If you are a particular type of person living in a city, you almost certainly have at least two or three friends who have recently shared the ongoing saga of the Maine Hermit, who was arrested last year and was recently featured in a rather gushing (five-page!) GQ profile. Please do not be impressed by his story; there is no need. There are other heroes more worthy of your distant adulation.
No one who lives in the country is impressed with the Maine Hermit; no one with an up-to-date hunting license or who owns a rifle or who has slept more than one night out-of-doors in the last six months finds Christopher Knight’s story captivating. His acolytes are largely young urban people who spend most of their days sitting in front of a computer with a picture of their last trip to Yosemite as the background on their smartphone, who enjoyed Hatchet in elementary school and like to think of themselves as the sort of person who would survive a zombie apocalypse, which is a fictional problem.
Thirty years in the woods! That’s a long time. I remember how that kid from My Side of the Mountain learned to build a fire and construct a lean-to that connected to an old oak tree, and teach a hawk to hunt for him, so this guy must have been pretty resourceful –
With an expert twist of a screwdriver, he popped open a door of the dining hall and slipped inside, scanning the pantry shelves with his penlight.
Candy! Always good. Ten rolls of Smarties, stuffed in a pocket. Then, into his backpack, a bag of marshmallows, two tubs of ground coffee, some Humpty Dumpty potato chips. Burgers and bacon were in the locked freezer. On a previous raid at Pine Tree, he’d stolen a key to the walk-in, and now he used it to open the stainless-steel door.
Oh.
Knight stated that over all those years he slept only in a tent. He never lit a fire, for fear that smoke would give his camp away. He moved strictly at night.
Oh.
He confessed that he’d committed approximately forty robberies a year while in the woods—a total of more than a thousand break-ins. But never when anyone was home. He said he stole only food and kitchenware and propane tanks and reading material and a few other items. Knight admitted that everything he possessed in the world, he’d stolen, including the clothes he was wearing, right down to his underwear.
Oh, right-ho.
That works out, by the way, to about 1200 robberies, give or take, of “food and kitchenware and propane tanks and reading material and a few other items” and also “everything he possessed in the world.”
It’s fine to like camping and to not like people. It’s fine to withdraw from society, if that is your particular bag. There is nothing in the world wrong with being socially awkward and feeling ill at ease around other human beings, of being afraid of coming into contact with someone else, of finding eye contact uncomfortable.
Should you desire to spend the majority of your life in the woods, you are free to do so; there is no limit to how often an American may go camping. You can work a summer job and save up enough cash to buy a polar sleeping bag, a few MREs and various basic supplies, and go forth (ugh, you probably have to get permits, though) to live off the fat of the land, and to cultivate a life of solitude and silence.
It is slightly less understandable, and altogether less admirable, to steal candy from children:
At a homeowners’ meeting in 2002, the hundred people present were asked who had suffered break-ins. Seventy-five raised their hands. Campfire hermit stories were swapped. One kid recalled that when he was 10 years old, all his Halloween candy was stolen. That kid is now 34.
Man, if you take only one thing away from this story, it is this: If you must live in the woods in complete solitude, and you absolutely refuse to learn to hunt or fish or build your own shelter, and you have to steal from your neighbors in order to eat, and you’re really in the mood for some candy, please steal just a few pieces of candy from multiple kids, so you don’t completely ruin any one particular child’s Halloween. Don’t make this year “the year the man who lives in the woods took all my treats.” That’s so cruel!
(By the way, it is super messed up to bury empty propane tanks willy-nilly. Please properly dispose of empty propane tanks.)
Knight was ordered to spend about seven months in prison, which is an unbelievably light sentence, all things considered.
The generosity of that prison term in the face of decades of theft must be contrasted with the shooting death of Michael Brown, whose murder by police was later justified because he had previously stolen a box of cigars. Just the once; not on and off for thirty years.
The fact that Knight was never shot by nervous homeowners, that he was arrested safely and without violence, that he will spend less time in jail than he spent stealing other people’s propane tanks, is enormously lucky; it is hard to imagine a man who was not white doing the same thing for thirty years and getting off quite so easily. But perhaps that is neither here nor there!
Nothing seemed to stop him. Or her. Or them. No one knew. A few desperate residents even left notes on their doors: “Please don’t break in. Tell me what you need and I’ll leave it out for you.” There was never a reply.
How sad, that the people in his community were still so willing to help him even after he had entered their homes and stolen from them, and that he was not willing to take them up on their generous offer. Society was ready to give him what he was already taking without asking. Frankly, I want to hear more about the resourceful, ingenious homeowners who banded together to non-violently solve a problem in their neighborhood.
So: what do we have, exactly? An unfriendly man spent twenty-seven-and-a-bit years living in some very cold woods.
“To put it romantically: I was completely free.” (And the article does put it romantically; if you have seen this scene from Seinfeld you have read this article.)
Almost completely free! Except for the part where you literally depended upon the labor and possessions of others to meet your every physical need. It says, you know, kind of a lot about the life you have chosen that “constant stealing” and “independence” are not mutually exclusive.
Hopefully, the man at the center of the myth can avail himself of the help that has already been offered him; hopefully he will not spend another winter walking up and down the length of his tent to keep his feet from freezing off. I do not think Christopher Knight ought to spend the rest of his life in prison or be turned into a local pariah.
But the mythos. The fanboys! The adoring fanboys whose dream it is to live in their own filth in the wood, Nobly Living Alone And Also Eating As Much Fluff As I Want, and Never Having To Talk To Anyone About Awards Ceremonies, And Literally Stealing From Children, the Chris McCandless boys who want nothing more than to live out the last five minutes of Shane on a daily basis, who mistake male-induced anti-social behavior and chronic theft for true independence; what my friend Chris called “the romantic transcendence of listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd for hours while slowly dying from an all-marshmallow diet” — all that must GO.
It is very silly that we live in a country where the conversation about people who rely on government assistance runs generally along the lines of “DON’T TAKE HANDOUTS,” while white men who steal from their neighbors are touted as tragic symbols of noble self-reliance! You can spend as much time in the forest as you like; this is America and no one will stop you. Put aside your needless, trumped-up sense of social persecution (“I MUST ESCAPE FROM HUMANITY, but can I have your magazines?”).
At the very least, whittle something to leave on the doorstep of the people you steal from most often so they have a whimsical gift from the forest in exchange for a brand-new canoe and a brace of fresh steaks.
The mythos must go. Let us puncture it now and watch it deflate.
For your analysis:
“I don’t know your world,” he said. “Only my world, and memories of the world before I went into the woods. What life is today? What is proper? I have to figure out how to live.” He wished he could return to his camp—”I miss the woods”—but he knew by the rules of his release that this was impossible. “Sitting here in jail, I don’t like what I see in the society I’m about to enter. 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.”
What kind of colorful, non-aesthetic crudeness do you mean, Maine Hermit?
“I gorged myself on sugar and alcohol,” he said. “It’s the quickest way to gain weight, and I liked the inebriation.” The bottles he stole were signs of a man who’d never once, as he admitted, ordered a drink at a bar: Allen’s Coffee Flavored Brandy, Seagram’s Escapes Strawberry Daiquiri, something called Whipped Chocolate Valley Vines (from the label: “fine chocolate, whipped cream & red wine”).
We covered hundreds of topics while chatting in jail, and nothing received higher praise than Lynyrd Skynyrd. “They will be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd songs in a thousand years,” he proclaimed.
I unearthed a stack of National Geographics with the dates still legible: 1991 and 1992. I also saw People, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Vanity Fair. There was even a collection of Playboys.
He also stole the occasional handheld video game—Pokémon, Tetris, Dig Dug—but the majority of his free time was spent reading or observing the forest. “Don’t mistake me for some bird-watching PBS type,” he warned.
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.
“I went to the woods to live simply. To escape from the hubbub and noise of modern life. To listen to Skynyrd while eating only Fritos and reading the occasional Vanity Fair. Eating Tater Tots and playing some kid’s Pokémon. Are you going to finish that chimichanga.”
It is incredibly telling that GQ‘s “artist’s impression” of the Maine Hermit looks like this:
(Artist Tim O’Brien)
This could easily be a concept sketch of Radagast the Brown from the Lord of the Rings. See the ruggled, grizzled face ennobled by solitude and hardship graced with a manly beard; the sleek, modern-looking backpack with…a handful of twigs strapped to it, for some reason; the long, determined, manly stride; the literal fucking birds swarming about him like he’s goddamn St. Francis of fucking Assisi. This is White Male Solitude at its most cartoonish; this is a drawing of the song “Desperado.”
