The Art of Manliness - The Stranger in the Woods — The Story of the Last True Hermit

00:00:00.000 Hey, it's Brett. We're taking a break from a new episode today. So we're going to rebroadcast

00:00:03.260 episode number 358, The Stranger in the Woods, The Story of the Last True Hermit,

00:00:07.700 aired originally in 2017. It's one of the more memorable episodes I've done,

00:00:11.240 interviews I've done, stories just fascinating. Hope you enjoy it. See you on Wednesday.

00:00:14.260 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Have you ever

00:00:33.640 wanted to get into your car, drive off in the middle of nowhere, leave behind the hustle and

00:00:37.760 bustle of civilization and just be by yourself? Well, in 1986, a man named Christopher Knight

00:00:43.160 did just that and lived in the main woods without any human contact, any human contact for 27 years

00:00:49.060 until he was discovered in 2013. My guest today wrote a biography, The Stranger in the Woods,

00:00:53.360 about this man who locals called the Hermit of the North Pond. Author's name is Michael Finkel.

00:00:57.660 Today on the show, we discuss how Chris survived in the main woods alone by himself. But more

00:01:02.860 importantly, we discuss why Chris wanted to be by himself for so long. And by looking at the life

00:01:08.000 of one of the modern world's last true hermits, Michael and I explored the idea of hermitage,

00:01:12.360 solitude and why being an individual requires you to be alone. After the show's over, you're going to

00:01:17.680 want to go off in the woods and be by yourself. But before you do that, go check out the show notes

00:01:21.280 at aom.is slash hermit. Mike Finkel, welcome to the show. Thanks. Happy to be here. So you wrote

00:01:30.320 an interesting book. It's sort of a hybrid of looking at the life of a hermit named Chris Knight. We're

00:01:35.880 going to talk about him, but also exploring the ideas of solitude and being alone. And

00:01:40.780 is that important to being a human, being an individual? So let's talk about what drew you

00:01:48.160 to the story of Chris Knight. So this is a guy who lived in the main woods, middle of the main woods,

00:01:52.740 by himself for 27 years. How'd you get connected with the story and why did you decide to write this

00:01:58.580 book? Yeah. So I've been a journalist for like 27 years. This is only my second book. I got three

00:02:02.880 little kids. I have a short attention span. If a story doesn't deserve to be a book length telling,

00:02:08.220 then I'm going to avoid it. It's just my, it's my tendency. I'm an impatient person. And boy,

00:02:13.900 this story of Christopher Knight, the main hermit really just grabbed me by every sense possible.

00:02:19.620 You know, as you mentioned before, here's a guy who lived completely alone in the woods of Maine,

00:02:24.300 which is really, really cold, by the way, for 27 years and claimed he not only didn't speak with

00:02:29.460 anyone, didn't see the internet, didn't make a phone call, never spoke a word aloud, except for

00:02:34.500 one syllable. Once he said hi to a passing hiker, never even lit a fire, which is boggles the

00:02:41.360 imagination for fear that smoke might give his position away. Also, he became this like over the

00:02:46.380 27 years, he also became this very odd legend for food and clothing and a few survival things and

00:02:56.240 books. He broke into these small cabins. I'm sure we'll talk about this further. He broke into these

00:03:01.540 second, these sort of summer cabins, simple summer cabins in the woods on the lake country of central

00:03:07.140 Maine. And so he, there was this sort of legend built up about him and people had wildly different

00:03:13.360 opinions of him. Some people thought that this guy breaking into houses was like the worst thing

00:03:17.580 that ever happened to them. You know, this guy broke into, you know, if you break into someone's

00:03:21.740 house, it's, you know, it's, you can get 10 years in prison, even if you don't take anything.

