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It’s now just a spot <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> woods. One or two more summers and it’ll probably be hard to tell that<br />
someone lived here. I sit on a boulder, out of <strong>the</strong> snow, try<strong>in</strong>g to catch a few blades of sunlight slash<strong>in</strong>g<br />
through <strong>the</strong> branches. Still, I shiver. It feels a little lonely here.<br />
Modern life seems set up so that we can avoid lonel<strong>in</strong>ess at all costs, but maybe it’s worthwhile to face it<br />
occasionally. <strong>The</strong> fur<strong>the</strong>r we push aloneness away, <strong>the</strong> less are we able to cope with it, and <strong>the</strong> more<br />
terrify<strong>in</strong>g it gets. Some philosophers believe that lonel<strong>in</strong>ess is <strong>the</strong> only true feel<strong>in</strong>g <strong>the</strong>re is. We live<br />
orphaned on a t<strong>in</strong>y rock <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> immense vastness of space, with no h<strong>in</strong>t of even <strong>the</strong> simplest form of life<br />
anywhere around us for billions upon billions of miles, alone beyond all imag<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g. We live locked <strong>in</strong> our<br />
own heads and can never entirely know <strong>the</strong> experience of ano<strong>the</strong>r person. Even if we’re surrounded by<br />
family and friends, we journey <strong>in</strong>to death completely alone.<br />
“Solitude is <strong>the</strong> profoundest fact of <strong>the</strong> human condition,” wrote <strong>the</strong> Mexican poet and Nobel laureate<br />
Octavio Paz. “Ultimately, and precisely <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably<br />
alone,” wrote <strong>the</strong> Austro-German poet Ra<strong>in</strong>er Maria Rilke.<br />
Surpris<strong>in</strong>gly, I receive one f<strong>in</strong>al letter from Knight. It’s an elegy to our relationship, five l<strong>in</strong>es long. He<br />
<strong>in</strong>structs me to purchase some flowers for my wife, and candy for <strong>the</strong> cowboys, “for compensation of your<br />
absence to Ma<strong>in</strong>e.” <strong>The</strong>n he tells me never to come back. “For now and <strong>the</strong>n hence.”<br />
He doesn’t sign his name, of course, but for <strong>the</strong> first time, he <strong>in</strong>cludes a small doodle, done with colored<br />
pencils. It’s a flower, just a s<strong>in</strong>gle flower, a daisy with red petals and a yellow center and two green leaves,<br />
bloom<strong>in</strong>g at <strong>the</strong> bottom of his note. An unmistakably optimistic sign. I take it as a signal that he’s adapted at<br />
least somewhat to his new life. I take it to mean that even if he can never live <strong>the</strong> way he wishes to, he won’t<br />
be walk<strong>in</strong>g with <strong>the</strong> Lady of <strong>the</strong> <strong>Woods</strong>. I take it as a sign of hope.<br />
Sometimes, though, I can’t help but wonder, What if? What if Sergeant Hughes hadn’t been so dedicated,<br />
and Knight had never been caught? Knight told me that he planned to stay out <strong>the</strong>re forever. He was will<strong>in</strong>g<br />
to die <strong>in</strong> his camp, <strong>the</strong> spot where he was most content. Even without a cleanup crew, it would not take too<br />
long for nature to reclaim <strong>the</strong> area, ferns sprout<strong>in</strong>g, roots creep<strong>in</strong>g through, his tent and his body and<br />
eventually his propane cyl<strong>in</strong>ders consumed by <strong>the</strong> soil.<br />
It’s <strong>the</strong> end<strong>in</strong>g, I believe, that Knight planned. He wasn’t go<strong>in</strong>g to leave beh<strong>in</strong>d a s<strong>in</strong>gle recorded thought,<br />
not a photo, not an idea. No person would know of his experience. Noth<strong>in</strong>g would ever be written about<br />
him. He would simply vanish, and no one on this teem<strong>in</strong>g planet would notice. His end wouldn’t create so<br />
much as a ripple on North Pond. It would have been an existence, a life, of utter perfection.