The Stranger in the Woods

“The man is wearing new-looking blue jeans, a hooded gray sweatshirt beneath a nice Columbia jacket, and sturdy work boots. It’s like he has just gone shopping at the mall. His backpack is from L. L. Bean. Only his eyeglasses, with chunky plastic frames, seem outdated. There’s no dirt on him anywhere, and little more than a shading of stubble on his chin. He has no noticeable body odor. His thinning hair, mostly covered by his wool cap, is neatly cropped. His skin is strangely pale, with several scabs on his wrists. He’s a little over six feet tall and broad-shouldered, maybe one hundred and eighty pounds.”

Knight’s unremarkable appearance confuses law enforcement to the point that Officer Diane Vance believes that the North Pond hermit was a common thief all along. Eventually, the reader learns why Knight looks so average: He cleans up and wears ordinary clothing as part of his camouflage, and he never finds a replacement for his original glasses. The trees at his campsite protect him from sunburn, but the barely healed scars on his hands are the result of aging.

“The sounds passing through his mouth are stutter and clanky, an old engine struggling to turn over, each syllable a chore.”

Vance’s interrogation of Knight is the first conversation Knight has in 27 years. It’s the reader’s first sign that Knights conversational style is unusual, as his word choice is labored and book-like. Later, some doubtful residents believe his vocal cords should have withered from lack of use. This is one of several misconceptions that are explainable through science or Knight’s testimony.

“One family had a running joke—‘He won’t date the skinny girl’—because no matter how many times their liquor cabinet was raided, he never touched the Skinny-girl margarita drink.”

Knight raided some houses multiple times, giving residents a glimpse into his preferences, such as sugary snacks, and a few residents even leave bags of food for him. While he did not drink alcohol before entering the woods, Knight eventually came to appreciate beer—particularly flavored concoctions—and coffee as he got older. This joke also reflects some families’ view of Knight as a nonviolent oddity.

“I didn’t dare—scrutinizing oneself that candidly seemed to require bravery and fortitude I didn’t possess, as well as a tremendous amount of free time. But I never stopped thinking about what might reside down there, what insights, what truth. There were people at the retreat in India who had completed months of silent withdrawal, and the calmness and placidity they radiated made me envious. Knight had seemingly surpassed all boundaries, plunging to the bottom of the well, to the mysterious deep.”

Finkel goes on a silent retreat to India shortly after the birth of his children to manage his stress, which he writes about in more detail in the Men’s Journal article “The Quiet Hell of Extreme Meditation.” Unlike Knight’s solitary life, the retreat involves a hundred participants and requires strict rules and medication according to the self-contemplation style of Vipassana. Finkel believes Knight’s solitary life would be ideal for self-discovery, yet his limited interest in explaining deep truths defies these expectations.

“When I came out of the woods they applied the hermit label to me. Strange idea to me. I had never thought of myself as a hermit. Then I got worried. For I knew with the label hermit comes the idea of crazy. See the ugly little joke.”

In his letters, Knight confides his feelings about the public impression of him. “Hermit” is a title that people who exhibit those traits rarely want to give themselves, as it enables stereotypes and allows people to write eccentrics off. This passage also reflects Knight’s self-consciousness with how others perceive him, which motivates his desire to leave society in the first place.

“Rarely in my life have I witnessed someone less pleased to see me. His thin lips were pulled into a downturned scowl; his eyes did not rise to meet mine […] There was no acknowledgement of my presence, not the merest nod. He gazed someplace beyond my left shoulder, nearly motionless. He was wearing a dull green overlaundered jail uniform several sizes too big.”

This is Finkle’s first face-to-face meeting with Christopher Knight about 140 days into his prison sentence. While Knight would eventually open up to him, the inmate maintains a sullen disposition, insists on having a wall between himself and his guest, and avoids eye contact. This is not intentional rudeness but a sign of limited conversation skills: The only time Knight looks directly at Finkel is during their final conversation together when he breaks down.

“The trance was so strong that Knight didn’t respond when Hughes tried to ask him questions. ‘I just let him be in the zone,’ Hughes recalled. ‘This guy would never step anywhere that would leave a track. He wouldn’t break a twig, flatten a fern, kick a mushroom. He avoided all snow. I was beside myself—I couldn’t even fathom it. I was in shock. I probably could have blindfolded him and he wouldn’t have missed a beat. He moves like a cat.’”

