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I like to be alone in nature but this dude is extreme:
"He lived for 27 years completely alone in the woods of Maine and didn’t even light a fire in winter; did not have a single conversation with another person in that time; did not send an email or communicate with the outside world in any way."
Knight was extremely shy all of his life. He found human interactions dauntingly complicated. And at the age of 20, he drove his car into northern Maine, left the keys on the center console, and walked into the woods. The family never called the police or filed a missing person’s report. I asked the local police, were you surprised that they didn’t call you for a search? The police said, “No, they are a very keep-to-themselves family. If a boy went off, then he went off.” They worried about him, I am sure. But they didn’t involve the authorities. That wasn’t the ethos of that family.
Then I went into the forest around his site. The locals call it “The Jarsey.” It is like a giant Brillo pad; the densest, most disorienting, pathless, boulder-choked forest that is too difficult even for deer to walk through. I’m a decent outdoorsman but when I went to find the site I cut my hands apart and ripped my hiking shoes. Chris Knight was able to walk through these woods, at night, completely silently.