Whereas the actual Maine Hermit looks like this:
[Image via]
Tags: crimes, faux pioneerism, gq, he didn’t even learn to hunt or whittle, heroes, jesus christ come on, male-induced ridiculousness, misplaced hero worship, the maine hermit, theft
Who the hell is going around vaunting this man as a hero of the woods?!?!?! Am I missing something because I don’t live in a city? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, I AM SO CONFUSED.
a lot of dudes i know who have SOFT HANDS and DIFFICULT SHOWING UP TO THINGS ON TIME who somehow STILL BELIEVE THEY COULD LIVE IN THE WOODS IF THEY HAD TO
Please never stop Mallory. Never stop all of it.
To be fair I believe that too and I last spent a night in a tent sixteen years ago and I didn’t like it much.
To be fair, if you go live alone in the woods you don’t really have to ever worry about showing up ANYWHERE on time. Except at a child’s house at the perfect moment to steal all their Halloween candy.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993
OH MY GOD
BURN IT DOWN
OK, this exchange is gold, though:
– yitchelle: “For Chris Knight, the environment that he can use for self-sufficiency includes the surrounding human population and their food.
– hyperpape: And my self-sufficient environment involves grocery stores, mechanics, Amazon, and a job…”
Hyperpape speaks the truth.
the people who romanticize this guy are the dudes who steal On The Road and Les Fleurs du Mal from independent bookstores, aren’t they
ughugughuguugughugugughugh I hate them all
And the ones who TOTALLY MISS THE POINT of Into The Wild.
They are the real-life embodiments of Jess from Gilmore Girls.
The harshest burn.
Fellow Jess haters! My people!
Yes! And, they are the dudes who were your college democrats co-chair who never fucking did anything and was all “why do we have to have an agenda for the meeting? isn’t that a little rigid?” (just me? that was probably just me)
I just had a flashback to watching the Anarchist club at my school complain about how they shouldn’t have to sign up for the org fair, man. They could just show up and I guess steal someone else’s tent so they didn’t destroy their ethos.
Our Anarchist club was four guys who did a lot of shroom and not much else, obviously.
Is anarchist club an oxymoron?
Not necessarily, though “anarchist leader” might be. My parents went to the University of Regina in the seventies, and in one student election, the Anarchist Party ran a frozen turkey as their candidate for president of the student council. And it won. All student government for that year was conducted by general meetings and all decisions passed by simple majority vote. At the end of the year, the Anarchists cooked and ate their president.
*finishes article, heaves satisfied sigh*
Motherfucking seconded. Oh. It tastes so good.
My hero of the woods growing up was Anne LaBastille. I read Woodswoman approximately, oh, infinity times when I was in elementary school. Then I moved to the Adirondacks and found out she could be kind of a self-important jerk.
My point being, I’d much rather find out my childhood hero was a flawed, regular human who could sometimes be unpleasant than to find out she was a criminal who stole candy from children.
“It is slightly less understandable, and altogether less admirable, to steal candy from children:”
to quote a great woman, you have never been more wrong in your whole life. The ONLY THING holding me back from admiration of these backwoods types is the knowledge that they bludgeon squirrels to death or whatever. strangle hedgehogs before breakfast, and for breakfast, frighten badgers to death, every day of the week and twice on Sundays. now you are telling me you can be a legendary hermit AND not murder cute animals with your hands AND eat candy? my god.
i have never loved someone i disagree with oftener more
This article is a valuable weapon, to be deployed on Facebook, in the never-ending War On Stupid Bullshit In My Facebook Timeline.
I may be bedridden but my anticipatory delight at the idea of purging pending comments from men jacking off to the idea of the Maine Hermit soars above me like a beautiful bald eagle.
Please bless us with a Deleted Comments Extravaganza as a Thursday treat tomorrow?
We’ll offer up a five-pound tub of Fluff to placate the male commenting masses.
They don’t want your crass handouts, when they want Fluff they will take it
You don’t need it anyway, this society is so wasteful, you wouldn’t understand
I kind of wanted to write absurdly self-righteous and defensive Clueless Dude Comments just to make you happy, Nicole. But then I realized that you probably have plenty as it is…
If Jennifer Lawrence didn’t want her candy stolen, she shouldn’t have had candy in her cupboards in the first place.
Am I doing it right?
I want the artist’s depiction of this.
SIGHS HAPPILY
somehow I got hung up on “Whipped Chocolate Valley Vines” because what
JARRING. Who would drink that? Or, produce that?
I feel that even if you’re a hermit stealing things to drink in the woods you’d have higher standards.
However, the fact that he stole it raises the question that someone bought it first.
I had to read that three times to figure out that they weren’t talking about drinking chocolate milk through a Red Vine.
I would drink that. Probably.
With vodka.
“We’re a Twizzlers family.”
Burned Apple Meadow Rose
Pulverized Sprinkles Mountain Hibiscus
Dehydrated Marshmallow A Tree Grows In Brooklyn
My mum got a mini of it once. It might as well be Yoohoo and vodka.
Chocolate Qream?
BRING QREAM BACK!! I was reading through the old Hairpin Qream archives and man do I miss those posts.
This whole piece was amazing, but I did have to start chewing a piece of gum halfway through, because the description of that diet was just making my stomach hurt.
Sadly, this particular “beverage” object is a thing I have seen in an actual grocery store. It probably horrifies me more than all the tubs of marshmallow fluff put together.
My friend Kris bought some chocolate wine once because it was on sale. (I mention his name only because this article gave me the impression that everyone in the world is named Chris, and I wanted to keep that going.) It tastes pretty much like Bailey’s. I’m not sure how chocolate + wine manages to taste the same as whiskey + cream, but we all agreed it did.
Let us instead sing the praises of that guy in Chicago who built a snug two-bedroom apartment in the struts beneath a heavily trafficked drawbridge.
Points in favor:
-Stole nothing but municipal electricity…
-…which he used to power a TV and a Playstation.
-Regularly entertained friends.
-This was a working drawbridge, so his apartment was often tilted eighty degrees off the horizontal.
Basically a silent film hero come to life. If you’re going to live off society’s margins, there are ways to do it with style.
That is awesome.
I don’t even care if that dude likes Lynyrd Skynyrd, he’s still great.
I am INCREDIBLY disappointed that there weren’t any photos in that article.
Unfortunately, the actual place he built looks pretty filthy and horrible: http://archidose.blogspot.com.au/2004/12/file-und…
D:
That’s at least WHIMSICAL, for pete’s sake.
I am always impressed by what the urbane find fanciful and will truly believe about rural life, like the greatness of “hermits” and the past-time of cow-tipping.
Side note, but does anyone watch Finding Bigfoot or similar? So many of those witnesses are like, “I was camping and I saw a shadow and my cooler was ransacked!” or “I was hiking and I heard a rustle and then I found the bed of pine needles!” THOSE ARE WOODS HERMITS STEALING YOUR FOOD YOU IDIOT. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.
I grew up in rural Wisconsin and came to college in Chicago, and was AMAZED how many people wanted to know about cow-tipping. Other students never failed to assume I was some kind of expert and never failed to be disappointed when I told them that a) I had never tried it, b) I didn’t know anyone who had, and c) my 170 lbs to a 1200 lb cow would be hardly more than an annoyance.
I still don’t really understand why so many people want to push over a cow? What did cows ever do to you?
I should be more ashamed to admit this, but I lived in WV for almost a decade and was positive that cow tipping was real, if only in the sense that a lot of drunk teenagers had tried to do it once and didn’t succeed because when you try to push a cow over it will charge you.
I mean, they also have torn the goalposts off the football field SEVERAL times and paraded around town with them, so compared to that moving a large bovine is nothing, no? The power of drunk people is beyond understanding: http://rockchalkblog.com/2013/11/16/ku-fans-tear-…
Wow, perhaps drunk people in WV are more intrepid than the drunk people I know in WI! I’m sure if I tried hard enough, I could find someone who had tried (or claim they tried) to tip a cow as a teenager, but it definitely wasn’t a thing. The true hobby of drunk teenagers in my hometown is drunkenly running through cornfields to escape police.
Rural Illinois here. (SHUT UP WE DRIVE FINE). I definitely chased cows and horses around fields for no reason, shot potato cannons over cornfields, drove waaaay to fast because it was literally the ONLY available entertainment–but I don’t think anyone who grew up within 20 miles of a farm would ever try to actually tip a cow. First of all, that’s someone’s livelihood, you dick, and you could really hurt the animal. Second, have you ever tried to get a cow to move, using its own two feet? It is a non-easy thing. They are well built and they are stubborn and their poop smells like milky, milky death.
> Second, have you ever tried to get a cow to move, using its own two feet?
> It is a non-easy thing.