Hughes describes Knight’s movement as he led the police to his campsite on the day of his arrest. Knight maintains his traditional routine even when there is not point to it anymore, demonstrating the degree of stealth that allows him to avoid detection in a forest that Hughes knows by heart. A self-proclaimed jarhead, Hughes is not prone to exaggeration, and his awe reflects the strange respect that law enforcement developed for the hermit.

“By clearing off a small area, then scraping away some soil—Hughes had suggested this—I could see, faceup, faded and badly waterlogged, the familiar yellow-bordered cover of a National Geographic magazine. […] The magazines had been bound with electrical tape into thick bundles that Knight referred to as ‘bricks.’ Elsewhere, there were buried bricks of People, of Vanity Fair, of Glamour, of Playboy. Knight had recycled his old reading material as subflooring, creating a platform that was perfectly level and also permitted decent drainage of rainwater.”

At Knight’s campsite, Finkel uncovers the layers of buried magazines that he repurposed to add additional drainage to his tent. This is an example of Knight’s ingenuity and ability to repurpose objects, and he scoffed when he heard that people took this to mean he was crazy. Knight reads voraciously, though he often had to take what he could get during his raids. In particular, he loathes National Geographic, but the glossy binding absorbs water very well.

“It was the kind of total quiet that literally made my ears ring; there was not so much as a breeze. Knight, I envisioned, was cowering on his bunk amid the slamming doors of jail, and I felt like an intruder—not on private property but at his home. I retreated to my tent, feet cold, and turned off my phone and burrowed into my sleeping bag. […] I turned on my phone and realized I’d rested for 12 hours, my longest sleep in years.”

Finkel spends the night at Knight’s campsite to understand what it could be like to live there for 27 years. The night is pitch black save for a few stars, and the sounds of civilization and animals soon dissipate. The writer experiences two sensations that ironically appear later in their conversations: His feet are cold just as Knight has problems keeping his feet warm in the winters, and Knight’s attempt to tell a great truth was, “Get enough sleep” (148).

“He headed north, through Georgia and the Carolinas and Virginia, blessed with the invincibility of youth, buzzed by ‘the pleasure of driving,’ and an idea grew into a realization, then solidified into a resolve. All his life, he’d been comfortable being alone. Interacting with others was so often frustrating. Every meeting with another person seemed like a collision. As he drove, perhaps he felt within himself some rumblings of fear and thrill, as if at the precipice of a radical leap.”

Knight has an epiphany during his trip along the East Coast, likely the first time he spent extended time by himself. He didn’t go in search of any particular location; being alone was the destination, and he wanted to find a way to make that experience permanent. At the same time, his social phobia influences this decision as well.

“Around a million protester hermits are living in Japan right now. They’re called hikikomori—'pulling inward’—and the majority are males, aged late teens and up, who have rejected Japan’s competitive, conformist, pressure-cooker culture. They have retreated into their childhood bedrooms and almost never emerge, in many cases for more than a decade. They pass the day reading or surfing the web. Their parents deliver meals to their doors, and psychologists offer them counseling online. The media has called them ‘the lost generation’ and ‘the missing million.’”

Finkel’s choice to frame Japanese hikikomori as protestor hermits is different from traditional depictions of them in media, which frame them at best as awkward fanboys and at worst as leeches who are to blame for issues like declining birth rates. Although Knight retreated into the woods, his leisure-orientated lifestyle, hoarding of electronics, and taste for role-playing video games is not far off from hikikomori habits. This passage also demonstrates how Finkel does not make judgments about whether the hermit life is bad for the person or society.

“Thoreau’s biggest sin may have been publishing Walden. Knight said that writing a book, packaging one’s thoughts into a commodity, is not something a true hermit would do. Nor is hosting a party or hobnobbing in town. These actions are directed outward, toward society. They all shout, in some way, ‘Here I am!’”

Knight explains his disdain for Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century writer whose two-year stay at an isolated log cabin in Massachusetts became the basis for the transcendentalist tome Walden. Thoreau’s writings inspired many to become more in tune with nature—Finkel himself acknowledges Thoreau for his influence on the book—but writing is an inherently self-promotional act that betrays the hermit’s desire to leave the world behind. Knight’s relationship with Finkel may be his way of getting his story out without betraying this belief: In the Notes on Reporting section, he expresses disappointment that the book wouldn’t be long like Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson.1

“During a burglary, there wasn’t a moment’s ease. ‘My adrenaline was spiking, my heart rate was soaring. My blood pressure was high. I was always scared when stealing. Always. I wanted it over as quickly as possible.’ The only time he paused for more than a moment during a raid was when the weather was cold and he needed to thaw something out. If meat was frozen, he’d pop it in the microwave.”

