The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

caterpillar droppings or downed leaves, what Knight called “tree dandruff,” he’d strain it through a coffee
filter before drinking it. Eventually, the water would turn greenish and a bit slimy, after which Knight used
it for laundry or bathing, or boiled it and made tea.
His bathroom, on the camp’s rear edge, farthest from the elephant-rocks entrance, was a couple of logs
framing an open pit. Knight kept a bathroom kit in his shelter, usually stocked with toilet paper and hand
sanitizer. As he’d insisted, there was no fire ring, not a charred piece of wood.
The largest trees around his site had served as storage units. Knight had wrapped thick ropes around a
dozen hemlock trunks and tucked items into them—lengths of wire, bungee cords, rusty bedsprings, plastic
bags, scissors, a tube of Super Glue, a pair of work gloves, a bent key. “The key could be used as a hook,
or to pry something up, as a makeshift screwdriver, I don’t know. I couldn’t bring myself to throw anything
away. I’m a saver and repurposer.” He’d strung clotheslines between trees; typically drying were Knight’s
staples: dark sweatpants, flannel shirts, and water-resistant jackets and pants.
He’d slid his boots onto sawed-off branches, a wilderness drying rack. One tree had held rakes and snow
shovels; another, an olive-green baseball cap and a floppy gray fishing hat. Some items had been in place so
long that the trees grew around them. A claw hammer was nearly swallowed by a tree trunk, impossible to
remove, and Hughes said that this hammer, more than anything, made him realize how long Knight had lived
there.
There was always the chance, Knight had understood, that someone might hike nearby or search for him
by air, so he’d tried either to cover any objects that could glint in the sun or to keep them hidden inside the
tarp structure. He’d spray-painted a camouflage pattern on plastic coolers and metal garbage cans and on
the outside of his spaghetti pot. He kept the blade of his snow shovel, when he wasn’t using it, covered with
a dark garbage bag, and he’d wrapped the handle in black duct tape. Propane tanks were also stored in
garbage bags. In a couple of spots where one might catch a glimpse of his site after the leaves fell, he’d
hung camo-colored tarps. He had even painted his clothespins green.
On a little raised area in his camp, a sort of porch, was a green aluminum lawn chair, the bottom of the
legs swaddled in duct tape to stop them from sinking into the soft soil. The chair, like everything in his
camp, seemed ideally and harmoniously placed to maximize the site’s sense of tranquillity. Knight scoffed at
this notion when we later discussed it: “Do you think I was engaging in feng shui?”
I set up my own tent at the site, then sat in the green aluminum chair as chipmunks raced among the
trees, acorns dropping through the branches like pachinko balls. A gust of wind bent the high boughs but
scattered only a few leaves around the camp.
Night fell fast. Frogs cleared their throats; cicadas whirred like table saws. A woodpecker hammered for
grubs. At last came the call of the loons, the theme song of the North Woods, pealing like a laugh or cry,
depending on your mood. A car crunched over a dirt road, a dog barked. For a while people could be heard
talking, though their words were too muffled to make out.
Knight lived so close to others that he couldn’t even sneeze aloud. There’s fine cell-phone reception at his
site. Civilization was right there, hot showers and creature comforts just steps away.
Soon it grew truly dark—one’s eyes could be open or closed with hardly a difference—and something
moved through the forest. An animal, probably no bigger than a rabbit, though it sounded like a hippo. A
couple of stars were visible through the scrim of branches overhead, and the crooked smile of a quarter
moon. A bird peeped percussively. Then there was nothing.