Below is a link to an article from the September issue of GQ about a man who lived as a hermit in the woods of central Maine for twenty-seven years. Chris Knight disappeared in 1986 at the age of twenty, and reportedly had no contact with the outside world until April 2013 when technology - in the way of a newly installed motion detector alarm system - finally led to his being caught raiding a lake camp for supplies, as he had been doing for nearly three decades. Over the years, he either unnerved or angered local residents, particularly the victims of his late night raids, and, perhaps unavoidably, was turned into the stuff of legend around campfires. Without knowing, or trying, or giving a shit, Chris Knight became the North Pond Hermit, a real person violating the law by habitually breaking into cabins, but also a larger-than-life presence in and around the woods.
I've always found these kind of stories fascinating. The lives of the likes of Tim Treadwell and Chris McCandless inspire a siren song in me. They get me thinking long thoughts about what it takes to actually commit to something so drastic - a little bit of madness, a little bit of courage, a whole lot of sheer will, I'd say, to actually disappear so completely your loved ones stop searching for you and your very identity becomes nebulous. Knight's story - unique in that, unlike McCandless and Treadwell, he survived - has me thinking about living nebulously, what it really means to me, and how committed I might be to taking my quest for solitude and soul searching beyond a mere road trip, making it a permanent lifestyle.
The answer: not too much. Assuming that the story is true (and I have no reason to doubt it, other than sometimes hoax happens), I simply don't have what it takes to do what Knight did. That siren song - of solitude, of peace, of a life that is wholly introspective and free of the covetous trappings and broad emotional pendulum swing of modern life - is there, and resonant, but its volume always gets turned down by a pressing need for physical comfort, for a sense of stability, and somewhat by the need (in recent years anyway) for companionship and connection with other people. I am not the loner I liked to pretend I was at twenty.
And the point of the article by journalist Michael Finkel (also assuming Finkel neither put words in Knight's mouth, nor took them out) seems to be that Knight had no siren song driving him. He was a true hermit, simply wandering into the woods, neither seeking out, nor discovering along the way, any grand insight. He didn't journal about existence while he was out there, or take pictures, or sketch, or write poetry, or his manifesto, had no interest whatsoever in leaving a record of his time in the woods and didn't care if anyone learned his story. It would seem he just wanted to be left the fuck alone, and was assuming he'd die in the wilderness, and we are only talking about him now because he was caught.
But whatever deep-seeded impulse drove him into the woods and kept him there for thirty years, enduring hunger and boredom and unimaginable physical hardship in the winter, there is a line in the article that really catches my attention, something Knight said as Finkel was interviewing him, not about his time in the woods, but the civilization he has been forced back into the last year and a half: "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."
It's too loud. Too colorful. The lack of aesthetics. The crudeness. The inanities. The trivia.
About what drives me toward a nebulous life, even if only on the highway for a few months, nothing else needs to be said, really. The North Pond Hermit got it right the first time.
Without knowing, or trying, or giving a shit.
"The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit"