Well, I think I see your problem right there.
I always assumed cow-tipping was something you tell your urban cousins you totally do, like, all the time, and they can have the first go tonight! No really, man, we’ll hang out by the fence so you can get a good run up. No, that’s not my camera, why would I have a camera here to do something we really truly do every weekend?
I wish I could upvote this twice for “THOSE ARE WOODS HERMITS STEALING YOUR FOOD YOU IDIOT. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.”
Tragically, my first exposure to the concept of cow-tipping was when I was a child and too young to know any better, and I promptly disillusioned my city-bred friends. I still feel kind of bad about it (both for them and for myself).
Ugh, plus he sports “carefully maintained . . . facial hair” the entire time he’s in the woods. The LEAST he could’ve done would be to grow an impressive beard where he could hoard his stolen candy a la The Twits: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8GzYhZ2vfp4/TyUN1poXUgI…
Any life where I don’t get to talk about award shows with other people is a life I do not want to live. Awards Show Twitter is the best Twitter (other than Toastie Twitter, of course).
That said, thank you for this very excellent article, Mallory.
I would like to know what Chris Kimball has to say about all this.
Oh, ME TOO.
ohpleaseohpleaseohplease!!
Perfect perfection is perfect. How disturbing is it that he only got seven months. Ugh ugh ugh.
I understand, though the part that does get to me is that having to serve a jail term is an *awful*, possibly cruel, way to abruptly reintegrate into society when you’ve kept in solitude for 27 years. Especially if you’re on the autism spectrum. Yes, he committed a shit-ton of crimes and there should be repercussions, but maybe house arrest with his mother (as I think was the arrangement, on his parole) will serve as well.
I think what’s upsetting isn’t that someone noticed how horrible jail is (jail is horrible) but that this one dude, who happens to be white and happens to have DEFINITELY DONE what he’s accused of, which is stealing for years and years and years, gets that kind of consideration when literally hundreds of thousands of black and brown people are thrown in jail for very minor crimes or nothing, with no empathy or understanding for their situations.
A+ point.
Part of the problem may be that so many think the ‘fair’ solution is for more people to be going to jail for longer, rather than the reverse
Yeah, I have no problem with the dude being re-integrated into society with care for whatever issues he has rather than being thrown in the clink. But I think it’s also more than fair to acknowledge that he’s getting this treatment ONLY because of his gender and race.
Yeah that’s fair it’s just after watching friends get charge-stacked into oblivion over minor offenses and years of local judges crowing about trying twelve-year-olds as adults my basic reaction to anyone getting a light sentence for once is good, GREAT
I offer you my throat, Mallory Ortberg. Let me serve you.
“The lack of aesthetics.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I almost passed out.
THE MAN ROTTED THE TEETH OUT OF HIS OWN HEAD BECAUSE HE LIVED ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY ON CHIMICHANGAS AND RED VINES, HE’S NOT EXACTLY HANNIBAL LECTER PAINTING THE DUOMO
Oscar the Grouch cosplay is a legitimate lifestyle/artistic philosophy you philistine
“Nothing seemed to stop him. Or her. Or them. No one knew. A few desperate residents even left notes on their doors: ‘Please don’t break in. Tell me what you need and I’ll leave it out for you.’ There was never a reply.”
This is definitely the part that annoyed me the most. People are WILLING TO GIVE YOU FREE STUFF and you still destroy their peace of mind by constantly breaking into their houses. Christopher Knight: Hermit Dirtbag
SERIOUSLY.
I am reminded of my roommate who “didn’t believe in possessions,” but sure did like to play my stereo when I wasn’t home.
There’s one man, David Proulx, who believes that Knight broke into his cabin fifty times. Over 27 years, that averages out to almost twice a year. Can you imagine how anxious and furious you’d be, not to mention the cost?
And do you report these burglaries? Does insurance get involved? I cannot imagine having to deal with an insurer after my home has been broken into fifty times. It was awful when my car was broken into just the once.
Well, you know, basic morality and the kindness of others are as nothing in the face of My Beautiful Need to Live Alone and Feel Superior to People.
This is basically the Dirtbag Motto, right?
Of course there was never a reply, those people were Too Trivial to communicate with and Beardo McCandyman was Too Independent to take anything that was offered willingly. Besides, what’s the fun of stealing if your targets just flat-out give you stuff, where’s the challenge in that?
+infinity to “Beardo McCandyman” holy shit
‘this is a drawing of the song “Desperado.”’
Oh God, Mallory Ortberg, you are The Best.
I’m just saying I live in a city and do not envy this man in the least, because why on earth would you sleep on the ground if you could otherwise help it?
He didn’t. He stole a bed.
I would’ve thought it would be too MODERN and CRUDE for him.
I think technically it was a cot… but yeah, point stands. He wasn’t sleeping on the ground.
Ok point taken but if you’re already eating candy and have a mattress what the fuck is the point of the woods?
The point of the woods is that you don’t have to pay for anything ever again. Score!
I think the article mentioned a boxspring, which I would argue makes it a full-fledged bed. The bed frame was stolen from a summer camp, though.
Exactly. See also: my feelings about camping as a vacation. “Oh, as a SPECIAL TREAT during your precious time off work, let us all leave our beds and running water and electricity BEHIND to go sleep on the grubby FLOOR and feign an understanding of the majesty of nature. WHAT LARKS!” No, no thank you.
Oh bless you. BLESS YOU. My people.
A grubby, poky cold damp floor coated in bugs.
My friends are pretty evenly split between pro-camping and anti-camping (I can barely even fall asleep on a COUCH, so I am firmly anti-camping), but…why can’t you enjoy the splendor of nature and then go into a building and take a shower and sleep in a bed and then go outside and appreciate nature again? Why pretend refrigerators aren’t the best?
Yes! Refrigerators and also: REAL TOILETS. Real toilets are why fully-furnished cottages/cabins >>>>>>>>>> a tent 10 minutes from an outhouse.
I am in support of all of these sentiments and those expressed in reply. Nature is lovely and it lives somewhere other than where I live and that is an ideal arrangement.
As a kid my family would spend up to eight weeks a year living under canvas and I can assure you all that “EN SUITE BATHROOM ” is the most beautiful phrase in the English language .
This is the only piece I’ve read about the Maine Hermit and the only piece I WANT to read about him.
(Just. WHAAAT?)
The GQ profile is pretty fascinating and detailed — you can take or leave what may be the author’s bias. I didn’t find it too overwhelming, myself.
“I don’t think I’m going to fit in.”
I’LL JUST KEEP EATING SMARTIES LIKE THEY DID IN THE 1750.
It is well known that the Pilgrims came to and conquered this land armed only with their wits, their resourcefulness, and a five-gallon jar of marshmallow fluff.
Ah yes, all schoolchildren remember the tenacity of Priscilla M&Mullins and Miles Marshmallowdish
I just wanted to say the above statement is now my Skype mood message.
And playing Poké-fucking-mon games. Also stolen from children.
also how dare you compare this gentleman to Chris McCandless and his worshippers, if any of those idiots had had the brains to pour piss out of a boot they’d have brought with them a duffel bag full of stolen kit kats and loped back to civilization when they ran out with no one the wiser, with no casualties or fatalities except for tooth decay.
*Stormy applause*
straight up Peter Pan bullshit. His campsite probably looked like the aftermath of that weird food fight in Hook.
(I aplogize for even referencing Hook in regards to this dirtbag but I have always wondered what that brightly colored..stuff? was that they threw at one another. I bet this guy knows. I bet it’s his lifeblood.)
I love this but I am conflicted because I feel like a MAJOR part of that article about the hermit centered on the fact that the man is mentally ill. When I read the original article I thought MY GOD this is what happens when mental illness compounds in you leaving society but you have no true survival skills. It puts the “the romantic transcendence of listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd for hours while slowly dying from an all-marshmallow diet” into a little more perspective.
I do not even feel comfortable stating the dude IS mentally ill, honestly, in the absence of a formal diagnosis (there is such a wide panorama of general-weirdness which is not clinical, he was told he MIGHT have some Asperger’s-like variant), and it is even more annoying if people are fetishizing untreated mental illness manifesting as criminal behaviour.
I’ve been following the story locally since it broke, and the local authorities are comfortable saying he’s mentally ill. For example:
In September, McKee and Maloney said Knight had an alcohol problem and will receive counseling, but Maloney said Friday that his mental health issues were the reason he was admitted into the court. She wouldn’t discuss his mental health in detail.
