Review: Finkel's The Stranger In The Woods The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

I had heard about him—the hermit of Maine—though I don’t know when or how the lore made its way to me. In any case, I was primed for the story when the book about him found its way to me.

When we fell into 2022, I resolved to become more capable and to aid that effort, I decided to seek out stories of adventurers, nature and the outdoors. The first book that came to me as part of that syllabus was journalist Michael Finkel’s The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit.

In it, we are guided by journalist Michael Finkel in a series of conversations, written and live, with the North Pond hermit, Christopher Knight, who headed into the woods of Maine and lived amongst the trees and rocks for 27 years. Knight did not alert his family that he’d be going, or anyone really, and he seemed to come to the decision in somehow a deliberate and yet seemingly spontaneous way. After a long road trip, Knight simply parked his car (that his brother had co-signed with him) and headed into the woods. He spent nearly the next three decades living in an encampment in the forest, subsisting off what he pilfered from the local camp and residents—a practice that, while necessary for his survival, never felt comfortable for him. His shame at stealing from others is baldly evident in his conversations with Finkel. The details of the full story were both simple and fascinating, but what resonated deeply with me about Knight was his comfort in being alone. Of this, Finkel writes:

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.

I love the people in my life. And I’m aware that personal relationships are just as essential, if not more so, for the human being, as water, food, sleep and going to the gym. This has been proven time and again. And yet, I found myself nodding along at Knight’s preference to be alone. The world is a noisy and chaotic place. Being alone, and finding quiet, are two endeavors that feel less and less possible given the dings of iPhones, chimes of Slack messages, streaming TVs, Bluetooth speakers. Knight’s play was extreme, far more extreme than anything I would be interested in, but the basic hunt for quiet and a bit of solitude—yes, I could understand that. I need the people in my life, and they make my life better—and I also need to sit and stare at the wall for periods of time and listen to the sound of the birds out the window.

Knight also mentions how, upon his reentry to society after 27 years of being a hermit, those around him think it’s strange that he would have opted to live in the woods rather than being a part of normal life. He reflects that it seems strange to him that we would consider his choice abnormal, but consider this choice normal: sit behind a desk for eight hours per day, for 45 years until we reach retirement.

I find myself deeply intrigued by stories of people who have chosen a different way to live. It feels vital to draw back and consider there are other choices that people make, and to shake up our thinking of what’s considered normal. For 27 years, Knight slept in the woods, barely surviving the cold some winters, and yet seemed deeply at peace with his time there—a man who had made a decision on how to live, and saw it through as long as he could.   

Solo boat heads into the stars. Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash