.’ It may be true that science has no definitive answer for precisely what temperature hypothermia begins to set in, but it must be very close at negative twenty. (As a side note, Outside Podcast has an amazing episode on the science of what it’s like to freeze to death, and it’s fascinating.) In some respects, Knight’s actions are near super-human, perhaps even heroic.On the other hand, Finkel does not gloss over the more unsavory aspects of this story: the fact the Knight was a terror to the local population of North Pond. Debbie Baker, one of the person’s interviewed for Finkel’s story and quoted at the top of this piece, perfectly highlights the fact that this is not some romantic narrative about one seeking refuge from the monstrousness of civilization. Rather, Knight was the horror. To Baker’s children Knight was the monster in the closet and under the bed, the boogeyman, the thing that goes bump in the night and every other unsavory beast that children dream up in the deep dark of their minds—except he was real. Knight had become the reason children need night lights. Knight himself acknowledged as much after his arrest in 2013. In speaking to Finkel from prison he said,There’s no justification for my stealing … And I don’t want people trying to justify my bad behavior in an attempt to sully what they admire in me. Take the whole package, good and bad. Judge me on that. Don’t cherry pick. Don’t make excuses for me.This distinguishes Knight from those who seek either refuge or enlightenment in solitude, or both. Make a plan, take only what you need, leave only footsteps. Thoreau (for whom Knight had no end of loathing) came into town regularly, if only to socialize, and while it’s true that it’s been over 150 years since he set up shop at Walden Pond, all that’s left is the foundation of his “cottage”: McCandless had a plan and many people to help him along the way, and all did so willingly: Bill Bryson uses his A Walk in the Woods as an opportunity to learn and teach about the ecology of the East coast and the Appalachian Trail: Wendell Berry talks about the restorative power of crossing “into the woods”. Yet, each of these figures operates with the understanding, at least tacitly, that without civilization such forays into the wild would not be possible. Moreover, each did so without directly causing harm to other humans, or presumably, the environment.Knight was different. Not only was he a terror to the local population, but he also left a veritable dump behind: a good deal of empty propane containers buried in the ground: twenty-seven years worth of shit—which, contrary to what you might think, doesn’t decompose when simply buried: hundreds of magazines: countless food wrappers. Additionally, Knight wanted to reap the reward without sewing the seed. Live off the fat of the land without in any way contributing to it. All this even though a number of North Pond residents offered, by way of notes on doorsteps, to leave him whatever he needed or desired so long as he didn’t break in again. In fact, a hermit named Meng-Hu, who runs Hermitary.com, a website for the hermit community—yes, that’s a thing—noted exactly this on his website:‘The idea of a hermit who steals for a living confirms the worst stereotype of the “eremite as parasite” … ‘No historical hermit, especially those motivated by a spiritual sense, but also wilderness hermits, has ever had the slightest motive to encroach upon anybody’s belongings—be that mind, body, time, space, or goods’.Readers may be conflicted regarding this hard-line stance; because while we do not condone or excuse such behavior, we may also see something of the stoic in Knight’s existence. Personally, I view Knight not so much as being lazy or as a parasite, but as willing to go to any lengths to make his time his own. To have no master but himself. In his own words, “You’re just there. You are”.All in all, Finkel’s narrative stands as a great piece of investigative journalism combined with masterful storytelling. From the background on Knight’s family, to the pace at which the text moves, to the inner-workings of the mind of a man who risked everything, even his own life in those Maine winters, not to have anything to do with society, readers will find it difficult to put this book down, and chances are they’ll be huddled over this one by lamp-light into the wee hours.For more visit: journeyofathousandmiles.blog

This is an intriguing, well-written story about a twenty year old man, Christopher Knight, who simply went of the grid in 1986, walking into the back woods of Maine, where he remained for twenty seven years until he was caught for thieving. So, this was no ordinary “hermit”. This was one who, for all he cried about wanting solitude, wanted his creature comforts, as well.So, for over a quarter of a century he stole from the cabins that were not too far from him and from a camp for disabled children. What did he steal all these years? Why, he stole food, candy, snacks, books, magazines, tools, small TVs, radios, hand held video games, lots of batteries, clothing, propane gas, even mattresses!Yet, he spoke quite disparagingly about people who worked just to get stuff, as he put it, the very stuff he was taking. This was not someone who lived off the land. He just lived off the grid by stealing, even as he acknowledged that stealing was wrong. He not only stole stuff from these people, he stole their peace of mind, as he broke into their cabins for over a quarter of a century!It was clear from the interviews that Christopher Knight has mental health issues or is on the autism spectrum. He is completely self-involved, self-absorbed to an unusual degree, contemptuous of others, and has seemingly little feeling for his family. He is not particularly likable nor is he interested in others. He has a skewed sense of right and wrong.Although the author went uninvited to meet with Christopher Knight while he was in jail, and Knight seemed to be reluctant, still he met with the author numerous times when he could have easily refused to meet with him. Although Knight’s family refused to speak with the author, I do not fault him for trying.While there was also some filler about hermits over the centuries, I think it was helpful to the reader in deciding if Knight could be categorized as such. What emerged from his efforts of trying to flesh out his story was an evolving portrait of a thieving loner, a pathetic egotist who was a legend in his own mind.