It doesn’t excuse the crimes and the unease-to-outright-terrorizing effect repeated break-ins have on a community, but it does frame the question of “What the hell is this guy doing in the woods?” It seems that he went into the woods because it seemed a better alternative than facing other humans day after day, for whatever private reasons Knight had. But I think we can all agree that you don’t retreat to the wet, cold, miserable Maine woods for three decades for happy reasons.
And of course, I agree entirely with Mallory that this retreat, and especially the gentle treatment (and even valorizing by fools) upon his arrest and trial, is a luxury afforded to white men and not to others.
Is he mentally ill or was is he just on the autism spectrum, like the author suggested? I can’t say authoritatively, but those who have such severe mental illness that may excuse their actions, usually can’t plan and coordinate the way he did to steal and hoard year after year without ever getting caught or miscalculating so as to starve to death.
I suppose so? I saw a brief mention of a possible Asperger’s diagnosis, but beyond that it seemed to paint the picture of a man who’s odd, certainly, and not particularly happy (or friendly to reporters), but perfectly aware of his situation and competent to stand trial. His conversation was certainly sane enough, if that’s the phrase I want. He seemed perfectly aware that he was stealing, and that stealing was wrong, and that his stealing was completely unnecessary. If psychiatric help is something that will assist with that, I certainly hope he gets it.
I think what is frustrating about his situation is that everyone from the judge on down wants to empathize with him — he was given an enormously reduced sentence because longer than that would be “cruel”; the people he stole from tried to buy him supplies; the reporter woos him with a list of his favorite white male authors. Everyone’s looking out for him, everyone’s identifying with him. His neighbors have offered him plots of land to camp on. The article talks about a Kickstarter. And I just can’t imagine that sort of outpouring of warmth and empathy and understanding for anyone who isn’t a white man who stole from the community for years and years, so I think it’s important to dissect the dangerous mythos that privileges white criminals while assuming the worst about black and brown men and women.
I think about, you know, Renisha McBride, who was shot to death standing on a man’s porch asking for help, and then I think about Christopher Knight and I think, man, these are two sides of the same shitty coin.
100% this. I’m so tired of the way every time a white person is caught famously committing a crime, there is an immediate media rush to label them as “mentally ill,” because a white person must be CRAZY to committ a crime.
+1 Also as someone who is mentally ill and on the autism spectrum, I find “oh poor dear couldn’t help it, he was insane” DAMN insulting. I have lived with NVLD, OCD, and anxiety for my entire twenty-three years on this planet, and never once have I decided to snatch someone’s propane tank or break into their house. And considering that he acknowledges that what he did was wrong, the mental illness question isn’t relevant to whether or not he’s responsible; if he’s cognizant of the fact that he behaved immorally, he is competent to a) stand trial, and b) acknowledge the consequences of his actions.
THANK YOU. I have Asperger’s and several mental health diagnoses, and I’ve never done that crap. And being autistic means you’re less likely to steal or commit crimes, not more.
Also just the glorification of the romance of being a lonely white dude. Boo Radley chic. TI feel like the rest of us humans think being lonely is…lonely and not to be confused with being independent. You can care for people and be cared for and still not be BOUND in CHAINS OF RESPONSIBILITY. Why is there such a damn love of being gloriously “FREE” of mean cruel society by people who so entirely benefit from it?!
aaaa “Boo Radley chic”
I’m pretty much a prison abolitionist, and I never think the answer is LESS EMPATHY, but otherwise you are right.
Retreating to the woods (in goddamn Maine) and living like a raccoon off of the worst garbage and making everyone miserable because you never interact with anyone or learn to do anything or be anything but marginal animal survival is probably the closest you can actually get to killing yourself without having the stones to up and do something proactive in that direction. Hell, his one big insight into the whole thing is that the greatest thing about endless self-imposed solitary confinement is that you eventually totally lose your identity and self.
The sentimentality about him sort of strikes me as the same morbid fascination/terror as the Rapture fanatics who desperately want to believe they can go to Heaven where all their problems will go away forever without having to actually, y’know, die first.
“Don’t mistake me for some bird-watching PBS type,” he warned.
YEAH, I WON’T. THEY OBSERVE AND CATALOGUE NATURE, THE BETTER TO UNDERSTAND AND PRESERVE IT, UNLIKE THIS SUGAR-BOOZE GUZZLING WASTE OF SPACE.
I don’t even HAVE a television
“Almost completely free! Except for the part where you literally depended upon the labor and possessions of others to meet your every physical need.”
This reminds me of how I felt when I read Stranger in a Strange Land as a teenager– the part where the Mars-raised protagonist builds his utopian commune (The Nest), and everything is great and equal and there’s just a big bowl of money by the door for whenever anyone needs to go out out into the “real world.” I read this and thought: So the solution to all the economic and political obstacles to utopian communes is being independently wealthy, and the trick to not needing money is to just have limitless amounts of money? Is Heinlein serious? Is this entire book a satire based on John Lennon’s Imagine? (A weirdly prescient satire since the song wasn’t released for another decade, but you get the point.)
This is off topic, because I genuinely want people to explain Heinlein’s politics to me.
I think Heinlein’s politics were more an excuse to have incestuous clone sex.
I mean, in his other books there are super-rich people breeding to give their bloodlines the longest lifespans possible and they use their time-travel powers to either 1. have sex with their own mothers or 2. give their previous selves stock tips so that they ride out the Depression in style. It’s not that deep. 😛
Yeah, I didn’t even get into the fact that all the people in the Nest started to look like each other/unconsciously mold their features to be more sexually attractive, a detail I found deeply upsetting.
so this is only tangentially related, but your annoyance with Heinlein reminds me of when I read Asimov’s Foundation which has exactly one female character who is terrible and is only around for about two pages. And then I got to the end of the book and saw that it was dedicated to his mother. Did he hate his mother? Was he taunting her as she rolled in her grave? “Look, ma, I can write a book with basically no women at all and watch it become super successful and touted as a sci-fi classic!”
That’s sixties science fiction for you. “In the future we will all be bouncing around Mars in space pajamas but gender roles will if anything have regressed.” Asimov was the best of a bad lot – he at least just did not write about sex, unlike Heinlein, who liked to populate his futures with cheerfully subservient underage redheads.
which is why I try to stick to the feminist sci-fi authors these days! MK Wren’s Phoenix Trilogy, while definitely not devoid of problems, is so freaking much better than Foundation that it’s kind of mind boggling.
Ursula K. Le Guin is here for all your feminist sci-fi/fantasy needs!
of course she is! she and Octavia Butler are the paragons for sure.
when does the One Female occur? I am almost done with the first book, maybe I missed her. But I was having the same thoughts as I read, just wondering if there was ever going to be a female character that speak. Other than that women are just obliquely referred to as the wives of all those scientists.
oh, she’s the wife of the political leader of some planet/nation towards the end of the book, she was essentially sold to him (it’s implied) by her dad who is an Empire dude and wanted to gain a foothold out in the boondocks planets.
Robots of Dawn has two interesting women in it; one a tough-as-nails scientist, another a widow from a planet where no one ever touches each other discovering her sexuality for the first time in her life. Unfortunately, they still both end up being damsels in distress with daddy issues. I think he genuinely tried to write interesting women in Robots of Dawn, but just wasn’t very good at it.
Asimov, to his credit, did eventually realize how horrible he’d been to women in his writing and smarten up a bit. To my knowledge he never wrote anything I would describe as revolutionarily feminist, but he started putting in some characters who actually mattered to the plot and weren’t shrieking harpies.
“Almost completely free! Except for the part where you literally depended upon the labor and possessions of others to meet your every physical need.”
That’s funny because to me, that line also describes Jack Kerouac’s (I’m sorry, Sal’s) lifestyle in On the Road. There are so many variations of this, but it is all basically the same white male fantasy.
Okcupid profile has that “the only people for me are the mad ones” quote = Will cheat on you and not understand why you’re making such a big deal out of it. Can’t tell the difference between mild boredom and oppression. Will tell you 20 minute stories detailing visions had while taking hallucinogens.
The only people for me are the sane, kind ones.
Besides the tooth-clenching racism, I could never get over the way that Kerouac and Cassady treated women. Sure, go ahead and live your vagabond lifestyle, but stop marrying women and having babies and leaving them to fend for themselves. You can be a romantic road wanderer OR you can be a husband and father. You can’t do both and just leave some poor (often extremely young) lady to pick up the parental slack while you fuck off to go romanticize African-American and Latino poverty. It’s just a shitty thing to do to a string of women and children.
Also the racism. There was also that.
Heinlein’s politics are best understood as a kind of libertarian solipsism.
“Everyone should be able to do whatever they want, without interference from anyone else!”
“Well, wouldn’t that be awful?”
“Not if everyone was ME.”
