Michael Finkel - The Stranger in the Woods

The Stranger in the Woods is a wry meditation on one mans attempt to escape lifes distractions and look inwards, to find meaning not by doing, but by being

Martin Sixsmith, bestselling author of Philomena

Michael Finkel has somehow found a story that takes the two primary human relationships to nature and to one another and deftly upends our assumptions about both. His subject, Christopher Knight, survived alone for decades. In Finkels hands, that story assumes the power and dignity of parable and feels as if we have having been waiting our whole lives to hear what someone like Knight might say about us. This was a breath-taking book to read and many weeks later I am still thinking about the implications for our society and by extension for my own life

Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm and Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

Michael Finkel has done something magical with this profound book: Hes written a gripping modern parable about how one man did the unthinkable, walked away from life as we know it to find a sort of happiness in isolation and silence. His investigation runs deep, summoning not only his surprising, poignant friendship with the books protagonist, but also the human history of our own attempts to find meaning in a noisy world. In some sacred forest place the hermit waits for us: he is us. This books promise is simple: If were lucky enough to find him, we may find ourselves one step closer to perfection

Michael Paterniti, bestselling author of The Telling Room and Driving Mr Albert

I burned through this haunting tale in one rapt sitting. Chris Knight is an American original, a man who kept himself hidden from all other humans for more than a quarter of a century. Every life choice we make comes with a price, and Knights can be tallied in moments of serenity and winters survived, or in break-ins and stolen propane tanks the final calculus, astonishing, poignant, and vexing as it is, falls to us

John Vaillant, bestselling author of The Tiger

As ever, Michael Finkels voice in this fresh new chronicle is clean, clear, lucid his attention fair and compassionate. The Stranger in the Woods is an altogether surprising page-turner that helps us to see his twisted saints essential sanity, and in so doing to question our own

Lawrence Weschler, author of Mr Wilsons Cabinet of Wonder and Waves Passing in the Night: Walter Murch in the Land of the Astrophysicists

A fascinating account of Knights renunciation of humanity... Deeply compelling

Publishers Weekly

In memory of Eileen Myrna Baker Finkel

How many things there are that I do not want.

SOCRATES , CIRCA 425 B.C.

The trees are mostly skinny where the hermit lives, but theyre tangled over giant boulders with deadfall everywhere like pick-up sticks. There are no trails. Navigation, for nearly everyone, is a thrashing, branch-snapping ordeal, and at dark the place seems impenetrable.

This is when the hermit moves. He waits until midnight, shoulders his backpack and his bag of break-in tools, and sets out from camp. A penlight is clipped to a chain around his neck, but he doesnt need it yet. Every step is memorized.

He threads through the forest with precision and grace, twisting, striding, hardly a twig broken. On the ground there are still mounds of snow, sun-cupped and dirty, and slicks of mudspringtime, central Mainebut he avoids all of it. He bounds from rock to root to rock without a bootprint left behind.

One print, the hermit fears, might be enough to give him away. Secrecy is a fragile state, a single time undone and forever finished. A bootprint, if youre truly committed, is therefore not allowed, not once. Too risky. So he glides like a ghost between the hemlocks and maples and white birches and elms until he emerges at the rocky shoreline of a frozen pond.

It has a name, Little Pond, often called Little North Pond, though the hermit doesnt know it. Hes stripped the world to his essentials, and proper names are not essential. He knows the season, intimately, its every gradation. He knows the moon, a sliver less than half tonight, waning. Typically, hed await the new moondarker is betterbut his hunger had become critical. He knows the hour and minute. Hes wearing an old windup watch to ensure that he budgets enough time to return before daybreak. He doesnt know, at least not without calculating, the year or the decade.

His intention is to cross the frozen water, but this plan is fast abandoned. The day had been relatively warm, a couple of ticks above freezingthe temperature he knowsand while hed hunkered in his camp, the weather had worked against him. Solid ice is a gift to trackless stealth, but this touch of softness will emboss every footfall.

So the long way it is, back in the trees with the roots and the rocks. He knows the whole hopscotch for miles, all around Little North Pond and then to the farthest reaches of North Pond itself. He passes a dozen cabins, modest wood-sided vacation homes, unpainted, shut tight for the off-season. Hes been inside many of them, but now is not the time. For nearly an hour he continues, still attempting to avoid footprints or broken branches. Some roots hes stepped on so often that theyre worn smooth from repetition. Even knowing this, no tracker could ever find him.

He stops just before reaching his destination, the Pine Tree summer camp. The camp isnt open, but maintenance has been around, and theyve probably left some food in the kitchen, and theres likely leftovers from last season. From the shadow of the forest he observes the Pine Tree property, scanning the bunkhouses, the tool shop, the rec center, the dining hall. No one. A couple of cars are in the lot, as usual. Still, he waits. You can never be too cautious.

Eventually hes ready. Motion-detecting floodlights and cameras are scattered around the Pine Tree grounds, installed chiefly because of him, but these are a joke. Their boundaries are fixedlearn where they are and keep away. The hermit zigzags across the camp and stops at a specific rock, turns it over, grabs the key hidden beneath, and pockets it for later use. Then he climbs a slope to the parking lot and tests each vehicles doors. A Ford pickup opens. He clicks on his penlight and peeks inside.

Candy! Always good. Ten rolls of Smarties, tossed in the cup holders. He stuffs them in another pocket. He also takes a rain poncho, unopened in its packaging, and a silver-colored Armitron analog watch. Its not an expensive watchif it looks valuable, the hermit will not steal it. He has a moral code. But extra watches are important; when you live outside with rain and snow, breakage is inevitable.

He vectors past a few more motion cameras to a back door of the dining hall. Here he sets down his canvas gym bag of break-in tools and unzips it. Inside is a pair of putty knives, a paint scraper, a Leatherman multi-tool, several long-necked flathead screwdrivers, and three backup flashlights, among other items. He knows this doorits already slightly scraped and dented from his workand he selects a screwdriver and slots it into the gap between the door and frame, near the knob. One expert twist and the door pops open, and he slips inside.