
Into the woods: how one man survived alone in the wilderness for 27 years - oska
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/15/stranger-in-the-woods-christopher-knight-hermit-maine
======
Mz
_All his life, he had been comfortable being alone. Interacting with others
was so often frustrating. Every meeting with another person seemed like a
collision._

If he were growing up today, they would likely give him some diagnosis on the
Autism Spectrum or some related diagnosis and try to give him meds and force
him to somehow fit in.

For as long as humans have existed, there have been those that don't connect
well socially. We may label them and pontificate and categorize, but this has
always been true and is not likely to change. Perhaps we should get over our
arrogant idea of _normal._

~~~
DiabloD3
I don't understand why parent is being downvoted.

As someone who was diagnosed with Aspergers, and someone that greatly dislikes
annoying, confusing, and overly excited people that rely almost entirely on
certain forms of non-verbal social cues to communicate (to the point I think
they're just as broken as I am, just in the exact opposite way; they seemingly
lack the ability to use words and logic to convey ideas, preferring emotions
and impulsivity to interact with the world and others)...

I actually understand the hermit to some extent. I do believe that he could
easily suffer from something the DSM V considers on the spectrum. It is
unfortunate that society's supports fell through for him.

~~~
Mz
I sent the article to my oldest son because it made me think of him. He
replied with: _I was sort of thinking about how, if I 'd had a different life,
I could see myself doing much the same. Maybe a bit more planned. Maybe not._

I was always okay with him being him and did not try to force him to be more
social. I helped him figure out how to interact with society on his terms.

For example, he likes going to stores with self-checkout so he doesn't have to
deal with a cashier. Self-checkout exists and many people use them for many
reasons. One of his big motivators is that dealing with people is hard, even
for just the brief interaction of paying for his purchase.

~~~
digler999
> One of his big motivators is that dealing with people is hard, even for just
> the brief interaction of paying for his purchase.

this is a fine line though. If you have some level of social anxiety, avoiding
social contact is about the worst you can do for it. It's allowing the fear to
control you. A better solution is to work your way through the social anxeity,
learning organic ways to "grease the gears" and make situations pleasant to
both parties.

I had to learn this in my late teens/early 20s. I was withdrawing more and
more, stone-faced all the time in public places such as the grocery store. I'd
park _behind_ the store just so I didn't have the hassle of interactions in
the parking lot. That's letting anxiety reign over you. Cognitive distortions
[1] can send you on a downward trajectory where avoidance is the norm and you
to go greater and more extreme lengths to mitigate the "problem". I learned
that a smile, saying "hi, how are you?" or "excuse me" seem to make most
interactions at least 50 "percent" less uncomfortable compared to unemotional
silence, which I've seen in psychology books as a sign of hostility.

Now, if you are autistic and have something inhibiting your ability to
understand social cues, then "just facing it" wont work, but even people on
the spectrum can learn to improve their situation through a skilled therapist.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion)

~~~
Mz
You are projecting your issues onto someone you know nothing about. I have
seen cashiers react as if they want to strip search him because he is trying
to pay for a pizza. Other people react incredibly negatively to him in ways
that are seriously problematic. This is a completely different situation from
what you describe. His desire to avoid it when possible is in no way neurotic
nor dysfunctional.

Additionally, letting him avoid it part of the time makes it easier for him to
cope effectively the rest of the time. You can think of it as him having a
limited people skills budget and not insisting he piss it away unnecessarily
just because other people with a bigger budget don't find it to be a hardship
to pay such things. For him, it amounts to being nickeled and dimed to death.

~~~
sanswork
>I have seen cashiers react as if they want to strip search him because he is
trying to pay for a pizza.

I'm having trouble picturing what this kind of reaction would look like. Can
you explain what the cashiers did that make you think this way?

~~~
Mz
Can you explain why you seem to be reading everything I say in the worst
possible light? It comes across like you are intentionally trying to bust my
chops, not understand my point.

~~~
sanswork
I don't think I'm reading this negatively. I'm genuinely curious as to what
sort of reaction would make you think they wanted to strip search your son.
The only image that comes to my mind when I think of someone wanting to strip
search someone involves a cop, a latex glove snapping on the wrist and a
menacing look and that seems so the opposite of every experience in a pizza
place I've ever had.

~~~
archenemy
Visible signs of anxiety might make the clerk think he was shoplifting. It has
happened to me.

~~~
ensignavenger
That makes sense, thanks for the insight. But I don't think there are too many
store clerks that want to strip-search shoplifters...

------
scandox
I'm amazed at the way people are looking at this. I think we're very jaded
when we lose our capacity to see just how remarkable homelessness is. Being
homeless and living homeless is something amazing. Just because it is common,
doesn't make it any less so. Just because it is common doesn't mean that we
understand it.

The only thing that makes this more or less interesting than some tale of
independence and "acceptable" survivalism is the contempt of the beholder.

One of my absolute favourite books as a child was The Autobiography of a
Super-Tramp by WH Davies. Perhaps it has coloured my vision, but I think we
owe at least a grudging respect to people who can survive in the modern world
(by any reasonable means) as such outcasts.