This is a haunting and intriguing story about a young American man, Christopher Knight, who in 1986 decided, apparently on the spur of the moment, to abandon his life and live in the midst of thick forest in Maine. He was there for 27 years, almost entirely without speaking to a single other human being and may, in the author's words, be "the most solitary known person in all of human history". He supported this lifestyle choice through theft of food and other necessities (including a wide range of books) from holiday cabins around the nearby lakes. Becoming over time the legendary (and/or notorious) North Pond hermit, he was eventually captured during a raid on a canteen in April 2013. Charged with a series of burglaries (though only a fraction of those he had actually committed), he was imprisoned for seven months. Reactions to Knight and his activities varied widely, from sympathy for his sense of alienation from a world he could not understand or relate to, coupled with offers to let him live alone again with goods supplied to him legally, to disdain for the crimes he had committed and the sense of insecurity they had generated among the residents of the North Pond holiday cabins - and sometimes combinations of these differing attitudes. The author, himself an introvert with an admitted love for solitude, makes great efforts to understand Knight's mindset, without minimising his offences. He examines the role of hermits and other recluses in various historical and contemporary societies, and attitudes towards solitude from various writers, for example Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote that: “People are to be taken in very small doses. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself”, or Sartre who wrote “Hell is other people”. The author had several difficult conversations with Knight in prison; the latter articulated his own motives thus: “What I miss most in the woods is somewhere in between quiet and solitude. What I miss most is stillness”; seeing himself as a square peg, one that everybody he encounters "is smashing at him, pounding on him, trying to jam him into a round hole." An interesting read that prompts much reflection on the nature of relationships between individuals and society, and the vastly differing needs different individuals have for these relationships (or for their absence).

I only got 70% of the way through because I agreed with the residents of Maine in believing that the hermit wasnt actually a hermit. I believe he spent most of his time indoors, whether it was him squatting in a vacant property or residing in a family home (which was local) is up for grabs. To survive for 27 years only 1 mile from the nearest home and not be seen, to be able to survive -25F weather in the winter without starting a fire and never having to see a doctor or suffer from frost bite, to have sight problems which only grew worse as he aged, to not have enough food but be fat is impossible. Worst of all is the fact that the hermit is a thieving voyeur who stalked the town every 2 weeks for close to thirty years.

I found this true tale about Christopher Knight, the 'stranger in the woods', compelling and it kept me thinking and talking about it for days. In fact I re-read the book soon after to clarify my thoughts.I was interested that the reviewers of the book seemed, in line with the residents of Maine, to fall into two camps. They were either empathic to Christopher Knight or branded him a common thief. They were also somewhat split on whether they believed his assertion that he had lived alone in the woods in such a way for 27 years. Personally, I fell into the 'empathic and believed him' camp.Two aspects made me believe him. His absolute difficulty in not saying 'truthfully' what he thought in any situation, as well as the testimony of the warden and police officer, who first interviewed him. They were ready to not believe his tale was possible but their experience of interviewing 'offenders' led them to a certainty that he was not lying. Yes he did steal, and felt sorry for that but his over riding drive was to 'not be found', rather than to 'live off of others'.I also found the difficulty of many professionals in the field of psychology in diagnosing him, as he showed traits of a number of diagnoses, such as autism but fitted none exactly, leading one to label him as simply a 'hermit'. As someone who has worked in a diagnostic field, I felt exactly the same, finding Mr. Knight was just a reflection and (for want of a better word) 'victim', of a world that finds little room for those who do not fit the common mould.I thought that Michael Finkel the author, wrote very well and honestly and like him I felt poignantly saddened how difficult it is for someone to choose to live 'differently' to those around them. A truly engrossing read.

I enjoyed reading this fascinating and well-written story, though I have my doubts as to whether it is all true. Some details don't add up, such as how Knight just happened to have a bag of house-breaking tools, and how his clothes were clean and he was clean-shaven. There is at some point the mention of doing laundry and 'fresh socks', and in the sketch of the camp there is a washing line with clothes hanging - but I don't see how he would have got his clothes dry in the winter months - and I speak as someone who has wild-camped long-term in the English Lake District. Who knows for sure, but I suspect he had access to a house too.It's worth noting that although Knight spoke to Finkel when pestered, overall he and his family were reticent with information. It's also worth noting that Finkel previously lost credibility as a journalist (as he admits) by fictionalising a story. I suspect he has filled in a lot of gaps in this story to create a best-selling product.

This book is a quick, easy read but leaves many questions unanswered about the claimed 27 years spent in a forest in Maine.The fact that the central character spent his days watching a stolen TV, listening to a stolen radio, reading stolen books and eating stolen food suggests he was not a true hermit but was a lazy common thief.He arrogantly prayed on his neighbours causing many of them great distress but shrugs this off with well worn excuses.But I'm glad I read the book.