The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

23
Conscious of time’s flow or not, Knight was still subject to its laws. He grew older. His survival skills
peaked, his efficiency was honed, but like an athlete in decline, his body could not keep pace. For a while he
was able to haul two propane tanks on his back. Then he could carry only one.
His eyesight was a constant concern. He’d had poor vision since his youth and was obsessive about
protecting his eyeglasses. “I knew if I broke my glasses that would be it,” he said, “and that carefulness
extended to my whole body.” Then, without humor—his preferred way of framing a quip—he added, “No
cartwheels over boulders for me.”
Even so, the world beyond an arm’s length gradually lost focus. His glasses eventually failed him, and
everything in the woods became more or less a blur. Each time he saw a pair of glasses during a break-in,
he tried them on, but he never found a better prescription. He’d always used his ears more than his eyes, so
by the time he couldn’t see well, it didn’t matter much. He was in his home territory. “Do you need glasses
to move about your home? No. I didn’t, either.”
Most hermits across history, secular ones especially, did not grow old in seclusion. They waited until they
were already fairly old, with a stockpile of experience and wisdom, to leave the world. Knight vanished at
twenty and never again received a word of guidance or instruction. He turned to no elder for advice. He was
king and janitor of his tiny realm, and the rest of the world, he believed, had nothing to teach him, no
wonder to offer. His decisions were purely his own.
He sacrificed college, a career, a wife, children, friends, vacations, cars, sex, movies, phones, and
computers. He had never in his life sent an e-mail or even seen the internet. His milestones were less
significant. Knight switched, at some point, from drinking tea to coffee. Classical music, he eventually
realized, soothed him more than rock did. His pet mushroom grew. The handheld game players he stole got
smaller and better. He knew, even with blurry vision, when each bald eagle pair nesting in his forest had
hatchlings. He began to drink more alcohol.
He fell a couple of times, hard, though never broke a bone. Once he slipped on some ice and banged his
left arm so badly he couldn’t pick up a cup for a month, but that was the worst injury he sustained. As he
aged, the usual bruises on his hands and wrists from living outdoors seemed to linger; they didn’t heal the
way they used to. His teeth constantly hurt.
Questions crept into his mind. He wondered if all the sugar he was eating was making him diabetic. He
thought about cancer, or the possibility of a heart attack, yet he did not consider seeing a doctor. He
accepted his mortality as is.