How One Man Survived Alone in the Wilderness For 27 Years

I’ve been intrigued by Michael Finkel ever since I first heard about his New York Times dismissal in 2002, when he’d created a fictional character based on multiple interviews for a story about child slavery in Ivory Coast. But rather than it killing his career, the episode seem to have kickstarted it.

After his controversial dismissal, he learned that a murderer had used his name as an alias when on the run and ended up confessing to him. The investigation resulted in the book True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa (2005) which is worth a read (I find the book better than the film that was made of it later).

So when I saw that the newest longread The Guardian published today was an extract of Finkel’s latest book, I got myself a cup of coffee and read it. It is another extraordinary story, of a 20-year-old man who parked his car on a remote trail in Maine and walked away with only the most basic supplies. Christopher Knight had no plan. His chief motivation was to avoid contact with people. He became a hermit for 27 years.

Given Finkel’s controversial claim to fame following the New York Times incident, I always wondered if people would trust him enough to do unusual true stories ever again. It’s probably why he called his 2005 book, True Story. And it might well be why Christopher Knight choose Finkel to be the only one he talked to, out of more than 500 interested journalists who gathered at his arrest.

The subject matter is so unusual that the story – ironically, perhaps – reads like fiction:

Knight’s goal was to get lost. Not just lost to the rest of the world but actually lost in the woods by himself. He carried only rudimentary camping supplies, a few articles of clothing and a little food. “I had what I had,” he said, “and nothing more.”

As far as extracts go: this one of ‘The Stranger in the Woods’ had me hooked enough to go and read the book in full.