Did Heinlein actually have politics, or were his stories just designed to appeal to know-it-all fourteen year old boys?
People who romanticize the hermit as an independent hero of masculine values* are missing the point of his story in truly spectacular fashion.
Christopher Knight took to the woods and lived on stolen candy and booze, keeping warm with stolen propane and lighting his nights with stolen batteries**, because some combination of mental health problems (maybe mixed with perfectly reasonable non-neurotypical function that could have been handled better by those around him) drove him to eschew all human contact except the stealing of Gameboys and Allen’s Coffee Brandy. He isn’t a tragic hero or a romantic ideal; he’s another sad statistic of the broken mental health system.
Tellingly, I don’t see a lot of that lyrical bullshit here in Maine, where he broke into camps and cottages in his region ~1000 times over the course of his self-imposed exile. I guess it’s easier to romanticize him from afar, G.Q. writer, because he was never going to steal your mattress and brandy.
p.s., talk about romanticizing: G.Q.’s nonsense lede says “one day last year, the hermit came out of the forest,” as if he’s some wild deer charmed by humanity’s lure who glides from its place of serenity to grace us. NOPE. As the article points out, he was picked up by a game warden and police officer after he set off a high-tech alarm that was put in place to catch him after he’d repeated his large-scale thefts. He had his own key to the camp kitchen. He is not some stealthy figure of dark starry nights and freedom; he’s a scared, miserable guy who pocketed whatever he could and came back for more later.
*like, um, avoiding human contact and taking what you want? I guess?
**Why do they always talk about the candy and never about the propane? I know it’s because talking about stealing candy instead of stealing expensive fuel makes his crimes seem trivial, but come on. Don’t these Masculine Ideal Romanticizers have propane-based fantasies of blowing shit up? HAVE THEY EVEN SEEN FIGHT CLUB?
“p.s., talk about romanticizing: G.Q.’s nonsense lede says “one day last year, the hermit came out of the forest,” as if he’s some wild deer charmed by humanity’s lure who glides from its place of serenity to grace us. NOPE. As the article points out, he was picked up by a game warden and police officer…”
The ability of that author to continue with his romantic narrative in the face of all this is truly amazing.
And the detector that caught him? Was put in place specifically to catch him, because he’d broken into the camp’s walk-in so often that it made more sense to splurge on a military-grade motion detector than to keep replacing the food he stole.
He wasn’t a self-denying ascetic who took only what he needed to survive; he’s a sick, sad person who took what he could grab (including your keys if he was lucky enough to find them, which meant he’d come back again and again and empty your larder) to support a life in which he never spoke to or looked at another person, but stole their winter coats and hand-held devices.
“Bro, have you even SEEN Fight Club?!”
It really bothers me that the stories so often focus on his “pockets full of candy” and not the fact that he would swap out full propane tanks for empty ones. I know, I know: it’s because the first sounds like some impish prankster skipping though the woods stuffing his pockets with sweeties in childish glee, and the latter displays a level of pre-planned mind-fuckery that cuts empathy like a scalpel.
But, as aravisthequeen points out below, propane is goddamned expensive, besides which if you go up to your cabin and find the full tank of propane empty, you’ve just lost however many hours (not to mention dollars) you have to spend driving someplace to swap it. And that’s just assuming he’s taking their grill tanks, because I can’t imagine he actually managed to steal the larger tanks for stoves and water systems.
[edited to add: Wait, that’s silly of me to assume. After all, he stole a bed and box spring. Maybe he could have stolen a larger propane tank.]
Propane is expensive as SHIT. People go to jail over propane theft (deservedly so!!!!). The fuck is that.
Right now where I live propane costs about $1.20 per liter. Which is roughly on par with gasoline. If your home is heated with propane, it can cost in the neighbourhood of $500 to refill it AND you’re going to be damned cold until the propane company can come and refill it.
Out of curiosity, what evidence do you see of actual mental illness? There’s some speculation of him being on the autism spectrum, but I don’t see other signs that he didn’t do this just because he’s a shitty person who wanted to enjoy stuff while being alone.
I don’t claim to see evidence of mental illness; mental illness is what’s been consistently reported in the local coverage over the past year, though (appropriately) there’s no public in-depth discussion of Knight’s mental state. I posted one link and blockquote in response to Nicole above, but here’s another link, and googling for “Christopher Knight Maine” will yield you plenty more.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that his current mental-health counseling is intended to help with problems that arose during his 27 years in the woods instead of problems that pushed him to that life in the first place, but it doesn’t seem remotely unlikely that a young man who decided “No, life in the dank, miserable, life-threatening woods of Maine is much better than talking to humans!” and then stuck to it for 27 years was grappling with some mental-health problems.
I agree with your points — I just wanted to quibble with your original statement that he’s “another sad statistic of the broken mental health system,” and also the suggestion that his behavior is explained by “some combination of mental health problems (maybe mixed with perfectly reasonable non-neurotypical function that could have been handled better by those around him),” because that still seems to put the onus on those around him who could have prevented this if they’d been more sensitive or aware, and also that he *wouldn’t* have done this if he’d been in his “right mind.”
That’s a fair objection; I’m not going to enter into an argument about it.
My larger point is that the people romanticizing Knight’s decision to live in the woods, stealing people’s batteries and propane and coats and Fluff, are thinking of him as a hero of self-abnegation rather than the sad figure he actually appears to be (and again, this is all gleaned from ten months of intermittent local coverage, most of which is probably available online if you look for it) and that the narratives about him all build around the apparently-whimsical aspects of his story rather than the thuddingly realistic ones.
Knight isn’t a backwoods hero. When he was arrested, he didn’t want to speak to the officer because, as he said, he was “ashamed”; he isn’t even the hero of the story in his own mind.
Hahaha, he is like a bear that knows how to use a screwdriver.
“Uh, Maine hermit, should you eat that?”
“Raaraarowr, does it fit in my MOUTH?”
A bear that knows how to use a screwdriver EXPERTLY.
IT IS A SCREWDRIVER.
Please note that a seal named Gunnar was trained to use a screwdriver during the Cold War.
A SEAL.
THIS GUY:
Noted!
Though it does make absolute sense that the modern White American’s notion of “freedom” is “completely free of responsibility to other people.”
“While feeling free to take anything you want from anyone else because nobody else matterssssss”
Serious question, though, DO other people matter? Because if not, I think I just figured out a really good way to get a lot of free stuff.
Thank you so much for this balancing perspective. I was pretty enthralled by the GQ profile, but *not* to the point of venerating the guy. I think it’s amazing he survived that many years…but it is indeed less amazing to think of how he managed it by stealing everything he could get his hands on, and apparently not learning any skills to survive on what he could get within the woods.
I liked the profile too! I didn’t come away from it like “OMG NEW HERO” or anything, more just like “what the whaaa?” But it’s nice to be reminded how romanticized the writing was, and how the author definitely did not want to end up writing a story about a crazy criminal in the woods so he turned him into an idol of sorts.
I know — I get the sense the author is fascinated with him and definitely took a sympathetic view, which bleeds through. My reaction was actually “THIS WOULD BE A GREAT MINISERIES” — not covering his solitary years of thievery, but the way he built a cautious relationship with the reporter, his first relationship in nearly three decades, just because I love human study stories like that.
But I see now that that’s evidence of how romanticized the portrayal was, because Mallory’s right about the much bigger and more relevant human interest issue: he is ONLY getting this sort of sympathetic reaction because he’s a white dude. Can you imagine the response if he were black? How everyone would take that as yet more evidence all black people are crooks? Rather than everyone automatically assuming OH HE MUST BE MENTALLY ILL, POOR THING, LET’S PAY FOR HIS GROCERIES AND LEAVE HIM ALONE AGAIN.
You know, it’s funny. I saw through Into the Wild in about two seconds, but the GQ profile of this guy kind of got to me. I think it’s the sheer amount of time he spent in the woods, the amount of cold and discomfort he put up with year after year, combined with the fact that he doesn’t seem to care whether people admire him or not. I mean, say what you will about his criticisms of our society, the guy still wasn’t naming himself Alexander Supertramp and writing people postcards saying “I now walk into the wild.” I don’t admire him, but I do feel sorry for him, because it seems like, for whatever reason, he’s just not able to function around other people.
I mean, I don’t admire McCandless, but at least he actually did go into the wild and foraged and killed wild animals for food. He was misguided and a dumbass, but he managed to kill a MOOSE, that deserves at least a lukewarm thumbs up.
He illegally killed a moose calf that just happened to wander past his bus, and then he let it rot because he didn’t know how to preserve the meat. I think that’s just more evidence of McCandless’s general incompetence and lack of self-awareness.
