The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

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Christopher Knight was arrested, charged with burglary and theft, and transported to the Kennebec
County Correctional Facility, in the state capital of Augusta. For the first time in nearly ten thousand nights,
he slept indoors.
The Kennebec Journal broke the story, and the news elicited some strong and curious reactions. The jail
was inundated with letters and phone calls and visitors; “a circus,” Chief Deputy Sheriff Ryan Reardon
called it. A carpenter from Georgia volunteered to repair any cabin Knight had damaged. A woman wanted
to propose marriage. One person offered Knight land to live on, rent-free, while another pledged a room in
his house.
People sent checks and cash. A poet sought biographical details. According to Chief Deputy Sheriff
Reardon, two men, one from New York and another from New Hampshire, arrived at the jail with $5,000
in cash, Knight’s total bail. Knight was soon deemed a flight risk, and his bail was raised to $250,000.
Five songs were recorded: “We Don’t Know the North Pond Hermit,” “The Hermit of North Pond,”
“The North Pond Hermit,” “A Hermit’s Voice,” and “North Pond Hermit”—bluegrass, folk, alt-rock,
dirge, ballad. Big G’s Deli, an iconic Maine eatery, offered a roast beef, pastrami, and onion ring sandwich
called the Hermit, advertised as containing “all locally stolen ingredients.” A Dutch artist created a series of
oil paintings based on Knight’s story and showed them in a gallery in Germany.
Hundreds of journalists, across the United States and the world, attempted to contact him. The New York
Times compared him to Boo Radley, the recluse in To Kill a Mockingbird. TV talk shows solicited his
presence. A documentary film team arrived in town.
Every coffee shop and barroom in central Maine, it seemed, was host to a hermit debate. In many
cultures hermits have long been considered founts of wisdom, explorers of life’s great mysteries. In others
they’re seen as cursed by the devil. What did Knight wish to tell us? What secrets had he uncovered? Or was
he just crazy? What punishment, if any, should he receive? How had he survived? Was his story even true?
And if so, why would a man remove himself so profoundly from society? The Kennebec County district
attorney, Maeghan Maloney, said that Knight, who apparently wished to spend his entire life anonymous,
had become “the most famous person in the state of Maine.”
Knight himself, the hub of the commotion, resumed his silence. He did not issue a single word publicly.
He accepted no offers—no bail, no wife, no poem, no cash. The five hundred or so dollars sent to him were
placed in a restitution fund for victims of his thefts. Before his arrest the hermit had seemed completely
inexplicable, but to most people his capture only enhanced the puzzle. The truth felt stranger than the myth.