Despite his lifestyle depending on it, Knight always felt shameful when he broke into houses. This is due to the sense of guilt his parents drilled into him as well as the fear of discovery that would force him to return to society, which may be why he limits his thefts to low-cost or duplicate items. However, this sensation would end when he returned to his campsite, where he feels a surge of relief and wouldn’t have to deal with this dilemma for about two weeks.

“He stole frozen lasagna, canned ravioli, and Thousand Island dressing. You can dig in the dump until you’re lying on your side, arm buried to the shoulder, and more keeps emerging. Cheetos and bratwurst and pudding and pickles. Quarry a trench deep enough to fight a war from—Chrystal Light, Cool Whip, Chock full o’Nuts, Coke—and you still won’t reach bottom.”

It’s hard to appreciate the time Knight spent in the woods without witnessing the trash he left behind from years of raids. While he favors meat and snacks, he would take condiments just to experiment with them. There’s an ecological message in this dump as well: Even after decades in the ground, the plastic containers remain intact and still have some of their original wrapping.

“The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there’s innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It’s part of being human. To Knight, it all felt impossible.”

Finkel contrasts Knight’s love of reading with his fear of conversations, using the simile of a tennis game to explain his challenges. In tennis, a player must not only deal with an opponent, but also conform to rules governing serves, fouls, and boundary lines. Likewise, a person can harm their social ties just by using the wrong tone or overreacting to something. Knight’s unusual tone and unfiltered attitude aren’t equipped for this game.

“He practices Stoicism, the Greek philosophy, descended from Socratic ideas, founded in the third century B.C. Stoics felt that self-control and harmonious existence with nature constituted a virtuous life, and that one must endure hardship without complaint. Passion must be subject to reason; emotions lead one astray. ‘There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain,’ Knight said.”

intense commitment. Conducting a thousand burglaries without capture means adhering to a carefully designed game plan. The philosophy also complements the practical skills and dispassionate focus instilled during his upbringing. However, a disadvantage to his philosophy is that it discourages socialization, where the practitioner will need to account for emotional needs. Knight is a very pragmatic person, so Stoicism is a perfect belief system for him. Staying in the forest through harsh conditions requires

“Carl Jung said that only an introvert could see ‘the unfathomable stupidity of man.’ Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, ‘Wherever is the crowd is a common denominator of stench.’ Knight’s best friend, Thoreau, believed that all societies, no matter how well intentioned, pervert their citizens. Sartre wrote, ‘Hell is other people.’ Maybe the operative question, Knight implied wasn’t why someone would leave society but why anyone would want to stay. ‘The whole world is rushing headlong like a swelling torrent,’ a recluse once told Confucius. ‘Wouldn’t you be better off following those who flee the world altogether?’ The Indian writer Jiddu Krishnamurti has been quoted as saying, ‘It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.’”

This passage demonstrates how Finkel alludes to famous isolationists to clarity his subject’s beliefs. The author fires off rapid references to both Western and Eastern thinkers across the centuries, revealing solitude as a universal pursuit. While most of his examples are well known, Finkel isn’t afraid of incorporating new or less venerated sources in these tangents: Immediately following this passage is a quote from a forum member on the website Hermitary. 

“‘No way he’s telling the truth,’ declared Fred King, who once had a sugar bowl stolen from his place, after which, for years, his friends called him Sugar Bowl. ‘Can I use a swear word?’ asked King, gruff and polite at once, a very Marine trait. ‘There is no fucking way this guy was a hermit. I’m an outdoorsman, and I’m just telling you, flat out, no way. I’m a thousand percent sure. In winter, it’s subzero all the time. I think a family member helped him, or another person took him in. Or he broke into a vacant place and stayed all winter.’”

Although the authorities and professionals who spoke with Knight believe he is telling the truth, the same cannot be said for roughly 80% of North Pond residents who only know him from news reports. Residents have a point as the winters place Knight at death’s door several times. Meanwhile, the profanity and “Sugar Bowl” nickname show how the burglaries, no matter how mundane the taken goods, leave a psychological effect on victims.

