The Stranger in the Woods

The Stranger in the Woods by journalist Michael Finkel is a 2017 nonfiction book about the “North Pond hermit,” who has lived in the Maine wilderness alone for 27 years. Through letters and interviews, the author learns about his origins, survival tactics, and burglary raids that made him a local legend. Finkel first published the story as the 2014 GQ article “The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit,” and the book provides more interviews, historical and scientific research, and an expanded ending.

On April 4, 2013, Kennebec County law enforcement arrest Christopher Thomas Knight while he’s stealing food from a camp facility near North Pond—the last of more than a thousand burglaries over two decades. The hermit leaves a divided legacy: His raids stirred paranoia within the small town, but his focus on minimizing property damage and taking inexpensive essentials from vacation homes earned him the sympathy of some residents. Knight was so good at covering his tracks that the only reason for his capture was because a game warden, former Marine Sergeant Terry Hughes, used Homeland Security surveillance equipment in his spare time.

The arrest makes national headlines and attracts Finkel’s attention. An outdoorsman and recent father of three children, Finkel sees Knight as a someone who has escaped the noise of the modern world. He strikes up a written correspondence with the hermit, now in prison, that lasts for five letters until Knight abruptly ends contact due to the stress of his new life.

Finkel travels from Montana to Maine for what would be the first of nine interviews he conducts with Knight in the facility. Knight is initially unhappy to see him, but the author discovers ways to loosen him up. Knight speaks in a book-like tone, labors over his sentences, and is honest to the point of insult. Prideful but immensely self-conscious, he refuses to touch or make eye contact with others.

Knight was the fifth of six children, grew up in a conservative home in Albion, a rural town near North Pond. His parents taught him the value of “Yankee ingenuity” and continuous improvement, which would later help him make equipment like a rainwater collector and water-resistant flooring for his tent. In 1986, a young Knight took an impromptu trip down the East Coast. Realizing that he preferred being alone, he traveled back to Maine, abandoned his car, and walked into the forest. Eventually, he found an ideal campsite location in the rugged “Jarsey” by North Pond.

Knight knew that stealing was wrong but turned to burglary as his initial plans to forage proves unsustainable. He developed a system to travel without a trace and break into homes when their owners weren’t around. In addition to food, Knight took books, electronics, and supplies for Maine’s harsh winters, where he risked starvation and hypothermia.

Knight confounds expectations of a forest hermit. He doesn’t think of himself as a hermit and worries about giving hokey truisms. While he is well-read, he distrusts intellectuals and listens to right-wing talk radio. A hyper-practical Stoic, He is not religious yet still achieves a sense of oneness with nature. Knight cares little for psychological explanations for his behavior—Asperger’s disorder, depression, or schizoid personality disorder—but fears potential medication.

Believing that a prison sentence would be cruel, the district attorney decides on a fine and a yearlong sentence of probation, community service, and counseling. Knight once again cuts Finkel out of his life, saying that they are not friends. Knight seemingly becomes a model citizen in his hometown of Albion, but his family shuts down Finkel’s attempts to contact him. Finkel makes a climatic unannounced trip to Knight’s family home. Knight emotionally breaks down while talking with Finkel, telling him that he’s only putting on a show for others and revealing a detailed plan to commit suicide over the winter.

Finkel now understands that Knight went into the woods because he couldn’t function in society as well as the value of Finkel’s family that he left so often for the interviews. Finkel writes letters pleading with Knight to reconsider to little avail. However, Knight completes his sentence, dispirited but alive, and sends Knight a five-line “eulogy” for their relationship with a drawing of a flower that the writer takes as a sign of hope. Finkel makes a final trip to the campsite, now destroyed by the police clean-up, and wonders about beauty of Knight’s original goal: To disappear from the world and let nature quietly remove what remains.