~~~
charles-salvia
I don't understand why this guy is particularly more interesting or amazing
than the countless other homeless people who have survived in our inner-cities
for decades. The only thing that makes this guy different is the superficial
aspects : the setting is more rustic, there's no drugs or begging involved, he
lives in a forest instead of in an abandoned subway line, etc.

In some ways, this guy actually had a much _easier_ time surviving than many
of the inner-city homeless. He essentially had access to a low-security, well-
stocked resort town in rural Maine - entirely to himself with no other
criminal competition and a very small police force to worry about. He didn't
have to worry about getting killed by other desperate homeless people or by
police, or having to constantly search for a different place to sleep every
night.

Also, he wasn't even _forced_ into homelessness. He just made a willful
decision to live this kind of parasitic lifestyle. Perhaps he was mentally ill
in some way, but regardless, I can't be particularly sympathetic without
further information about his motivations.

------
qume
No one here interested in the concept of not having direct human interaction
for 27 years? Regardless of how he achieved it?

There is much to learn from this case. I suspect only a few handfulls of
humans in history have completed that epic journey.

I personally know poeple who have solo nonstop sailed around the world,
speaking on the radio every day, and even that has a huge impact and is less
than a year.

Perhaps we can put aside the moral aspects with how he achieved it and focus
on the rest of this astonishing edge case?

~~~
paganel
> No one here interested in the concept of not having direct human interaction
> for 27 years? Regardless of how he achieved it?

I guess we could also ask Thomas Silverstein. From his wiki page
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Silverstein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Silverstein)):

> He has been in solitary confinement since 1983, when he killed prison guard
> Merle Clutts at the Marion Penitentiary in Illinois.

I'm betting there are other people in US prisons who have been in solitary
confinement for 10+ years.

~~~
3131s
A few people have been in solitary for more than 40 years.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/us/herman-wallace-
held-41-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/us/herman-wallace-
held-41-years-in-solitary-dies-at-71.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/us/for-45-years-in-
prison...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/us/for-45-years-in-prison-
louisiana-man-kept-calm-and-held-fast-to-hope.html?_r=0)

~~~
distances
That's simply sickening.

------
ianaphysicist
For those who wish to hear this sort of story from the author's own voice,
Finkel was recently interviewed on Maine Public Radio:
[http://mainepublic.org/post/north-pond-
hermit](http://mainepublic.org/post/north-pond-hermit)

------
oska
Previously:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993)

~~~
framebit
Fascinating how two different HN Post titles for the same article have
produced _vastly_ different reactions.

~~~
4ndr3vv
They're not the same article - just the same subject matter

------
Zikes
For anyone that wants to see the real deal, watch Alone in the Wilderness by
Dick Proenneke:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M23j1U0esvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M23j1U0esvc)

------
charles-salvia
This story... doesn't really strike me as that worthy of contemplating for too
long. Really, how is this guy really particularly different from someone who
is basically just homeless? I mean, instead of living on the outskirts of
summer resort towns in Maine, he could be homeless living on the outskirts of
Bayonne, New Jersey, sifting through trash or breaking into 7-11s at night.
The whole "into the woods" thing is sort of almost beside the point here. The
guy didn't actually live as some sort of pre-Columbian hunter-gatherer. He was
just basically a homeless guy who robbed houses. I'm not sure why anyone
thinks we can learn something from him... other than, perhaps, how to break
into houses.

~~~
aaron695
Never read "My Side of the Mountain" as a kid??

He steals in that too.

This guy is not homeless. He had a home.

I've read similar stories of people setting up semi-permanent homes in hidden
urban spaces.

It's the hacking aspect that makes it interesting. Living within a community
off the books. If his stealing hurt people, then his bad, but I kinda feel
like it didn't. The urban legend itself had a value to the community.

There have been billions of 'pre-Columbian hunter-gatherers', this is
different.

~~~
cmdrfred
All theft hurts someone. People have this conception that home/store owners
are millionaires. That is more often than not incorrect. The margins on
products sold can be as low as 1 - 3%. Thus you have to sell 34 to recoup the
cost of a single stolen item. The business owner would likely increase prices
in order to respond to the theft, thus hurting the community as a whole. Now
imagine you are a single mother attempting to feed your child, are you happy
to pay higher prices so this guy can live " off the grid"?

In more primitive society this person would have simply been killed for this
transgression of the social contract. This isn't a hack, its sociopathy.

------
santaclaus
So what happens with the IRS if you disappear into the Alaskan wilderness for
20 years (or get hooked on meth and become homeless or whatever) and
subsequently want to reintegrate into society? Do you get tossed in the
slammer for failure to file?

~~~
LaneRendell
You aren't required to file if you make less than 3000 dollars of income a
year.

~~~
LaneRendell
Actually it's a bit more than that, my bad:
[https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch01.html](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch01.html)

~~~
mysterypie
Since you found the answer, why didn't you mention it? It's nice that you gave
a citation, but that's a 100-page document that you linked to.

