The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

Unabomber.
None of these hermits remained secluded as long as Knight did, at least not without significant help from
assistants, or without being corralled into a monastery or convent, which is what happened to the Desert
Fathers and Mothers. There might have existed—or, it’s possible, currently exist—hermits more completely
hidden than Knight, but if so, they have never been found. Capturing Knight was the human equivalent of
netting a giant squid. His seclusion was not pure, he was a thief, but he persisted for twenty-seven years
while speaking a total of one word and never touching anyone else. Christopher Knight, you could argue, is
the most solitary known person in all of human history.
Mailing me the photo of Onwas seemed Knight’s way of sending a shrewdly opaque message, hinting at
admiration for someone else who’d spent his life away from modern society, expressed without using a
single word. Then I turned the page over and saw that Knight had written on the back. The note was brief—
three paragraphs, two hundred and seventy-three words, the lines crowded together as if for warmth. Still, it
contained some of the first statements Knight had shared with anyone in the world.
“Received your letter, obviously,” he opened, without salutation. His use of the word “obviously”—droll,
patronizing—elicited a smile. He was replying to my letter, he explained, in the hope that writing back
would provide some relief from the “stress and boredom” of his incarceration. Also, he didn’t feel
comfortable speaking: “My vocal, verbal skills have become rather rusty and slow.” He apologized for his
sloppy penmanship; a regular pen can be used as a weapon, so he was permitted only one with a bendable
rubber casing in jail.
Knight was shy about everything, it seemed, except literary criticism. He wrote that he felt “rather
lukewarm” about Ernest Hemingway. He was partial to history and biography, he said, though he was
presently interested in Rudyard Kipling, preferably his “lesser known works.” Here he added, as if
clarifying why he stole so many potboilers, that he would read just about anything when the alternative was
nothing.
He was aware of the commotion his arrest had stirred—all the letters that were mailed to him were duly
delivered to his cell, though the majority of them were, he noted, “crazy, creepy, just plain strange.” He had
selected mine to answer, he implied, because it wasn’t particularly creepy, and because he’d sensed
something pleasing in the words I’d chosen to use. As if catching himself getting a little friendly, he abruptly
wrote that he didn’t wish to reveal anything more.
He then seemed concerned that he was now being too unfriendly. “I wince at the rudeness of this reply
but think it better to be clear and honest rather than polite. Tempted to say ‘nothing personal,’ but
handwritten letters are always personal, whatever their content.” He ended with: “It was kind of you to write.
Thank you.” He did not sign his name.
I wrote back promptly, and mail-ordered for him a couple of Kiplings (The Man Who Would Be King
and Captains Courageous). Knight had said in his letter that because he didn’t know me, he would write
only “innocuous content.” This seemed an invitation to become less of a stranger, so I filled five pages with
personal anecdotes about my family, along with an account of one of my now-infrequent wilderness escapes:
the summer solstice had recently occurred around the same time as the so-called supermoon, the year’s full
moon that is closest to Earth, and I had observed this celestial coupling while camping with a friend amid
the mountains of Montana.
Also, I disclosed to Knight that I was a flawed journalist. In 2001, while writing a magazine article about
child labor, I wove various interviews together to create a composite character, a storytelling method that is