Based on extensive interviews with Knight himself, this is a vividly detailed account of his secluded life-why did he leave? what did he learn?-as well as the challenges he has faced since returning to the world. He broke into nearby cottages for food, clothing, reading material, and other provisions, taking only what he needed but terrifying a community never able to solve the mysterious burglaries.
Living in a tent even through brutal winters, he had survived by his wits and courage, developing ingenious ways to store edibles and water, and to avoid freezing to death. He would not have a conversation with another human being until nearly three decades later, when he was arrested for stealing food. A New York Times bestseller In 1986, a shy and intelligent twenty-year-old named Christopher Knight left his home in Massachusetts, drove to Maine, and disappeared into the forest. This is the remarkable true story of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years, making this dream a reality-not out of anger at the world, but simply because he preferred to live on his own. Many people dream of escaping modern life, but most will never act on it.The book doesn’t penetrate the mystery of Knight’s renunciation, but the questions it raises remain deeply compelling. Yet even as Finkel immerses himself in Knight’s life-researching hermits, consulting psychologists, even camping at Knight’s hideaway-his subject’s motivations remain obscure, leaving the book somehow incomplete. A fellow outdoorsman, Finkel places Knight in the long tradition of hermits, a category that has been admired and distrusted over the centuries. Despite frequent rebuffs, enough of a relationship developed for Finkel to broadly outline Knight’s wilderness solitude. Drawn by the details that followed Knight’s arrest, Finkel reached out to him through letters and visits. Finally apprehended during one of his raids, the “Hermit of North Pond” battled depression and contemplated suicide as he was forced to rejoin society.
To survive, Knight relentlessly pilfered supplies from vacation houses around his campsite, infuriating and terrifying homeowners and baffling a generation of cops. In this fascinating account of Knight’s renunciation of humanity, Finkel ( True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa) struggles to comprehend the impulses that led Knight to court death by hypothermia even though his family home was less than an hour’s drive away.
Nearly three decades passed before he reappeared and revealed he’d spent most of that time camping in the woods of central Maine. On a summer morning in 1986, 20-year-old Christopher Knight didn’t show up for his job installing alarm systems in Waltham, Mass.
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