The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

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I learned about Christopher Knight while scanning the news on my phone one morning, amid the din and
spilled orange juice of my children. The story grabbed me. I’ve slept hundreds of nights in the wild, most of
them before my wife and I had three babies in three years, an experience that bestows various blessings,
though not one permitting much quiet time in the forest. I wasn’t jealous of Knight’s feat—the no-campfire
rule is too brutal—but I did feel some degree of respect and a great deal of astonishment.
I like being alone. My preferred exercise is solo long-distance running, and my job, as a journalist and
writer, is often asocial. When life becomes overwhelming, my first thought—my fantasy—is to head for the
woods. My house is a testament to runaway consumerism, but what I crave most is simplicity and freedom.
Once, when my kids were all in diapers and the chaos and sleeplessness had turned poisonous, I did quit the
world, albeit briefly and formally, and with the grudging consent of my wife. I fled to India and enrolled in
a ten-day silent retreat, hoping that a large dose of alone time would settle my nerves.
It didn’t. The retreat was secular, though heavy on meditation—we were taught an ancient style of selfcontemplation
known as Vipassana—and I found it grueling. It was more monastic than eremitic, with
hundreds of other attendees, but we were not allowed to talk or gesture or make eye contact. The desire to
socialize never left me, and simply sitting still was a physical struggle. Still, the ten days were enough for me
to see, as if peering over the edge of a well, that silence could be mystical, and that if you dared, diving fully
into your inner depths might be both profound and disturbing.
I didn’t dare—scrutinizing oneself that candidly seemed to require bravery and fortitude I didn’t possess,
as well as a tremendous amount of free time. But I never stopped thinking about what might reside down
there, what insights, what truth. There were people at the retreat in India who had completed months of
silent withdrawal, and the calmness and placidity they radiated made me envious. Knight had seemingly
surpassed all boundaries, plunging to the bottom of the well, to the mysterious deep.
Then there was the matter of books. Knight clearly loved to read. He stole, according to news reports, a
lot of science fiction and spy novels and best sellers and even Harlequin romances—whatever was available
in the cabins of North Pond—but one person also lost a finance textbook, a scholarly World War II tome,
and James Joyce’s Ulysses. During his arrest, Knight mentioned his admiration for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson
Crusoe. Crusoe lived on his island almost exactly as long as Knight lived in the woods, though he had his
man Friday for several years. Also, the story’s fictitious. Maeghan Maloney, the local DA, said that Knight
was now reading Gulliver’s Travels in jail.
Two of life’s greatest pleasures, by my reckoning, are camping and reading—most gloriously, both at