There’s something really fascinating in the stories of those who have decided to take one step away from the noise of modern society and carve out a life for themselves in nature’s arms. Some seek peace, others self-discovery, and a few simply run from something. But in the case of Christopher Knight, a man who lived in the wood for 27 years, the story is not just another case relating to self-imposed isolation but about a man who defied all the odds of survival in one of the most ruthless environments and still remained a mystery to the whole world.
In 1986, 20-year-old Christopher Knight stepped into the forests of Maine and never returned. He would not see a fellow human being for three decades. Christopher Knight spent all of 27 years in solitary, living in the forests of Northern Maine on theft and his abilities to make things himself, having completely excluded himself from any real contact with the outside world. His life was shrouded in mystery, and the very thought of his survival seemed utterly impossible—and yet, he did it.
As unbelievable as this will read, it is a true-life tale of a man who, by choice, lived utterly solitary, surviving out in the woods for the near three-decade mark with his identity and existence hidden to the world in which he physically existed.
The Man Who Vanished
Christopher Knight was born and grew up in Albion, a small town within Maine. Of a conventional middle-class family, born and growing up normally, he gradually began to feel increasingly alienated from society as years went by. In his early twenties, Knight decided that he had had enough of the pressure and expectations shrouding modern life. Contrary to the majority who eventually leave for road trips to explore the world, Knight did something on the opposite spectrum: he walked away.
One night – May 4, 1986 – Christopher Knight had had enough with everything. He took to the woods of Maine in his car, parking along a dirt road, and then vanished into the woods without telling a soul where he was going. It was a silent exit, almost unbeknownst to anyone, and it would not be until years later that anyone would have even the remotest idea of where he had gone.
Knight would later be tagged as the “North Pond Hermit.” No real plan existed in his head for living in the woods. He came with little in the way of personal things or basic survival equipment – a will to do so being the least of it. What he was to discover then little did he know was that this journey would, in fact be a survival spree which was to last for almost three decades and he would come out totally isolated and completely off the grid.
Early Survival Years
For one thing, Knight didn’t know exactly how long he could hold up in the woods, having some surviving skill when he was little, but for sure not in conditions like that-to live just outside the reach of civilization. Nonetheless, Knight had been resourceful, and the determination proved greater than those thrown his way.
Deep in the woods, near North Pond-arguably the most farthest place-one broken cabin came to be his home. A small and decaying cabin that was very far from being ideal, for Knight, however a shelter it nonetheless was, it was. It is here he commenced the life of a hermit-an absolutely lonely self-sustenance surviving life.
In a short time, Knight transformed himself into an adept at survival on the dole of Mother Nature. He had never been in a position where he would hunt or fish for his survival-as for that, too, he was not good-but tried to make it a point to scrounge around for what nature could provide him with: berries, mushrooms, edible plants. He would forage for berries, mushrooms, and edible plants. He learned to set traps in order to capture small animals to eat using only the simplest traps and snares. Water was fetched from the nearby ponds and streams, and fuel was brought down from the surrounding forest. It was, however, in the art of building and adapting that Knight’s genius really lay.
In due time, he constructed several other shelters out of materials he had gathered from the woods. The most ambitious thing he ever made was a line of wonderfully hidden tents and cabins that practically were not visible to passersby. His survival was silent disobedience against the world – no need for the trappings of society: him, a phone, electricity, the internet, human contact. Decades passed, and Knight existed for the trees, animals, and wild creatures around him, becoming one among them. The years went into his isolated livelihood; instead of just surviving, he was prospering. The beautiful nature around was soothing; his legacy lay in the rhythmical life of the woods.
The Mystery of the Hermit
Christopher Knight had lived a mysterious life for 27 years.
Rumors would start amongst the townspeople of some kind of crazy hermit deep in those woods, and nobody had ever even come close to laying eyes on this mystery. Indeed, Knight spent many, many years utterly unfound by the rest of the world. Some thought he was some other crazy wanderer; others believed that he ran away from some kind of law, or maybe he just had a very sad history. But Knight’s motives for leaving society remained murky. The isolation of Knight was not only physical but also emotional. He hardly ever had contact with the outside world; when he did, it was usually a series of stealthy, well-planned raids into nearby campsites to plunder for food and other supplies.
These were sporadic, and Knight always managed not to leave traces of himself. He refused to engage humanity at any level, concluding he was better left in the relative obscurity of forest life than face the challenges associated with the present world. The seasons of solitude passed yet instead of Knight separating from the naturalistic existence of the woods, he embraced it more passionately. With time, Knight learned to speak the dialect of the land-changes in seasons, animals, and weather conditions-and his ways to sustain himself became almost instinctive. Yet his life was a series of inconveniences.
The stark cold of the Maine winters put his will to test, and the times of most lonely, most doubting, most fearing must have indeed been long and frequent. Yet he never considered returning to society. His mind was set, and it was in those woods that he felt better than the world ever made him feel. The Find: The North Pond Hermit is Discovered The mystery of the North Pond Hermit would last almost three decades, up until 2013, finally, his existence would be shown. It is actually quite a miracle that Knight was discovered-from an uncanny series of unlinked and unbelievable happenings. One night, March 4, 2013, Knight made one of his rare forays into the nearby town of Rome, Maine, stealing supplies. He had been surviving mainly on food he had stolen from the nearby campsites and cabins, but as winter dragged on, he was running low on some staples. On that night, Knight tried to break into a camp where earlier he had stolen food and got caught.
The two owners of the camp were awakened from their rest by some strange noises that came from the woods. They found a pale, unshaven man covered with dirt and grime from the woods. They were shocked but were not quite sure what to do with him, for they surely had stumbled upon something more than ordinary: a hermit-a man who had been living in these woods all by himself for many years.
The police came and took Knight away. His story spread like wildfire in the media, and soon the world knew about the man who had lived undetected, utterly alone, for almost 30 years. Knight spoke very little about his past during interviews, offering only vague responses to questions regarding why he left society. Asked why he chose to live in isolation, he explained simply: “I wanted to live alone.”
But everybody was fascinated with Knight’s tale and the consequent questions as he returned into human fold: How can he survive that long? And what could go wrong to such an extent in his life as to make him want to give it all up? But the answers do not quite appear to be in sight. About the motivation to turn hermit and about his experiences in the wild, Knight maintains silence.
As far as post-life discovery, Knight was not the kind of man to find or relish attention.
He never gave any interviews or otherwise sold his story.
Rather, he began doing the quiet work of readjusting to life outside the woods, moving into a small apartment in a town nearby.
Yet, even today, he remains more or less a mystery-a man who chose to live life on his own terms, and still had the mystery of his past alive in his closet. — Such is the saga of Christopher Knight, the man who lived alone in the woods for 27 years, one of the most engaging survival stories to come out in modern times. This human capability to attempt and survive in isolation for a great many years without too much support and communication with the outer world can be testified by developing the tenacious instinct of a man to survive accompanied with an urge or seeking trait of being alone.
More than that, it is a reflection of one man’s decision to live his life according to his own terms-in his own way-and find the meaning in the silence of the forest. An adventure into the wilderness to prove that sometimes the greatest stories are those which have gone unspoken for the longest amount of time.