“It was only when he heard the song of the chickadees, the state bird of Maine, that he knew winter would soon loosen its grip, ‘that the end was near.’ The feeling, he said, was momentous; he referred to it as a celebration, the chirps volleying through the trees, the little birds with their black-capped heads bobbing in the bare branches, calling their names—chick-a-dee-dee—the sound of months of mute suffering coming to a close, the sound of survival. […] ‘After a bad winter,’ Knight said, ‘all I could think was that I’m alive.’”

Chapter 21 focuses on the toll that solitude, whether forced or elected, can have on the human mind and why some people endure it. Knight notes that his greatest pleasures came after the brutal winter, where the woods exist “somewhere in between quiet and solitude” (141) as life returns around him. Just as hard work can make the result feel more satisfying, the beginning of spring serves as a reward for a difficult trial.

“What happened to him in the woods, Knight claimed, was inexplicable. But he agreed to set aside his fear of phony wisdom and koans to give it a try. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said. ‘Solitude bestows an increase in something valuable. I can’t dismiss that idea. Solitude increased my perception. But here’s the tricky thing: when I applied my increased perception to myself, I lost my identity. There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant.’”

The idea that Knight may have found some hidden truth is a reason for Finkel’s interest in the case, but an explanation of that feeling can appear as folksy. People lose a sense of time and space after prolonged separation from others: Ralph Waldo Emerson proclaims “I am nothing; I see all” (143) in his poem “Nature,” and Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo believes that she escaped the need to accomplish something. While Knight does not practice any intentional meditation, his long periods of relaxation and the lack of mirrors at his campsite help him lose himself.

“People earnestly say to me here, ‘Mr. Knight, we have cell phones now, and you’re going to really enjoy them.’ That’s their enticement for me to rejoin society. ‘You’re going to love it,’ they say. I have no desire. And what about a text message? Isn’t that just using a telephone as a telegraph? We’re going backwards.’ When he hears how songs are now shared and downloaded, Knight is equally unimpressed. ‘You’re using your computers, your thousand-dollar machines, to listen to the radio? Society is taking a rather strange turn.’ He says he’ll stick with vinyl records.”

Knight had a computer in his youth, but he is unimpressed with how the once solitary machines are now communication devices. This retort has some humor to it: Knight’s attitude is not that different from other older adults who vilify the youth and their smartphones. Meanwhile, he first entered the woods around when cassettes and CDs started to replace vinyl records, and he’s returned just as nostalgia for vinyl brought the format back from obscurity.

“Once I get out of here, you’re off my dance card. I can’t afford the indulgence that is you; I deny you my magnificent presence. Did you get my dance-card reference, or do I have to update my references? Did you read Little Women?”

In Louisa May Alcott’s Civil War-era novel, Little Women, it was common for women to have a dance card with a list of suitors and dances. Aside from demonstrating Knight’s range of literary interests, this quote is one of several instances in which Knight tries to stop Finkel from talking to him. He claims that the visits were annoying but allows them as a form of stress relief. Continuing the relationship afterward would mean acknowledging him as a friend, and Knight does not want any friend. Or at least he claims not to.

“And right then, I come the closest I think I ever will to understanding why Knight left. He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him. He was never happy in his youth—not in high school, not with a job, not being around other people. It made him feel constantly nervous. There was no place for him, and instead of suffering further, he escaped. It wasn’t so much a protest as a quest; he was like a refugee from the human race. […] I think that most of us feel like something is missing from our lives, and I wondered then if Knight’s journey was to seek it. But life isn’t about searching endlessly to find what’s missing; it’s about learning to live with the missing parts. Knight had been away too long, and I sensed that there was no coming back. He had a brilliant mind, but all his thinking had only trapped him alone in the woods.”

The Stranger in the Woods reaches its emotional climax when Knight tells Finkel about his struggles with reintegration and desire to die in the woods, leading to both men crying. The moment recontextualizes Finkel’s perception of Knight from someone who left the modern world willingly to someone who left because he could not emotionally function with it. In addition, Finkel gains a new understanding of the dangers of an escapist mentality and the importance of his family in making him a whole person. Knight is tough and clever, but those qualities alone could not solve his internal challenges.