The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

elieves, is a painless way to die. “It’s the only thing that will make me free.”
He stands stiffly, hands in his jean pockets. “Something’s got to give,” he says. “Or something’s going to
break.” And this is the line that breaks him. His voice catches and his Stoicism crumbles, and the humanity
beneath pushes out, and I glance at his face and see tears sliding down his cheeks.
I can’t help it. I cry as well. Two grown men standing beneath a lilac tree on a gorgeous spring day.
Knight is able, after all, to interact with another person, and do so in the most open and vulnerable way. 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. The forest offered him shelter.
“I did it because the alternative was— I wasn’t content,” says Knight. “I did find a place where I was
content.”
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.
“Yeah, the brilliant man,” says Knight, “the brilliant man went to find contentment, and he did. The
brilliant man wishes he weren’t so stupid to do illegal things to find contentment.”
During nearly every visit in the county jail, Knight had chastised me for a few moments about abandoning
my wife and the cowboys, neglecting my fatherly duties to talk with him. I’d found it amusing—he had
shirked all responsibility entirely—but in the end, he was right. I saw what happened to Knight and felt only
the urge to go home.
For Knight, his camp was the one spot on the planet where he knew he belonged. His existence had been
extraordinarily challenging at times, but he’d made it work. So he had remained there as long as he could.
He doesn’t want to sit in a shed taking apart engines. He has known something far more profound, and
that sense of loss feels unbearable. I understand all this, yet I’m powerless to change anything or relieve his
pain. We stand there, our tears streaming. He will return to the trees, his real home, even if it is just to die.
“I miss the woods,” he says.
Knight fishes out his watch once more. He says he probably won’t see me ever again. It was risky to
speak even this once, against his family’s wishes. There won’t be another conversation. After he’s gone, he
says, I can tell his story any way I want. “You’re my Boswell,” he declares. He no longer cares what’s
written about him. “I’ll be with the Lady of the Woods, I’ll be happy,” he tells me. “You can make T-shirts
with my image on them if you wish, and have your kids sell them on the corner.”
I smile at the idea, suspending my tears. The world is a confusing place, meaningful and meaningless at
once. “It was good to see you,” he says. He walks me around the garage to my car, and leaves me there. His
mother will be coming any minute. “Go,” he whispers. “Go.” And I do.