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

3.5/5 stars.

This book has me conflicted! I listened to it, narrated by Mark Bramhall, and he was excellent. What follows are my thoughts on this book while trying to avoid spoilers, (even though the synopsis tells a lot already). Perhaps my feelings will become more clear as I write.

What I found most fascinating was this: think about how long you've gone in your life without talking to or touching another human being. I'm talking phone calls, internet, or hugs. As the author points out in this book-most of us have gone only a matter of hours. Imagine going for 27 years.

Is a person who has a need for quiet and silence sick? Are they autistic? Are they schizophrenic? Do they have Asperger's? The author asks all of these questions-of show more doctors and regular people alike. I couldn't help but wonder why everyone thought something was wrong with Christopher Knight. Is it so wrong to want to avoid people, noise, news, television, and electronics? Is that abnormal? I guess 27 years with no contact does seem strange, but sick? I'm not sure about that.

A number of philosophical views were also offered as well as quotes from many different books about hermits and recluses throughout history. Views on solitary confinement are also discussed, with most agreeing that solitary is a type of torture.

Here's what bothers me most: I'm not sure I'm comfortable with what the author did to get the information for this book. While I did find this story fascinating, the hermit himself asked Mr. Finkel to leave him alone on a number of different occasions, yet he persisted-not only visiting him in jail, but also visiting him in Maine once he was released. (Christopher Knight was incarcerated for a time, due to his repeated thefts of food, books and other items.) I'm not sure if I view this as honorable or as harassment.

I can't deny, however, that I did keep listening. I loved the parts that were direct quotes from Mr. Knight, because he had such a clear view of how he saw things/nature/people. Did all of these things make sense to me? No, but they sure did cause me to rethink my views on the world and all of its noise and distractions.

I will also admit to a bit of envy when Knight spoke of one of his deep winters in the Maine wilderness when there was NO SOUND. Nothing whatsoever. No animals, no planes, no birds, no chatter, nothing at all. It's hard to imagine that.

Well, I wrote all this and I'm still conflicted. I guess I am glad that the author pursued Mr. Knight because I did find this tome to be fascinating at times. It's just that I feel Knight's wishes were disrespected and I hate the thought of that; and I hate that I took part in it by listening to this book. Which probably makes no sense at all, but there you have it. show less

I chose this book because at this moment in time the entire world is practicing "social distancing" in hopes to slow down the virus that is killing almost everyone that comes in contact with it. We aren't working. We aren't hugging. We are in a holding pattern. I thought this would be the time to explore the thoughts of a true hermit. Many of us THINK we are practicing hermitism but in truth how many are enjoying and being mindful of this experience. I loved this book! I am a New Englander so it's not hard to picture the experience in my mind's eye. His survival instincts are amazing and show what can be done when you feel there is no other alternative. One of my favorite lines has to do with the journalist asking if he had ever been show more sick. His response is no. He doesn't see anyone. Social distancing done to an extreme. :) Wonderful read. I even took the time to look up some of the resources and other articles on him. I highly recommend this. And if you listen to the audiobook you get the treat of a Maine accent. ;) show less

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 show more 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). show less

Literal hermits are very interesting to me, considering how solitary I have a tendency to be in a much more modern and moderate setting. Christopher Knight's experience is a very interesting one, but by the end of this book I felt more than a little uncomfortable.

The discomfort didn't stem from the topic of the book, but from the author and his decision to write the book in the first place. While Finkel recounts their interactions through his own lense, it's still clear that he made Knight very uncomfortable while researching him for the book. It feels almost insulting that he (relatively honestly) reports how Knight repeatedly told him to basically get fucked, and he still felt the need to butt into the man's business.

The ending show more lines of the book basically state that the author belives that Knight would have been happiest if he got to live the rest of his life in the woods, isolated from everyone else, unknown to the wider world and with no words written about him. I don't know a more effective way to disrespect the man's wishes than to write a fucking book about him, just to sate your own curiosity and need for clout.

Makes me feel dirty about buying the book in the first place. show less

This book tells the true story of Christopher Knight, who left society behind at age 20 in preference for a solitary life in the woods of Maine. He lived without touching or having a conversation with another human for 27 years. Knight was eventually caught and arrested for burglarizing cabins and camps nearby, as he had stolen food and supplies he needed to survive. The author contacted Knight in prison by mail, and Knight returned his correspondence, ultimately leading the author to interview Knight and write his memoir. This book elaborates on why Knight had chosen this rudimentary existence, and the challenges he faced when returning to society. The author includes research on the primary reasons people become reclusive, which I show more found extremely interesting. He also contacts mental health experts regarding possible psychological explanations for Knight’s eccentric behavior. This book seemed very philosophical at times, pondering the nature of solitude, and how it is sought out by some and feared by others. It ultimately portrays Knight as someone who prefers to live alone in the woods in order to find contentment and freedom. It made me think about how people find meaning, happiness, and fulfillment in life, and how a simplified existence could be appealing (even if not to the extreme practiced by Knight). The only difficulty I had is that it seemed a bit intrusive on the life of a person who never sought the limelight, and in fact, just wanted to be left alone. At the end, in “A Note on the Reporting,” the author provides a list of his sources. I plan to further explore several of these references. Recommended to those who enjoy reading about alternative lifestyles, survival stories or philosophical perspectives. show less

