The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

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The only book Knight didn’t steal was the one he most often saw. “I had no need for a Bible,” he said.
Knight came from Protestant stock but did not attend church as a child, though he read every page of the
Good Book. “I don’t practice a religion. I can’t claim a belief system. I would say at this point I’m more
polytheist than monotheist. I believe there are multiple gods for multiple situations. I don’t have names for
these gods. But I do not particularly believe in one big god of all gods.”
Instead, he affiliated himself with a school of thought. He practiced Stoicism, the Greek philosophy,
descended from Socratic ideas, founded in the third century B.C. Stoics felt that self-control and harmonious
existence with nature constituted a virtuous life, and that one must endure hardship without complaint.
Passion must be subject to reason; emotions lead one astray. “There was no one to complain to in the
woods, so I did not complain,” Knight said.
In the absence of a deity, Knight seemed to have venerated Socrates. The philosopher, born in 469 B.C.,
was not himself a hermit but advocated the lifestyle. Socrates may have concluded that his most valuable
possession was his leisure. “Beware the barrenness of a busy life” is a quote commonly attributed to him.
He walked everywhere barefoot, and ate only the poorest quality meats. Nothing appeared to bother him.
Socrates was sentenced to death, facilitated by a cup of hemlock tea, for impiety and heretical teaching. One
becomes free, Socrates seems to have taught, not by fulfilling all desires but by eliminating desire.
When Knight faced life-threatening challenges in the forest, he chose not to express emotion, instead
maintaining the dispassionate equanimity of a Stoic. At no point, he emphasized, did he pray to a higher
power. With one exception. When the worst of a Maine winter struck, all rules were suspended. “Once you
get below negative twenty, you purposely don’t think. It’s like there’s no atheists in a foxhole. Same with
negative twenty. That’s when you do have religion. You do pray. You pray for warmth.”
All of Knight’s survival tactics were focused on winter. Each year, just as the cabins were shutting down
for the season, often with food left behind in the pantry, Knight embarked on an intensified streak of allnight
raids. “It was my busiest time. Harvest time. A very ancient instinct. Though not one usually
associated with crime.”
His first goal was to get fat. This was a life-or-death necessity. Every mammal in his forest, mouse to
moose, had the same basic plan. He gorged himself on sugar and alcohol—it was the quickest way to gain
weight, and he liked the feeling of inebriation. The bottles he stole were the signs of a man who’d never
once, as he admitted, sat at a bar: Allen’s Coffee Flavored Brandy, Seagram’s Escapes Strawberry Daiquiri,
Parrot Bay Coconut Rum, and something called Whipped Chocolate Valley Vines, a liquefied blend of