This is story about a person, living in the woods for years, with no human contact. Until he was caught while stealing supplies and jailed. As far as I know, he never returned back to the forest....
This is story about a person, living in the woods for years, with no human contact. Until he was caught while stealing supplies and jailed. As far as I know, he never returned back to the forest. I really recommend you to read it, it was a great story.
He confessed that he’d committed approximately forty robberies a year while in the woods—a total of more than a thousand break-ins. But never when anyone was home. He said he stole only food and kitchenware and propane tanks and reading material and a few other items. Knight admitted that everything he possessed in the world, he’d stolen, including the clothes he was wearing, right down to his underwear. The only exception was his eyeglasses.
"For how long?" wondered Perkins-Vance.
Knight thought for a bit, then asked when the Chernobyl nuclear-plant disaster occurred. He had long ago lost the habit of marking time in months or years; this was just a news event he happened to remember. The nuclear meltdown took place in 1986, the same year, Knight said, he went to live in the woods. He was 20 years old at the time, not long out of high school. He was now 47, a middle-aged man.
We exchanged letters throughout the summer of 2013. Rather than becoming gradually more accustomed to jail, to being around other people, Knight was deteriorating. In the woods, he said, he’d always carefully maintained his facial hair, but now he stopped shaving. "Use my beard," he wrote, "as a jail calendar."
Even worse, he feared his time in jail would only prove correct those who doubted his sanity. "I suspect," he wrote, "more damage has been done to my sanity in jail, in months; than years, decades, in the woods."
"I don’t know your world," he said. "Only my world, and memories of the world before I went into the woods. What life is today? What is proper? I have to figure out how to live." He wished he could return to his camp—"I miss the woods"—but he knew by the rules of his release that this was impossible. "Sitting here in jail, I don’t like what I see in the society I’m about to enter. I don’t think I’m going to fit in. It’s too loud. Too colorful. The lack of aesthetics. The crudeness. The inanities. The trivia."
What an incredibly interesting man and fascinating read with so much to digest in it. I found it particularly interesting that the other inmates found his silence so deserving of respect and a bit...
What an incredibly interesting man and fascinating read with so much to digest in it.
"You speak like a book," one inmate teased. Whereupon he ceased talking.
"I am retreating into silence as a defensive move," he wrote. Soon he was down to uttering just five words, and only to guards: yes; no; please; thank you. "I am surprised by the amount of respect this garners me. That silence intimidates puzzles me. Silence is to me normal, comfortable."
I found it particularly interesting that the other inmates found his silence so deserving of respect and a bit intimidating. I can sort of intuitively understand why that is, similar to the respect that people who took vows of silence used to get, but wonder what the underlying reason for that is. It is something to do with admiring/fearing the willpower required to sustain it?
In the end, he decided he could not even write. "For a while writing relieved stress for me. No longer." He sent one last, heartbreaking letter in which he seemed at the verge of breakdown. "Still tired. More tired. Tireder, tiredest, tired ad nauseam, tired infinitum."
And that was it. He never wrote me again. Though he did finally sign his name. Despite the exhaustion and the tension, the last words he penned were wry and self-mocking: "Your friendly neighborhood Hermit, Christopher Knight."
That made me incredibly sad but I was glad to see the relationship continued on in person. And I am definitely curious how he is doing now that he has been released. Apparently there was a Supreme Court case on whether or not he had to pay restitution for the removal of his camp, but I can't find anything else regarding him personally or his life now.
Some other interesting/funny parts, too:
"Some people want me to be this warm and fuzzy person. All filled with friendly hermit wisdom. Just spouting off fortune-cookie lines from my hermit home."
He explained about the lack of eye contact. "I’m not used to seeing people’s faces," he said. "There’s too much information there. Aren’t you aware of it? Too much, too fast."
I trusted him. I sensed, in fact, that Chris was practically incapable of lying. I wasn’t alone in this thought. Diane Perkins-Vance, the state trooper present at his arrest, told me that much of her job consisted of sorting through lies people fed her. With Chris, however, she had no doubts. "Unequivocally," she said, "I believe him."
Debbie Baker, whose young boys were terrified of the hermit—to quell their fears, the family renamed him "the hungry man"—installed a surveillance camera in their cabin. And in 2002, they captured a photo of Knight. The police widely distributed the photo and figured an arrest was imminent.
It took eleven more years.
Reading all the sections on what he stole (lots of books with him being a fellow military history buff! and handheld video games!) and what he ate/drank (lots of junk food and "girly" mixed liquors) was pretty interesting too. Rather than eating healthy or living off the land I suppose his high fat/high sugar junk-food diet makes total sense when his primary concern was avoiding starvation.
This is story about a person, living in the woods for years, with no human contact. Until he was caught while stealing supplies and jailed. As far as I know, he never returned back to the forest. I really recommend you to read it, it was a great story.
What an incredibly interesting man and fascinating read with so much to digest in it.
I found it particularly interesting that the other inmates found his silence so deserving of respect and a bit intimidating. I can sort of intuitively understand why that is, similar to the respect that people who took vows of silence used to get, but wonder what the underlying reason for that is. It is something to do with admiring/fearing the willpower required to sustain it?
That made me incredibly sad but I was glad to see the relationship continued on in person. And I am definitely curious how he is doing now that he has been released. Apparently there was a Supreme Court case on whether or not he had to pay restitution for the removal of his camp, but I can't find anything else regarding him personally or his life now.
Some other interesting/funny parts, too:
Reading all the sections on what he stole (lots of books with him being a fellow military history buff! and handheld video games!) and what he ate/drank (lots of junk food and "girly" mixed liquors) was pretty interesting too. Rather than eating healthy or living off the land I suppose his high fat/high sugar junk-food diet makes total sense when his primary concern was avoiding starvation.
Thanks for the link, Soptik... that was great.