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

Michael Finkel

Michael Finkel begins the book with a quote attributed to Socrates – “How many things there are that I do not want.” It’s a perfect start because the subject of the book – Christopher Knight – eschewed everything that was non-essential to himself back in 1986, the year that Chernobyl happened, when he was twenty. In his first road trip, he drove till he nearly ran out of gas. “I took a small road. Then a small road of that small road. Then a trail off that.” And then he disappeared for the next twenty-seven years, in the woods of “the maine land of New England”, Maine. Living less than three miles from society, and yet inhabiting a world that was only his. 

He ‘raided’ camps for his food, fuel, entertainment and other requirements. Books were a weakness – spy novels and science fiction to Ulysses, his favourite was ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’. Never extravagant, he only took what he absolutely needed, and felt deeply guilty about that. Reactions to him ranged from a deep admiration for the life he chose to hatred for the feeling of insecurity he created among residents. Eventually, he came to be known as the hermit. One whom no one could track, because he didn’t even leave footprints. He tried not to even give a hint that the place had been robbed, even refitting doors if it came to that! Though sensors and surveillance tools became more efficient, he managed to evade them. A camp for the disabled was ‘his private Costco’, and that’s where he was finally caught. 

He didn’t really know why he chose to do this, but he was an introvert who found interactions with society and its rules tedious. Hermits are usually of three types – protesters, pilgrims, and pursuers. Japan has a million of the first kind – hikikomori – dubbed the lost generation. Most religions have the second kind. The third are the most modern, and they seek ‘alone time’ for what they want to do -from artistic freedom to self discovery. 

Knight left because ‘the world was not made to accommodate people like him.’ ‘It wasn’t so much a protest as was a quest; he was like a refugee from the human race. The forest offered him shelter.‘ His plan was to eventually die in the forest. After he was apprehended, he spent some time in prison. In his own way, he tried to adjust. But he just couldn’t socialise, even his meetings with the author were awkward and full of silence. When the author saw him last, in court, after he had been living with his family for a while, he seemed compliant, where once he had been full of defiance. ‘He had seen the bottomless nonsense of our world and has decided, like most of us, to simply try to tolerate it‘. 

I found the book deeply poignant. There is something noble about a person whose response to the way of the world was to quietly withdraw from it. Twenty seven years is a long time to survive outdoors, especially in a geography whose winters are cruel. And yet, that’s where he found peace. 

Favourite quote: Not till we have lost the world do we begin to find ourselves ~ Henry David Thoreau