People who romanticize the country and living off the land and EMERSON and solitude etc baffle the shit out of me. Chris McCandless baffled the shit out of me, to the point where I felt personally angry at a kid I never met for being so short sighted. I wanted to bring him back to life and shake him one good time.
I grew up in the country (although we did not live OFF THE LAAAAND (entirely – we raised our own meat and a lot of vegetables); we drove forty minutes or more to a FOOOOOD LIOOOOON which isn’t as poetic so maybe I am immune to whatever seductive siren call this kind of shit has on people who grew up in cities or suburbs. I’m like bro, the woods are full of stuff that is gross and/or dangerous. Ticks! Bears! Bobcats! Vermin! Chiggers! Mountain lions! Poison stuff! MORE TICKS PROBABLY! Nature is fine and lovely to observe but it also straight up does not care about you and is probably actively trying to kill you dead. I’m like, I enjoy nature but I also fear and respect it and when I say enjoy I typically mean in short bursts or from inside a structure like a car or cabin.
This guy though, I feel is mentally ill and this isn’t the same kind of story as something like McCandless. Like…despite the inane ramblings about SO-CIETY and so on which yes, is annoying as shit. I’m not his psychologist so I can’t speculate as to what, why, or when it started but yeah.
One thing I will never understand is the concept of “Living in the country, buying your vegetables at a farmer’s market, these things go together!” because I have only ever seen viable farmer’s markets in cities. There’s one in my small town, but it’s only open two mornings a week (one weekday and one weekend) and I went there once and it was six stands, three of whom were selling vegetables and three were selling flowers, jam, and knitted items. This is not where regular people are going to buy their veggies. Every rural person I have ever known has shopped at Foodland or IGA or wherever, because you cannot sustain farm life buying ridiculously expensive veggies once a week. No.
YEP. We had home grown vegetables, sure. Cause we GREW them at HOME. No one came out and bought vegetables from our crappy little garden. Our farm produced cows sold for beef to businesses, not to locals. The farms in and around the area I grew up in raised like tobacco and shit, not food for locals.
There’s viable vegetable stands near the cottage where my family spends the summer, but their viability is owed mostly to cottagers like us buying their food. Without outside money coming in, farmers have no one to sell to locally but each other, and no way to make a profit except off of a neighbour having a hard time. No one does that.
Not only that, but my experience of living in Vermont is that there are times of the year when you need to be sure to lock your car when you park it or desperate neighbors will deposit large bags of unwanted zucchini in it when you’re not looking. The stuff is ripe when it’s ripe; you don’t get to say “hold off for a week, I’m in the mood for turnips.”
I am dying laughing at this. Zucchini bandits strike again!
Well, no. But the kind of rural I think you’re talking about has things like families with reliable roadside stalls and people who know each other and barter/swap/buy things they don’t grow for themselves, and farmers who’ll run a few head of cattle for families who rent pastureage and split the butchering costs, and the guy who butchers everyone’s deer gets a cut of the steers he does for folks, too.
Not at all the romanticized vision of country-livin’, though.
This guy though, I feel is mentally ill and this isn’t the same kind of story as something like McCandless.
Exactly. I have plenty of empathy for Knight, though it doesn’t diminish how legitimately terrorizing it must have felt to the people whose cabins he broke into over and over. (In addition to his multiple break-ins at the Pine Tree Camp, he broke into ~300 different private homes; one cabin owner says he suffered fifty break-ins.) He seems like someone pushed to a desperate retreat by mental health issues.
My argument isn’t with Knight but with the fools who ignore the painful details of his withdrawal and hold him up as an exemplar of some masculine retreat from The World. He’s not an ideal; he’s a sick man who took what must have seemed the only route available to him, for whatever private reasons he had—but we can all reckon they weren’t happy reasons.
I dunno. My misanthropic side dreams of spending a year alone in a yurt somewhere in the wilderness. With just all the books I want to read and my dog and a comfortable bed and everything else I need, because I am not into roughing it or living off the land for any substantial length of time.
Apparently, it is (or was?) possible to be paid to spend three months alone in a cabin keeping half an eye on a fire tower, and having whatever books you desire to read provided for free and brought in with your other supplies by the delivery helicopter. (I learned this from a guy who had this job at one point.)
I would guess that you’d be expected to say hi to the helicopter pilot, though.
I completely agree with your sentiments here, but Thoreau deserves much more blame than Emerson.
Thoreau:
Agreed! He was absolutely worse than Emerson!
I was lumping in all those nature loving wordy people together, apparently. MY APOLOGIES RALPH!!
The myth of Thoreau has gone so far beyond Thoreau himself. Thoreau was more like the nature writers alive now who go camping or live in a rural area and publish essays about what they observe. He never hermetically sealed himself off from society; his friends were important to him, and he supported himself without poisoning himself to death or stealing propane and candy from camps for disabled children. Then he shared his thoughts about the experience, because he cared enough about other people enough to talk to them. Nobody is obliged to like or agree with those thoughts or even to think any of the above was a good idea, but if someone’s idolizing Knight because they think he’s walking in Thoreau’s footsteps then they’re not paying very good attention to either person.
WORD UP. It’s crazy how people have made Thoreau out to be some wilderness hero. He didn’t want to be, and never was! He went to live in the woods, which was like, a mile from his buddy’s house. I certainly enjoy his writing but I gotta scoff at all the people who think he was some sort of ~`*deep woods guru.*`~
That’s actually why I LIKE Thoreau. “Oh yay, Nature! Isn’t it lovely? Doesn’t it make you so contemplative? Yes? Welp, I’m off to visit my friends down the road here. See a few friends, sit by a nice warm fire. See ya!” THAT’S how you do it.
I feel like he would have liked PBS too.
“Gonna go visit my mom so she can do my laundry for me while I contemplate nature!”
I don’t mind that part of his ideology, I mind what a jackass he is to poor people while he’s living in his cabin.
“For I purposely talked to him [John Field] as if he were a philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men’s beginning to redeem themselves. A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture. But alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he might think that I was dressed like a gentleman (which, however, was not the case), and in an hour or two, without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough money to support me a week. If he and his family would live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement. John heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms a-kimbo, and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail; — thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage — living, John Field, alas! without arithmetic, and failing so.”
Oh ho, of course, Thoreau! Surely they simply didn’t understand your logic instead of thinking you were a complete asshole.
Man, I saw the movie version of Into the Wild and then I read the book and I really, really wanted to punch Chris McCandless.
Given the choice, I’d rather punch Jon Krakauer.
I lived in the Northwest Territories as a kid – not in the woods, but even Yellowknife is a town of fewer than twenty thousand people and surrounded on all sides by wilderness (the next closest place with more than 5000 people in it is Peace River, over a thousand kilometres away). My mother grew up on a farm in rural Saskatchewan. People who romanticise isolation, especially in cold places, blow my mind. Even the hippies I knew who lived in the Territories were boggled by idiots who showed up expecting to just “be one with nature, like the First Nations”. Newsflash, even the First Nations people who still live in anything resembling a traditional way (and there ain’t that many) HAVE COMMUNITIES and depend on each other. The only way you’re going to end up being one with nature is if a bear eats you. And keep in mind, I like camping and hiking and spending time alone, despite being a city person at heart; I’m sympathetic to the impulse of wanting to get away from it all. But going without preparation so that you can be Brave and Independent doesn’t make you a pure and noble hero. It makes you a moron.
I want to resurrect Susanna Moodie (or really any pioneer wife, ever) so she can slap this fool silly.
Laura Ingalls Wilder would Not Be Amused
Catherine Parr Trail, Cougar Annie, that elderly lady who lived her whole life in the wilds of Russia…they can all out-badass this guy in their sleep.
It’s important for everyone to know some of my RL friends have a camp in the area of Maine this shitbird terrorized and have in fact been victims of his thievery.
A mutual friend who grew up with the owners of this camp had long heard tales of the Maine Hermit but he thought everyone was shitting him to freak his little 8-year-old self out. He was flabbergasted when the guy was actually caught.
My only association with the song “Desperado” comes from one night at a piano bar, when a middle-aged lady and her sulky teenage daughter came in, and the mother proceeded to sing it to the daughter. It was deeply weird and kind of sweet, and it definitely made me tear up a bit thinking about what a little shit I had been at that age.
Also Pine tree camp, his favorite hunting ground? Is a camp for developmentally disabled children. A non-profit one at that. Verdict, dirtbag.
oh what the SHIT. DIRTBAAAGGGG
Clearly, those developmentally disabled children cannot appreciate how aesthetically lacking our culture is.
oh my goddddddddd
In Maine, I feel like the only thing we learned from this dude is that our radio stations haven’t changed in 30 years.
