Julie Stielstra's Reviews > The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

As a "solitudinarian" myself, I was eager to read this. I often find people difficult, annoying, draining, exhausting. So it was fascinating to read about a young man who took that "introversion" to the extreme. Christopher Knight was not traumatized, he was not mentally ill, he just didn't want to be around other people. Ever. Even if it meant living in a tent made of tarps and garbage bags, wrapping himself up in stolen sleeping bags in central Maine's subzero winters. For twenty-seven years. He fed and clothed himself by regularly burgling summer cabins and a commercial camp, packing up books and batteries along the way. His existence was rumored; some people left food out for him, others lay in wait with firearms. But finally the very security technology he had been trained in outstripped him, and he was caught. Enter Michael Finkel, a journalist with a checkered past of his own. He courts Knight, sending him letters which seem to be mostly about himself, and for reasons I personally cannot fathom, Knight responds. A few times. So Finkel, apparently aiming for the big scoop, just shows up at the jail where Knight is being held, and Knight agrees to see him. There he sits, in a partitioned visitor cubicle, across from a man who has just spent nearly three decades in utter avoidance of all human contact and is now confined to a local lockup, and all he can think of to say to him is "So, have you made any friends here?" Seriously? Good grief. But let's be fair. Finkel proceeds to meet and have more substantive conversations, and Knight begins to open up. Finkel, to his credit, tells Knight's story simply and straightforwardly. He describes (and visits) Knight's camp, explaining the rather ingenious improvisations Knight has devised for shelter, for cooking, for washing, for defecating. He never lights a fire. He can move through a nearly impenetrable woods noiselessly in the dark. He steals, but steals essentials. The years go by. He is not lonely. He doesn't seem to be depressed, though he definitely includes alcohol in his swag. He is just quietly living, and enduring a great deal of physical suffering and danger as a price. Finkel is clearly quite fascinated, and sympathetic. Others in the community, not so much. He does quote a few residents who make comments like "[Knight] stole my piece of paradise," or that they lived in constant fear of the hermit, but these voices are few and we don't really get much depth from them. At last, Knight is freed upon certain conditions: he has to live with his elderly mother (who never knew what had become of him all those years), check in with the authorities, get a job...in short he is forced to do everything he had spent 27 years avoiding at any cost. He's miserable. I don't blame him. Knight's family emphatically refuses to speak with Finkel. I don't blame them either. If Knight ultimately decides he will disappear back into the trees to "walk with the Lady of the Woods," it would not be the worst thing to happen to him. I think it already has. This is a sad tale. It might have been even more interesting had Knight been able to convey more of his inner state, to describe what he was thinking or feeling. Did he "cope with" feelings of isolation? Or didn't he have any? He describes a sort of suspended state of "you're just there," but doesn't go much farther than that. Given his natural taciturnity - though his constant reading gave him a masterly and literary vocabulary - perhaps he just didn't want or need to discuss it. This is not exactly a cautionary tale, or a psycho-bio, just the story of how one misfit tried his best to live the life he needed to live... and failed.