The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

David and Louise Proulx, whose tiny black-and-white television had been stolen by Knight, suffered at
least fifty break-ins over the decades, and they described the strange psychological effects of the crimes—at
first, they were convinced it was one of their own children who was guilty; then they seriously wondered if
they had begun to lose their minds. Pete Cogswell, whose size thirty-eight Lands’ End jeans and brown
leather belt were stolen, and his wife, Lillie Cogswell, who worked in the Texas criminal justice system for
more than thirty years, spoke with me at length, describing the details of Knight’s confounding break-ins
and speculating on what might be an appropriate punishment for him. Donna and T. J. Bolduc shared with
me their game-camera photos of Knight, as well as their Skinnygirl margarita mix joke.
Garry Hollands, one of the first people to hang a bag on his cabin’s door with offerings for the hermit,
spoke of all the books he’d lost, and how he’d balanced a nearly invisible bit of fishing line over his door
that would be dislodged when someone opened it, so he could tell when he’d been burglarized. Debbie
Baker described how fearful her young children were of the hermit—it was her family that nicknamed him
the Hungry Man. Neal Patterson recounted his fourteen nights waiting in his cabin in the dark, with a gun,
trying to catch the hermit.
Sergeant Terry Hughes spent hours telling me about his hermit obsession, and one evening he took me
around in his pickup truck to check his traps, then brought me to his clubhouse and provided instructions as
I skinned my first-ever muskrat. State Trooper Diane Vance met me after Knight’s court hearing and spoke
with me several times over the phone. Both the district attorney, Maeghan Maloney, and Knight’s attorney,
Walter McKee, granted me interviews. No one in Knight’s family spoke with me, but dozens of people in
the Albion community did, including several of Knight’s former teachers and classmates, as well as a few
longtime friends of the Knight family.
During each trip to Maine, I visited Knight’s camp. It was never easy to find. There is no way to overstate
how thick and confusing the Jarsey is, or the astonishment provoked, every time, by stepping from the dense
forest into the site.
To attempt to comprehend more of Knight’s mind-set, I had lengthy telephone conversations and e-mail
chats with several psychologists and autism experts, including Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge
University; Catherine Benoist, who runs a clinical practice near Chicago; Peter Deri, in private practice in
New York; Stephen M. Edelson of the Autism Research Institute, in San Diego; Thomas W. Frazier of the
Center for Autism at the Cleveland Clinic; Jill Hooley of Harvard University; and Catherine Lord of Weill
Cornell Medicine. Stephen M. Prescott, president of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, spoke
with me about the nature of communicable diseases and how it was possible that Knight had never gotten
sick.
In order to gain insight into the ordeals of forced isolation, I corresponded extensively with John
Catanzarite, an inmate in the California prison system who spent almost fourteen years locked in solitary
confinement. I also read a dozen other accounts from solitary prisoners.
There’s an ocean of hermit literature; I began my reading on one shore, with Lao-tzu’s Tao Te Ching (I
recommend the Red Pine translation), and started swimming from there. Excellent explorations of the
history and motivations of hermits include Solitude by Anthony Storr, A Pelican in the Wilderness by
Isabel Colegate, Hermits by Peter France, and Solitude by Philip Koch.
Perceptive and valuable personal explorations of time alone include A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland,
Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Migrations to Solitude by Sue Halpern, Journal of a Solitude by May
Sarton, The Point of Vanishing by Howard Axelrod, Solitude by Robert Kull, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by