God I hated Hatchet. That is all.
Allens Coffee Brandy. Drink of choice for Maine dirtbags, and not just of those hermit variety.
I mean honestly though, in that particular case, he definitely did those people a favor.
You know what the Cult of the Maine Hermit reminds me of? Peter Hayward, that Australian guy who wanted to “bring attention to homelessness” by living on the streets for a month in a “homeless adventure.” He spent that month lying to everyone he came into contact with (including a sweet older couple who fed him, let him use their shower, and gave him FIFTY DOLLARS because they thought he was, y’know, homeless) so that he could have access to the amenities that actual homeless people DON’T HAVE ACCESS TO and which he could have purchased at any point because he actually had money and parents supporting him: http://hoydenabouttown.com/20100220.7268/peter-ha…
(Fun fact: if you google “Peter Hayward homeless” one of the top results is an article about a different Peter Hayward who actually was homeless and was shot and killed by police while he was living on the streets. HOMELESSNESS: IT’S A NONSTOP ADVENTURE!)
Hahaha, bring attention to homelessness.
“Thurston, did you know that there are homeless people?”
“What, lovey? Homeless? But where do they live?”
“On the street!”
“But where do they keep all of their diamonds?”
“I think some of them don’t HAVE any diamonds!”
“WHAAAA–?”
Monocles fly everywhere.
Like the real life sequel to Catcher in the Rye. “All of them phonies,” he muttered darkly to himself as he stole from children and the elderly.
And then, after serving seven months in jail, he returns to live with his MOTHER who is in her EIGHTIES! I mean.
He’d better fucking learn to take care of her. That is probably one of the best things for him right now.
After forbidding her from coming to see him when he was in jail, no less.
This whole story seems like this man is a character out of a horrible Adam Sandler movie that has come into our universe.
So this is just a homeless guy, right? This is a homeless guy that men have decided is a figure of wish fulfillment, because they are so afraid of having to deal with other people and be considerate of their needs that they would rather live in the woods and talk about how corrupt and facile everything is and shit off the side of a log,
I’ve been waiting for this piece ever since Mallory ranted on Twitter about it. It was even better than I hoped it would be.
When I was 7, some teen dirtbags smashed my family’s jack-o-lanterns. This was my first real introduction to the idea that people who don’t know you – which is most people, even in small-town Ohio – are completely indifferent to your well-being, and that means sometimes they’ll hurt you just for fun. This is a hard thing for a sensitive kid to learn. So obviously the part about the candy really gets me. Fuck this dude.
Mallory please annotate all future issues of GQ
Mallory you are 100% the best.
I don’t get the adoration. If they want to fawn over actual off-the-land types, it’s not like there aren’t hundreds/thousands of better examples. I live in northern Canada, and they are everywhere. A coworker of mine knew a guy who lived for 30 years in the woods, only coming into town once a year to stock up on supplies (which he bought with actual money he made from his trapline because he was a nice guy and not a thief). She asked him about one of his cabins once, and it turns out he made it just for fun because he wanted to see if he could make a cabin using no tools other than a handaxe. On the sadder side of things, I worked at a campground in the middle of a giant forested park when I was in high school and there was a schizophrenic man who lived in the woods because his hallucinations were more manageable out there. He never stole or bothered anyone, so we’d leave him alone unless someone complained (and some asshole always complained eventually), then we’d have to ask him to leave or have the police take him back to one of the facilities in town. He was always nice and polite and a far better person than this guy, but no one ever started a Kickstarter for him.
I live in Alaska, and used to work in a bookstore, and I always wanted to scream at the lower-48 hippie boys who would come in and buy copies of Into the Wild. (I assume they already owned the book, but wanted their very own Alaskan copy.) We have so many people who live in the bush year after year, supporting themselves, hunting and fishing and flying planes and generally being competent at everything you have to do to survive, and people romanticize this guy who spent a summer camping on a well-known trail and was so inept he managed to starve to death a mere 25 miles outside of town?
ahhhh. I love The Toast so much. this is why I gotta say this. *deep breath*
When I lived in Maine, I went on a couple of outreach visits with a homeless outreach team. Homeless shelters, frankly, fucking suck. They’re crowded, smell weird, and there’s so much drama/politics between other people at the shelter, over everything from whose chair you might have sat in accidentally, to where your place in line is (the line for breakfast, the line to shower, the line for lunch, the line for a shelter bed, the line to sign up for a shelter bed, the line for dinner, the line to get into your locker, the line to return the key you used to get into your locker). Lots of people, if they’re healthy, just say fuck the whole thing and camp in the warmer months. The people who have such substantial mental health issues, or are triggered by crowds, loud noises, or tight spaces (the hallmarks of homeless shelters!) or would rather never set foot in a shelter, will camp all year. In Maine. In Winter.
The homeless shelter outreach team used to be 4-5 people, with a nurse, but then their budget got cut. So it was 1-2 people. Without a nurse, when they ran into people who were sick or injured, they just sort of shrugged: ‘put a band aid on it. keep it clean.’ one time the team lead said to someone, “you know, you should really go see somebody.” he laughed. the whole tent of people laughed. finally, reluctantly, she laughed. How the hell would he pay for that?
many homeless men are cis, white, and straight- some of them are veterans, some of them struggle with mental illness, most of them have had myriad encounters with the justice system. one of the things I spent a lot of time talking to homeless organizers and shelter staff about was the challenge of having conversations about privilege and oppression- as one female staff member said, “it’s hard to start conversations with guys about sexism with this power and class differential.” Maine is also racist as hell (LOL LIKE EVERYWHERE), and to be fair, when I was at meetings for this group, most of the full time advocates were white, straight men in their 40s-50s. however- they were also good listeners, interested in taking feedback, and kickass fucking organizers.
I see this as part of a broader problem. God, yes, white supremacy shapes the lenience of the judge/community, as it shapes all situations to create inequity and oppression, particularly when the justice system is involved. But this man was homeless. Showing this man compassion doesn’t invalidate the battle against structural racism- unlearning oppression is not a zero sum game, and contemplating white supremacy does not mean you can’t contemplate other oppression and work against it. I have paid no attention to the Maine hermit story beyond this article, and yeah, I can see how neck bearded hipsters would be all about sharing this as a way to sate their Thoreau fetish,
neck bearded hipsters are annoying. fetishizing homelessness is gross. stealing sucks. white supremacy is destructive and pervasive.
but this guy doesn’t have to emulate the survival skills of “the kid from Hatchet” to be worthy of respect as a human being.
This is very good perspective, but it’s worth noting that Christopher Knight wasn’t homeless before he moved into the woods. He had a job and just bought a new car; in his own words, had a good childhood (and never went camping once); and he’s returned now to his childhood home to live with his mother. So while he can be described as homeless for those decades of his life, he didn’t flee the shitty homeless shelters — that wasn’t his situation. He really did voluntarily choose to live in a tent in the woods, year-round, over the kind of stability and security that I’m sure any of those who live in a shelter would give anything for.
This dude wasn’t just homeless, though- he was voluntarily homeless. He had money, he had a support system; and he chose to drop all that so he could live in the woods and steal Halloween candy and Gameboys. Maybe he’s mentally ill, I don’t know, but he made the choice to go into the woods and to steal peoples’ shit instead of learning survival skills or taking them up on their offers to provide him with food and clothes. He was not compelled to do this. He did it because he wanted to. He acknowledges that he “screwed over” his victims, including his own family, but he doesn’t especially seem to care. That’s not a sign of mental illness; that’s a sign of being selfish. He wanted to live alone, on his own terms, but those terms involved the violation of other peoples’ property. I don’t lack respect for him because he wasn’t a top-notch survivalist; I lack respect for him because he was an ASSHOLE.
The guy who actively rejects any attempt at outreach and support and FREE FOOD, of which there were many, to studiously retain his isolation and poverty is a lot of things but oppressed in the manner of the homeless vet who’s too unbalanced to hold a job he ain’t.
Some people can’t operate as efficient cogs in the machine and get thrown away, some people decide they don’t value all of what society demands they do and get steamrolled, some people are out for whatever past reason and are blocked from ever getting back in simply because they are Out, and some people reject non-homelessness on an ongoing basis to maintain the lifestyle they’ve deliberately and actively pursued.