00:03:25.720 And other people thought this mysterious person might have some heroic qualities. And I love the

00:03:30.960 fact that there was a myth, there was a person. And then of course, the great question is, you know,

00:03:34.700 how did he survive? Why? And then what happens after a person who has been away for so long is thrown

00:03:41.380 back into our very loud, very, you know, 24, seven, 365 society. What happens then? How could you not be

00:03:48.600 interested? It's catnip for a journalist is what I'm trying to say. Oh yeah, for sure. So let's talk

00:03:52.340 about Chris Knight's backstory. What year did he go off into the woods by himself? How old was he

00:03:57.180 when he decided to do this? Christopher Knight grew up in central Maine in a kind of an unusual

00:04:02.120 family. He had four older brothers, one younger sister. They were very private family. All the

00:04:07.140 children, the Knight children were got extremely good grades in school. But more than that, they,

00:04:11.460 the family did not have a lot of money, but they learned how to hunt and fish. They learned how to

00:04:16.400 fix everything from electrical to automotive to plumbing. Their house, according to people that

00:04:21.720 have been inside, it was like a library. They all read everything from Shakespeare to poetry.

00:04:26.000 In the evening, they studied like theoretical physics and hydrodynamics. And these guys built

00:04:30.560 this crazy greenhouse where they could, you know, grow food all winter and not pay a dime

00:04:33.780 to the electric company. And Chris Knight, you know, people I spoke to that went to high school with

00:04:37.800 him, considered him shy. Some people said nerdy, but no one expected him to do something as radical

00:04:43.720 as he did. Anyway, so Christopher Knight quit the world at age 20, which is extraordinarily young

00:04:51.240 for a hermit. I just imagine never getting another piece of advice from your elder after the age of 1.00

00:04:57.500 20. I mean, I'm, uh, I'm 48 years old and I still call my father for advice frequently. He

00:05:03.720 drove his car, Subaru Brat, into the woods of central Maine and abandoned it there through the keys in the

00:05:10.740 center console. And at the age of 20 with very little supplies, just the most scant amount of

00:05:17.200 camping gear, no maps, no compass walked into the woods of central Maine and wasn't seen again

00:05:23.460 for 27 years. It's an incredible story. And I do want to emphasize that everything I'm saying tonight

00:05:28.900 is not only true, but it has been thoroughly vetted by fact checkers and lawyers and the police

00:05:35.420 investigators and everything. This is a true story. No fake news going on here at the art of

00:05:40.500 manliness. So what year was this? That's another important factor because he, you know, probably

00:05:44.940 missed a lot in 27 years. Yeah. So Chris Knight departed the world, I believe it was 1986 and wasn't

00:05:52.500 pulled out of the woods until 2013. So just imagine that in 1986, there had been, I think Reagan was

00:06:00.900 president. There were no cell phones. Nobody had heard of the internet yet. It's not just even the

00:06:06.800 years. It's like the years of his life between the ages of 20 and 47. Most people, you know, more or

00:06:13.200 less live their entire life. Before that, you're sort of a young kid. And after that, you're sort of

00:06:17.380 middle-aged man. This is when most people go to school, pick their job, get married, have a family,

00:06:23.500 you know, make all these massive life changes, buy a house, you know, figure things out. But this guy

00:06:28.380 lived by himself for basically the heart of his life. So the next question is like, why? Like,

00:06:34.480 what caused him to do it? I mean, most, was it a Unabomber thing where he's like fed up with society,

00:06:39.280 wanted to get away from it? Did he have some sort of spiritual motive? Like what,

00:06:42.800 why did, what caused him to drive his car in the middle of the woods and just give it up and then

00:06:46.260 walk out into it? Yeah. I mean, I think that's the operative question. Why? And of course, that was the

00:06:50.220 first question on my mind. It was like, how did he survive? Which we can get into, but why,

00:06:54.580 why would you quit the world for 27 years? And I'll try and be as brief as possible. And the

00:06:59.560 answer is actually sort of simple, but the reason why it's very difficult to imagine is that most

00:07:04.520 people, me, you, I'm sure the vast majority of people listening to this don't really spend much

00:07:09.960 time alone. And we really, as humans, we really don't like to spend that much time alone. It's

00:07:14.800 clear like, you know, watch anybody when they have like 12 idle seconds, what's the first thing most

