What’s the longest you’ve ever been by yourself?
Take a minute and really think.
Is it hours? A few days maybe, if you’ve done some solo adventuring. A week possibly, if you’re hardcore.
For Christopher Knight, the truly unique protagonist of The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, by Michael Finkel, this solitude extended 27 years.
The read (or listen, in my case, as I consumed it in audiobook) opens dramatically. It depicts a thief caught in the act, both from the persepctives of the burglar and the apprehender — a Maine game warden. This is the crescendo, the last hurrah for a myserious hermit, infamous within a rural Maine community and beyond for his serial burglaries spanning nearly three decades.
The narrator reveals his identity in subsequent chapters as a Montana-based outdoorsman journalist/author, who learns of the facinating character as Knight’s story percolated into the national media. Initially, over correspondence and then in person, the author slowly deelops a rapport with the “criminal,” as he sits in jail awaiting his fate.
The meat of the book tells Chstopher’s tale, information garnered from a compilation of interviews with the hermit himself and artfully woven together into a cogent, entertaining piece.
Brought up in a rural, eccentric and rabidly private Maine family, high school classmates remembered Knight as highly intelligent, yet introverted. His parents empahsized education above all else. Highly industrious, they lived a simple, self-reliant lifestyle while keeping to themselves, even from neighbors.
An Unglamorous Exit
A 20-year-old youth, months into his first real job at a security systems company in Waltham, MA, Knight just walked out one day.
With neither fanfare, nor notice to friends (he didn’t have any) and family, he hopped into his car and started driving.
He drove all the way to Florida, then turned around and drove all the way back to Maine. Bypassing his parents home, he continued north, driving on progressively smaller and smaller roads. He stopped the car, disembarked and with just a backpack, a knife and tent, he headed into the woods.
Here, he was beyond the point of no return. Nearly out of gas and miles from the nearest service station, he didn’t even really know where he was.
There was no recourse, no backup plan. There wasn’t really any plan at all except to go into the woods. And that’s what he did.
He wouldn’t leave for 27 years…
What it looked like:
Knight provides great detail of his life in the woods, his self-imposed isolation. Evading other humans was the top priority at all times during his nearly three decades alone. He was, after all, a burglar.
He abided by two rules: 1) No fires 2) No footprints.
Imagine this in the context of rural, inland Maine… in the winter! Not exactly the maxims held by your run of the mill weekend camper.
The description of his campsite/homestead is pretty amazing. After some trial and error, he chose a location that was within hearing distance of people! Cabins and hikers were a short distance away at all times, but his specific location was so rugged, it was nearly impenetrable to navigate without intimate knowledge of the craggy, dense forest.
He had everything he needed, but designed his space for utility, not aesthetics. I imagine it wouldn’t be too unlike a weekend warrior’s campsite, except the duration and objective of the stay may differ somewhat.
Tall Tales
Over time, the hermit became that of legend… for his burglaries, that is. Cabin owners, fatigued by repeated burglaries over the years, resorted to leaving notes, books and food for the intruder. Some were fearful of the hermit. They spoke of living in a state of constant anxiety. Others considered him a harmless loner, a veteran, likely, that just wanted to be left alone.
Knight, fearing sabotage and an end to his lifestyle, never took anything offered. Instead, he restricted his spoils to the pragmatic, the economically insignifacnt and the packaged foodstuff (to avoid poisoning). Propane tanks, batteries, books, macaroni and cheese and various candies topped the list as staples. The diet wasn’t the helathiest, but it sustained him and was “safe.”
On Hermitage:
Knight, in the author’s estimation, doesn’t fit the “typcal” hermit mold which he neatly divides into three categories: the protest hermit, the religious hermit and the pursuant hermit.
Knight wasn’t necessarily protesting anything particularly. Granted, he clearly didn’t fit within society’s sandbox, but he wasn’t actively protesting a specific ideology, paradigm or war.
He grew up in a Christian household, but didn’t describe himself as religious. In his readings, he developed an appreciation for eastern religions and experimented with his own brand of meditation. It would be a misrepresentation, however to characterize him as a zealot or disciple of X.
Knight was pursuing a lifestyle, but it wasn’t an experiment a la Thoreau’s Walden. He was not in search of life’s secrets. Knight was in search of idleness and solitude for its own sake, not to draw out some grand conlcusion or master thesis. He never kept a journal.
Revelations in the Forest
Finkel draws parallels between Knight’s brand of wisdom and many of history’s most celebrated stoics and authors on the topic of solitude. He puts his finger on a common theme: selflessness.
Knight describes his isloation filled not with loneliness, but rather oneness or nothingess. He recounts a feeling of losing one’s identity, becoming an eye with nothing behind it, total immersion with one’s environment.
Ever mindful of avoiding the guru or philosopher nametag, Knight concludes by stating that the experience is beyond descripton.
The author postulates Knight may be the freest person he’s ever encountered, maybe the freest person the world has ever encountered.
Hometown Hermit:
This book fascinated me on it own merits, but I may have been (sub)consciously draw to it because of a childhood memory related to hermits.
I know. “Thats an odd statement,” you may be thinking to yourself. Please bear with me as I explain.
My hometown is known for.. well, not a lot. *
BUT… back in the 1860’s there was a Scottish-born hermit who lived alone for about 30 years in the woods just a quick hike outside of the town’s center. In The Stranger in the Woods, Finkel explains how European aristocrats found it fashioable to host a hermit on their sprawling estates. A moderately more dignified minstrel of the times?
In simlar form, the hermit of my hometown was somewhat of a local celebrity in his day. Both tourist and townsfolk would venture up to his “hermit castle,” little more than some rock and thatch structure near the base of a natural rocky cliff formation, to hear him tell stories. This hermit was named John Smith. They wrote a book about him.
This Town Isn’t Big Enough for the Two of Us
After reading Finkel’s book, it makes me wonder what John Smith was like as a man. Would he be coined a “typical”hermit or an enigma like Finkel’s hermit of Maine?
Did Smith have something in his past he was fleeing?
Was he as well connected to the land as Christopher Knight?
Would they get along with each other if they were to meet in a hypothetical hermit ho-down?
My guess is that Christopher Knight would have scoffed at John Smith’s (so-called) hermitage. The man consorted with humans for Pete’s sake! But, like the rest of us, they’d probably have more things in common than not and it fills me with pleasure to imagine them hanging out in their respective homesteads. I picture them busy with some mundane task, like sweeping or sharpening a knife. Or, better yet, I envision them sitting lazily beneath a tree. I see their blissful idelness, calm and healthy visages. The mouth slightly upturned at the corner, a visual confirmation of their complete satisfaction.
*I’m being a bit fecetious here. I love my hometown, despite it being often (and accurately) described as a “podunk, drive-through town.” Beyond my very personal nastalgia, its history is interesting from a variety of perspectives: natural, industrial and cultural.