I’ve no idea what winter in central Maine is like, but I’ve been trying to imagine sleeping outdoors there, in a tent, with no heating (not even a campfire because smoke might give away your position) would be like. Christopher Knight did just that—for twenty-seven years—in the woods near a place called North Pond.
    He’d grown up far to the south, went to college, then out to work, and seemed to be living a perfectly ordinary life. One day in 1986 though, he abandoned his car (his first, brand new) deep in those northern woods, set off on foot…and disappeared. There doesn’t seem to have been a plan; he took neither gun nor fishing tackle and had with him only minimal camping gear. “His departure was a confounding show more mix of incredible commitment and complete lack of forethought, not all that abnormal for a twenty-year-old.” Eventually he pitched his tent, established a camp and for the next twenty-seven years survived by raiding the many summer cabins dotted around the shore of North Pond.
    The locals, of course, knew someone was out there, but never once caught sight of him—some were afraid of him—and a Hermit Of The Woods legend took root. When he was finally caught trying to break into Pine Tree Summer Camp, he turned out to be nothing like the classic cartoon-hermit people had been imagining; he was meticulously clean, intelligent—and healthy: “Knight lived in the dirt but was cleaner than you. Way cleaner. The muck that matters, the bad bacteria, is typically passed through coughs and sneezes and handshakes and kisses. The price of sociability is sometimes our health. Knight quarantined himself from the human race and thus avoided our biohazards. He stayed phenomenally healthy. Though he suffered deeply at times, he insists he never once had a medical emergency, or a serious illness, or a bad accident, or even a cold.”
    Also, to call Knight “taciturn” is some understatement and it took journalist Michael Finkel nine one-hour prison visits, spread out over two months, to coax even the bare minimum of his story out of him. The resulting book is both a documentation of those twenty-seven years—how Knight lived, how he spent his time (he met just one other human being, a hiker he encountered sometime during the 1990s, and said “Hi” as their paths crossed, the only word he spoke in nearly three decades)—and an attempt at understanding why a twenty-year-old might do something like this. It’s also an essay on hermits and solitude in general. Right down through the ages (not just in ours) there have been recluses who have hated what the world has become; also religious ones seeking God; and then also artists, writers, scientists and philosophers seeking originality—isolation as the key to creativity (“Solitude,” as the historian Edward Gibbon put it, “is the school of genius”).
    The Stranger in the Woods is well-written, includes maps and a sketch of Knight’s campsite, and very well-researched (Finkel corresponded extensively with, for instance, an inmate of California’s prison system who has endured nearly fourteen years of solitary confinement in a windowless concrete cell). It’s thoughtful too: “Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is. We live orphaned on a tiny rock in the immense vastness of space, with no hint of even the simplest form of life anywhere around us for billions upon billions of miles, alone beyond all imagining. We live locked in our own heads and can never entirely know the experience of another person. Even if we’re surrounded by family and friends, we journey into death completely alone.” Or, as the Mexican poet and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz put it, “Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.” show less

My twelve-year-old and I were side by side at the sink, coring strawberries that we had picked this morning. "Sometimes," she said, "I think it would be nice to be invisible. I like to watch things happening and not participate sometimes."

I'm not sure if it's entirely the same as what my daughter was talking about, but invisibility is something I crave sometimes myself, the freedom of not being seen, not for the purpose of doing anything in particular but just to take a break from being someone to other people for a while, and maybe to do my grocery shopping without small-talk. When my daughter made this comment about being invisible, it occurred to me that this is what Christopher Knight managed to do for twenty-seven years.

Reading show more about Knight's experience, I was intrigued by the idea that our self-identity is bound so tightly to our interactions and relationships that if we remove those interactions and relationships, we in some way lose our sense of self. It's both a comforting and an unsettling thought, similar to contemplating the oneness, loss of self, and ultimate equanimity we'll all experience in death (I've not been dead, as far as I can remember, so I'm not positive this is how it is, but it's what I imagine).

The story of Knight and how he attained invisibility without dying was interesting, as were the small glimpses we got of his family, but I felt very unsettled by the way in which the author pushed himself into Knight's life. It's bad enough that Knight was ripped from the solitary life in which he'd found contentment, but then to have the author following him around and showing up when Knight asked him---told him---not to just seems pushy and inconsiderate. There are times when Knight clearly rejects the author, and rather than seeing it as a rejection of himself and the connection he's trying to make, the author chooses to see it as a quirk of Knight's personality that he can safely shrug off. I felt squirmy reading about the author's persistence, and I didn't know if I could trust his interpretation of the situation.

Once I suspected his view of his relationship with Knight, I began to suspect his point of view throughout the book. Why did the author insert himself into the story so much? Why couldn't it have just been about Knight and not about the author's relationship with him? I can think of many reasons, but once I started to question the author, I found it difficult not to question his motives from the beginning, and that tarnished my experience of the book.

At the end of the book, there is "A Note on the Reporting," in which it appears that the author puts a lot of importance on how nice people are to him, not really considering that perhaps this is just the way people in this particular community respond to a stranger showing up unannounced. Reading this, I suspect that there's another story here that someone else could write about the author and his need to be important to people he's never met. show less