This is the age old argument about structural inequality though. ‘Other people are oppressed also’. Sure. Of course they are. But there is something other than this going on when representations of black teenagers murdered by the police are all, ‘this thug stole some cigars one time’ and representations of visibly white murderers are all, ‘this teenager had serious mental heath issues’ and representations of white people who steal stuff are all, ‘this poor guy had serious mental health problems and wow he survived some harsh winters more power to him’. The mainstream media does not give a fuck if black people survive the winter. We are all innate criminals who don’t even deserve to see another winter. Whilst white men are celebrating this guy’s survival techniques, public authorities are actively murdering black people and threatening black survival. This isn’t respect for a homeless man. This is just white supremacy. This guy has plenty of people fighting his corner. You can go to countless other spaces on the Internet and make assumptions about his mental state (btw being neurodiverse is not the same thing as having a mental health problem), make unrelated comments about veterans and talk about white homelessness. You are free to do more outreach visits with your local outreach team. Please can we just have this space though, to talk about racism and the immense inequailty of the criminal ‘justice’ system.
I do give the guy credit for refusing to spout cod philosophy on demand. The interviewer is all “But you must have some ~wisdom~ for us from your years of solitude,” and he’s like “No I don’t. Now fuck off, we’re not friends.”
Yeah I think we need to rename this guy. “Maine Hermit” sounds so romantic when really “Homeless by Choice Thief Dirtbag” is much more accurate.
As someone who read alllllll the Gary Paulsen and whose phone wallpaper is from her last trip to the Rockies (HAHA TOTALLY DIFFERENT FROM YOSEMITE SO I TOTALLY DIDN’T CRINGE AT THAT), I guess I’m supposed to idolize the guy, but mostly I think of how the homeless people in my neighborhood feel like they have to scrape and bow and convince in order to reassure strangers that they’re not like this dude. Not even when panhandling – I mean, standing next to you doing laundry at the laundromat.
But it’s a lot easier to think about how probably the dude was doing things the way you would, rising from a bed of freshly cut pine branches and watching the sun come up with your tame marmot at your side, sipping from a steaming tin cup of completely incongruous coffee.
Trigger warning for those who went through child abuse.
Well I related to the hermit story in a different way. When I was growing up, for some reason, my step-father bought a house that was a converted 1857 log cabin. It turns out that on the 2nd floor, on my side of the house, there was no insulation in the walls. It also turned out that even though there was a heat vent in my bedroom, the heat duct had been blocked off. Since, in winter, it got to -60 degrees windchill, in was very very cold in my bedroom. When it was windy, my curtains rippled, as if I was letting in a summer breeze with the windows open.
I routinely slept under at least 20 blankets and a couple of sleeping bags; which was heavy, and I slept completely under the covers except for an air hole. I did this for 6 years, and every winter was just … horrible. (My parents were drunks, and … being drunk … whenever I told them how cold my room was, they either ignored me or .. ?) I had to prepare every winter for the cold. Multiple layers of wool socks, long johns, panty hose, down jackets and ski pants etc. Putting stuff in the windows (which took up an entire wall) to block the breezes. Hanging blankets over the curtains. Common sense stuff. But in spite of all that, if I left a glass of water out overnight, it froze solid within about an hour. Outdoor winter camping, are you crazy? In door winter camping, are you nuts?
So, when I read about the hermit not really being prepared for the initial winter and then, not preparing for every winter after that, I wondered what was wrong with him. I didn’t have much choice in my surroundings, and I was just a kid with bad parents. But after a few years, this guy shouldn’t have had to get up at night, so as not to freeze to death. Even one year in that sort of cold makes you desperate and you never want to be that cold again.
That being said, I was still cold with all my preparing, but not cold to the point of frostbite.
He just didn’t prepare enough. If I had been him, I might have broken down and built a permanent cabin; which might have meant asking family for help. But you don’t nearly freeze to death every winter. That is the definition of insane, maybe not in a mental illness way, but crazy nonethless. Reading about his winters in that cold was very real to me, is what I’m trying to say.
(When I got to college, and lived in a dorm, I discovered, to my delight, that I could crank up the heat as far as I wanted to. I slept without covers, in a negligee, and felt very decadent.)
God, I’m sorry that you had to do that as a child. Everyone deserves a warm-enough place to sleep. Especially children.
Oh god, that is awful awful. I just want to take BabyEllaAstor and give you all the things you deserved, including but not limited to a space heater, a heated blanket, lots of cocoa with homemade marshmallows, and a house with FUCKING INSULATION IN IT.
Yes, I thanked god for my grandmother, who went to rummage sales and bought lots and lots of blankets, quilts and comforters. No one who hears this story ever asks, “You had 20 blankets in your house? Why? Why does anyone have 20 blankets?”
This was in the 1970s, in small town America, the Upper Midwest, where parents raised their kids as they felt best. What “raised” means is up for grabs!
Fun contrast about “not knowing how to fit in to society after 30 years” goin’ down with this article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/04/us/north-caroli…
I work a few miles from Walden Pond. People occasionally stop at my office to ask for directions there. They are universally insufferable.
There’s so much Independent Rugged Machismo adoration over this guy’s breaking and entering lifestyle and so much Independent Rugged Machismo chest-beating about how they’d shoot anyone who broke into their house on sight that I wonder what the overlap is, like how much of The Hermit’s fanbase as a percentage would IRL kill him if they caught him jiggering with the locks and then venerate his corpse like a Catholic relic
Whenever I dream about running away from society, it’s after I win a Powerball jackpot and can build myself a fully stocked little cottage somewhere remote from which I control all my charitable doings.
When I was wee (well, fourteen, which is admittedly not THAT wee) my parents and I went up to Georgian Bay over Thanksgiving Weekend and toured Beausoleil Island. I thought it would be THE COOLEST THING IN THE WORLD to move there as an adult and live in the woods without ever coming into contact with the terrible horrible no-good very badness of modern society.
Of course, on that same trip, my mom yelled at me for eating wood sorrel because they could potentially react badly with my asthma medication. That should probably have been my first indication that the hermit life was not for me.
There’s a hilariously terrible film called The Edge that would be PORN to people who venerate this dude. It’s about Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin and one of the guys from Lost crashing Hopkins’ private plane in the Alaskan wilderness and getting chased by a bear. I heartily recommend it; I have rarely if ever laughed so hard at a movie (it’s not supposed to be funny; it oozes sincerity).
Shit I’ve seen that movie at 3am on TV one time. If I remember rightly, Hopkins has a cunning plan to lure the bear onto a spear because he once saw a picture of exactly that happening in a book. Also Baldwin was doing his wife or something.
The bear’s name was Bart.
My favourite part of this was definitely “ruggled.”
Can someone clear up for me the dirtbag taxonomy? I thought we liked dirtbags, but this guy is getting called a dirtbag…I’m confuzzled.
We are reading Emerson and Thoreau in my American Environmental Literature class next week and I am absolutely assigning this. If my students groan at the extra work, I’m blaming you for writing something so good, Mallory.
Side comment: Until now, all of the lit classes I’ve taught have been filled with almost completely with women. Suddenly I’m teaching enviro lit — woods! hiking! solitude! — and the breakdown is 50/50.
I know I am late commenting on this but I have a friend who has been talking about this story non-stop. My friend keeps going on about how he would be such a great survivalist and how if an apocalypse or nuclear holocaust or zombie uprising happens we should seek him out if we want to survive. The best part is that this is the same guy who called me from the street in front of my apartment one night because he was to scared to get out of his car. Why was this fearless man to scared to leave his car you may ask? Only because a family of raccoons had run underneath his car while he was parking and he thought they might attack him if he opened the door because he smelled like Taco Bell. When I went outside to check underneath his car for him I noticed a golf club on the ground which he had tried to use to scare aware the raccoons until they somehow managed to disarm him. Pretty sure I’ll take my chances of surviving a war on my own unless I need to use him as a human shield or something.
This is perfectly marvelous except for “willy-nilly.” “Higgeldy-piggledy” would work, but only if the propane tanks weren’t buried neatly. (IT WAS A WORD, AND I CAN’T HELP MYSELF)
Higgledy-piggledy implies a lack of order, sure. But only willy-nilly truly captures the sense of joyous abandon with which he distributed them. Like a man who discards his soda can just wherever he happens to be when he has finished consuming its contents. One moment it’s in his hands, being used; the next it is garbage and it falls from his hands to land who knows (or cares) where.
Ys pls!
If only he had found King Cole potato chips, instead of Humpty Dumpty, this tale would have had a much happier ending.
All his talk about how society has changed is kind of odd. I mean, he went into the woods in the mid-80s, not the mid-1880s. So we have Twitter now. Big deal. This is like that bit in Flight of the Navigator when the kid comes back and is weirded out by the concept of a music video. Hello! You’ve been gone about 6 minutes! Music videos aren’t something to be scared of!
He is obviously mentally ill. My association with the song Desperado is that my husband aged 23 said that’s hoe he felt before he killed himself leaving me and a beautiful 2 yr old boy.