Annie Dillard, <strong>The</strong> Div<strong>in</strong>g Bell and <strong>the</strong> Butterfly by Jean-Dom<strong>in</strong>ique Bauby, A Field Guide to Gett<strong>in</strong>g Lost by Rebecca Solnit, <strong>The</strong> Story of My Heart by Richard Jefferies, Thoughts <strong>in</strong> Solitude by Thomas Merton, and <strong>the</strong> <strong>in</strong>comparable Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Adventure tales offer<strong>in</strong>g superb <strong>in</strong>sight <strong>in</strong>to solitude, both its horror and its beauty, <strong>in</strong>clude <strong>The</strong> Long Way by Bernard Moitessier, <strong>The</strong> Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomal<strong>in</strong> and Ron Hall, A Voyage for Madmen by Peter Nichols, Into <strong>the</strong> Wild by Jon Krakauer, and Alone by Richard E. Byrd. Science-focused books that provided me with fur<strong>the</strong>r understand<strong>in</strong>g of how solitude affects people <strong>in</strong>clude Social by Mat<strong>the</strong>w D. Lieberman, Lonel<strong>in</strong>ess by John T. Cacioppo and William Patrick, Quiet by Susan Ca<strong>in</strong>, Neurotribes by Steve Silberman, and An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks. Also offer<strong>in</strong>g astute ideas about aloneness are Cave <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> Snow by Vicki Mackenzie, <strong>The</strong> Life of Sa<strong>in</strong>t Anthony by Sa<strong>in</strong>t Athanasius, Letters to a Young Poet by Ra<strong>in</strong>er Maria Rilke, <strong>the</strong> essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson (especially “Nature” and “Self-Reliance”) and Friedrich Nietzsche (especially “Man Alone with Himself”), <strong>the</strong> verse of William Wordsworth, and <strong>the</strong> poems of Han-shan, Shih-te, and Wang Fan-chih. It was essential for me to read two of Knight’s favorite books: Notes from <strong>the</strong> Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Very Special People by Frederick Drimmer. This book’s epigraph, attributed to Socrates, comes from <strong>the</strong> C. D. Yonge translation of Diogenes Laërtius’s third-century A.D. work <strong>The</strong> Lives and Op<strong>in</strong>ions of Em<strong>in</strong>ent Philosophers. <strong>The</strong> Hermitary website, which offers hundreds of articles on every aspect of hermit life, is an <strong>in</strong>valuable resource—I spent weeks immersed <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> site, though I did not qualify to become a member of <strong>the</strong> hermitonly chat groups. My longtime researcher, Jeanne Harper, dug up hundreds of reports on hermits and loners throughout history. I was fasc<strong>in</strong>ated by <strong>the</strong> stories of Japanese soldiers who cont<strong>in</strong>ued fight<strong>in</strong>g World War II for decades on remote Pacific islands, though none seemed to be completely alone for more than a few years at a time. Still, Hiroo Onoda’s No Surrender is a fasc<strong>in</strong>at<strong>in</strong>g account. And <strong>the</strong>n <strong>the</strong>re’s <strong>the</strong> story of <strong>the</strong> last survivor of an Amazon tribe. In 2007, after several failed attempts to make peaceful contact with this man, who once fired an arrow <strong>in</strong>to <strong>the</strong> chest of a rescue worker, <strong>the</strong> Brazilian government provided him with a thirty-one-square-mile region of ra<strong>in</strong> forest. <strong>The</strong> land is offlimits to everyone except this man. He traps animals for food. He has been completely alone for about twenty years. Now that Chris Knight resides <strong>in</strong> society, this man, whose name is unknown—as is <strong>the</strong> name of his tribe and <strong>the</strong> language he speaks—may be <strong>the</strong> most isolated person <strong>in</strong> <strong>the</strong> world.
A Note About <strong>the</strong> Author <strong>Michael</strong> F<strong>in</strong>kel is <strong>the</strong> author of True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, which was adapted <strong>in</strong>to a 2015 motion picture. He has reported from more than fifty countries and written for National Geographic, GQ, Roll<strong>in</strong>g Stone, Esquire, Vanity Fair, <strong>The</strong> Atlantic, and <strong>The</strong> New York Times Magaz<strong>in</strong>e. He lives <strong>in</strong> western Montana.
- Page 2:
Also by Michael Finkel True Story:
- Page 5 and 6:
Contents Cover Also by Michael Fink
- Page 7 and 8:
In memory of Eileen Myrna Baker Fin
- Page 13 and 14:
1 The trees are mostly skinny where
- Page 15 and 16:
2 Terry Hughes’s wife nudges him
- Page 17 and 18:
eyes, and trains the .357 square in
- Page 19 and 20:
down, hands still locked behind his
- Page 21 and 22:
truth. Anything else would be wasti
- Page 23 and 24:
“I took no medications and never
- Page 25 and 26:
Or them. Nobody knew. Because of th
- Page 27 and 28:
North Pond hermit, it turns out, wa
- Page 29 and 30:
7 I learned about Christopher Knigh
- Page 31 and 32:
8 A white envelope arrived in my ma
- Page 33 and 34:
against the rules of journalism. I
- Page 35 and 36:
9 Augusta, Maine, is picturesque bu
- Page 37 and 38:
East accent. I plowed awkwardly on.
- Page 39 and 40:
10 Knight lived in the same campsit
- Page 41 and 42:
Knight, matching him step for step.
- Page 43 and 44:
He’d spread a carpet over the mag
- Page 45 and 46:
It was the kind of total quiet that
- Page 47 and 48:
to the nature of the electromagneti
- Page 49 and 50:
something. Chris was smart and frie
- Page 51 and 52:
13 But why? Why would a twenty-year
- Page 53 and 54:
including Charles Darwin, Thomas Ed
- Page 55 and 56:
14 Knight actually did have a plan.
- Page 57 and 58:
the sorts of places where it’s ne
- Page 59 and 60:
their canoe has been borrowed and r
- Page 61 and 62: 16 Knight lived in the dirt but was
- Page 63 and 64: he was famished for words, he’d s
- Page 65 and 66: Knight had a strong distaste for bi
- Page 67 and 68: Knight’s camp. He began observing
- Page 69 and 70: 18 The only book Knight didn’t st
- Page 71 and 72: my winter toilet. Do my business. T
- Page 73 and 74: pen name. “Human society has been
- Page 75 and 76: do telethons? I hate Jerry Lewis.
- Page 77 and 78: fed her, but with Knight she had no
- Page 79 and 80: 21 A thousand poets sing of solitud
- Page 81 and 82: “psychologically completely out o
- Page 83 and 84: 22 Snow melted, flowers bloomed, in
- Page 85 and 86: changes is where the brain is funct
- Page 87 and 88: His thieving raids became considera
- Page 89 and 90: to sing, with his food supplies nea
- Page 91 and 92: inherited from her mother, and a co
- Page 93 and 94: 25 A side door to the jail swings o
- Page 95 and 96: Jail, he’s realized, might not be
- Page 97 and 98: 26 Chris’s oldest brother, Daniel
- Page 99 and 100: That note, thirty-four words long,
- Page 101 and 102: the bright side. The sun will come
- Page 103 and 104: 28 A mile down the road, I pull ove
- Page 105 and 106: It’s now just a spot in the woods
- Page 107 and 108: For insight into Knight: Matt Hongo
- Page 109 and 110: Annette Schipf Chris Anderson David
- Page 111: David and Louise Proulx, whose tiny