The answer is that if you are single and under 65, then you don't have to file
a U.S. tax return if your gross income is less than $10,350.

(As usual with the IRS, nothing is simple. There are reasons you might be
compelled to file anyway and possible benefits to file even if you were under
the threshold. But you can still give the short answer of $10,350, and a link
for the long answer.)

~~~
flomo
As a practical matter, the IRS has bigger fish to fry. There's so many lower-
income people who don't pay income tax, and a few get made an example of, but
most fly under the radar indefinitely.

------
Daneel_
After 27 years, you'd hope he might have built his own accommodation or other
useful tools in the style of Primitive Technology
([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA)).

Interesting read, but I don't think there's much to take from it.

------
dpandey
not much of a "wilderness"

------
fishsaysno
I've first heard about this guy on Sword and Scale. Peanut butter. He loved
peanut butter.

[http://swordandscale.com/sword-and-scale-
episode-77/](http://swordandscale.com/sword-and-scale-episode-77/)

------
jack9
This is a repeat. It hasn't even been 3 months before it comes up again?

------
ythn
From a different article about the same dude:

"He’d not been sick in the woods, and his worst accident was a tumble on some
ice, but his teeth were rotten, and no wonder. I dug through his twenty-five
years of trash, buried between boulders, and kept inventory: a five-pound tub
that once held Marshmallow Fluff, an empty box of Devil Dogs, peanut butter,
Cheetos, honey, graham crackers, Cool Whip, tuna fish, coffee, Tater Tots,
pudding, soda, El Monterey spicy jalapeño chimichangas, and on and on and
on."[1]

[http://www.gq.com/story/the-last-true-hermit](http://www.gq.com/story/the-
last-true-hermit)

------
rongway
the title is misleading- it implies that he was outdoors as a rugged
survivalist not however breaking indoors, and being the next moment
outdoors....

~~~
Nugem_
Agreed. Not just a thief stealing from people for 27 years.

~~~
hossbeast
Not only misleading, but mildly offensive. He did not survive alone. Quite the
opposite.

------
digler999
just to save everyone the suspense: he "survived" so long by stealing
resources earned by _other people_ who worked for them. Apparently the so-
called "hermit" didn't mind people _that much_.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
Well, he robbed vacation homes, so I don't know that owners were really put
out as much as all that. What strikes me as funny is that he went to such
lengths to rob them, it seems like gardening, hunting and fishing would have
been easier. But I suppose it's possible it was the thrill of getting away
with it that motivated him.

~~~
sbuttgereit
Robbery is robbery; the immorality of which has no dependency on how "put out"
his victims were... as though it were for you or me to even make such a
determination. He was a thief that stole stuff from people: nuff said. I hope
at some point his victims got justice.

~~~
totalZero
Robbery is not robbery.

Burglary is not armed robbery. They are different in the eyes of the law, and
justly so.

Theft of a candy bar carries a different penalty from theft of an automobile,
and justly so.

A thief is a thief, and a criminal is a criminal, but not all crimes are
identical. There is a difference between the rigidity of ethics, and the
flexible punishment-must-fit-the-crime nature of justice.

~~~
sbuttgereit
Of course, you are correct in your statements, but contextual application in
this discussion would appear to be in error on at least one point.

You are correct in that I used an term incorrectly: I shouldn't have said
robbery, I should have simply said "theft". Robbery indicates force: there was
no indication of direct force/intimidation that I saw. Point conceded.

Where I think your criticism is incorrect. Your examples differentiate based
on the what the criminal was trying to get away with. Trying to steal a candy
bar is different that trying to steal an automobile: the resources involved in
obtaining a candy bar legitimately are much smaller than the resources
dedicated to obtaining a car. You rightfully call out that distinction, they
are different (as individual acts) and I would not disagree that they should
be different in what answer justice should demand of the criminal. Where you
go astray is that the context of my criticism of was that the original
commentator was differentiating the severity of the crime not on the value of
the property stolen, but on some perception of the of the victim's "need". So,
it's not the difference of the value of the good taken, but a judgment on how
important that should have been to the victim. This is a very important
distinction and changes the validity of the ethical judgement. I assert that,
whereas the value of the stolen item is correctly a part of the determining
the severity of the transgression, the "need" of the victim is not a proper
factor in determining the severity of the crime. (And yes, this is a
generalization. If I steal a hospital respirator from a medical supply company
showroom floor, it is different than if I steal it while it's in use by a
patient... though even then the theft aspect should likely be seen as the same
and there are just other, different ethical/legal crimes in addition to
theft.)

~~~
totalZero
I see where you're coming from, but to be succinct:

If your argument were correct, then duress would never serve as an acceptable
defense.

I'm not saying that Chris was under duress (his situation was due to his own
choices, not forced upon him), but the fact is, some accused criminals are
able to defend their crimes by saying "my actions were necessary to avoid a
serious, immediate danger in a situation that was forced upon me." That is a
form of need and it is a legally workable defense, at least in the USA and UK.

------
mrunseen
Fake story

