The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

oom. A tiny cabin, roof caved in, is $16,500. I wonder if he’d accept such a gift, or if his therapist would
agree that it’s a good idea. He’d still need money, for repairs and food, and he has not a dollar. All of the
donations to his cause went to restitution, and he owes more.
Knight had specifically asked me not to interfere in his life, so I veto buying him the cabin and fly home.
I write him a letter: “I absolutely cannot stand the thought that you may choose to take a stroll with the Lady
of the Woods.” I do not tell his caseworker, or anyone else in Knight’s life, about the suicide risk, but every
month or so I write again, through spring and summer and into fall. There’s no reply.
When November arrives, the time of his threat, I can stand it no longer. I book a flight to Maine, and ten
days before I leave, I send him a brief note saying I’m on my way. My wife calls me while I’m changing
planes in New York. A postcard has arrived from Knight. “ ‘Urgently important that you leave me alone,’ ”
she reads to me over the phone. “ ‘Show me respect by leaving me alone. Please. If you appear I will call
police. Leave me alone. Please.’ ” I fly back without seeing him.
Winter descends, and I try to keep tabs on Knight. Every North Pond resident I speak with says the past
two summers without the hermit have been the most carefree in memory. People have been leaving their
cabin doors unlocked, like in the old days. “It’s just done,” says Jodie Mosher-Towle, editor of the twiceyearly
bulletin the North Pond News. “It’s in the past. Nobody wants to hear about the hermit anymore
around here, because it’s like yeah, whatever.” Maloney, the DA, e-mails to tell me that Knight continues to
arrive in court promptly every Monday and is doing fantastically well. So at least I know he’s alive.
At the end of winter, Maloney announces that Knight has completed the Co-Occurring Disorders and
Veterans Court and on March 23, 2015, he will officially graduate. It’s been nearly two years since his
arrest at Pine Tree. “His performance in this court has been flawless,” Justice Mills says at his final hearing.
“There was never a misstep. He has done everything he has been asked to do.” Knight is placed on
probation for three years, unable to possess alcohol or drugs and required to continue psychological
counseling, but with few other restrictions. “Mr. Knight,” says Maloney, “is now a member of our
community.”
Knight sits in the defendant’s chair in court, still thin and clean-shaven, but with something different about
him. Though he doesn’t speak at graduation, his demeanor seems more docile. There is an unfamiliar
slackness to his visage. He is wearing a navy blue V-neck sweater over a white button-down, like a
kindergarten teacher.
In one of the first letters he wrote me, Knight described himself, in verse, as “defensive, defiant,
aggressive, you bet,” then added, concluding the rhyme, “but at least not compliant, at least not yet.” From
the initial moment I encountered Knight, through to the day he told me he wanted to kill himself, he was full
of defiance.
Now, in court, he seems compliant. Fighting against everything, he may have realized, only makes one’s
life infinitely harder. He has seen the bottomless nonsense of our world and has decided, like most of us, to
simply try to tolerate it. He appears to have surrendered. It is rational, yet heartbreaking.
After the hearing, I drive by North Pond again. I park my car beside the road and struggle through the
snow-choked woods to his camp. It’s my eighth trip here; I’ve spent the night five times, across every season.
Now I sense that the site, as with Knight himself, has been scrubbed of some crucial vitality.
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection had recently sent in a six-person team and an allterrain
vehicle and removed the remaining trash and propane tanks, creating more of a human trail in a few
hours than Knight did in decades.