00:07:19.080 people do these days? They fish their cell phone out of their pocket and start to connect in some way or

00:07:23.700 another. But Chris Knight, like, you know, despite the fact that 99.9% of us don't like to be alone,

00:07:30.840 there has been throughout human history since the beginning of recorded time, which goes back about

00:07:36.020 5,000 years in every culture at all times, there's been a thin, but distinct stream of people that

00:07:42.980 really wanted to be alone. And there is even a genetic component to this. And Chris Knight expressed

00:07:48.080 many of the same things that, you know, the hermits throughout history have said, which is that

00:07:52.320 he always felt a little uncomfortable around other people more than a little uncomfortable.

00:07:57.520 And he really liked his own company. And it was like, he described it as this sort of

00:08:02.360 gravitational pull. You know, when I was talking to Chris Knight, you know, I was guessing, you know,

00:08:07.100 well, you, did you commit a crime? Were you embarrassed about something? Were you confused

00:08:10.520 about, say, you know, this is the eighties in central Maine? Were you confused about your

00:08:13.400 sexuality? Something. And he said, no, no, it was nothing specific like that. And really anything like

00:08:18.320 that's not going to keep you away for 27 years. So Chris Knight had this radical idea of how he

00:08:23.860 wanted to live his life. And he decided to attempt it and decided to fulfill his most radical idea,

00:08:29.580 pretty much probably more fully than, I'll just speak for myself, more fully than I will ever dare.

00:08:34.680 And probably most people listening will ever dare. And why did he leave the world? He left the world

00:08:40.440 because he just didn't feel comfortable being around other people. He felt this tug to be alone.

00:08:45.520 But the better question, Brad, the better question is why did he stay? And the answer to that question,

00:08:52.220 I find really fascinating. He stayed alone because he really liked it. He expressed a great deal of

00:09:00.740 contentment. Now he definitely suffered during winters and definitely suffered from hunger sometimes,

00:09:06.300 but overall he said he loved being alone. He expressed more contentment about his life than most people

00:09:14.380 I meet out here in the world. And so he left because he found this strong tug, but he stayed

00:09:19.100 because he was happy. I mean, what are we all searching for in life? Life, liberty,

00:09:22.900 the pursuit of happiness. He found it. Yeah. We'll get into how he's able to do this.

00:09:27.500 I thought it was interesting when he finally got caught, there was all these therapists and analysts

00:09:32.800 trying to figure out what was that component. He felt uncomfortable around people. Was he autistic or

00:09:39.400 did he have some sort of other thing? But the consensus was there was no consensus that something

00:09:44.420 was quote unquote wrong with Chris Knight. He just had a tendency, he wanted to be by himself and he

00:09:50.120 enjoyed it. I mean, of course, I can't blame anyone for thinking like, oh, what's wrong with this guy?

00:09:55.320 Yeah. Because that's exactly what I thought. And he, Chris Knight was examined by a state psychologist

00:10:00.040 who offered a couple of things, the obvious sort of like the Asperger's or something on the autism

00:10:04.920 spectrum. But I spoke with many, you know, people who said they couldn't make a specific diagnosis

00:10:09.920 without actually talking to Chris Knight himself, but really reviewed the case. And as you just said,

00:10:14.600 there really is nothing, no diagnosable syndrome that you can pin on Chris Knight. Many autism experts said to

00:10:22.900 me, we just could not consider him to be on the autism spectrum. There's just, he had to plan

00:10:27.720 ahead. There's no, in the annals of autism, there's no examples of a person who survived by themselves

00:10:32.920 for this long, who can plan ahead, who had all these, you know, he just didn't fit any diagnosis

00:10:39.320 at all. In fact, you know, it'd be like saying, you know, every hermit has a problem. In fact, you know, 0.88

00:10:45.140 and I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to get too deep into this, but the truth is like,

00:10:49.680 you know, probably there's two or three days a week where I'm, you know, driving, driving my three

00:10:53.800 kids around and they're fighting in the backseat and I'm stuck in traffic and there's terrible news

00:10:58.160 coming out of the radio and six, you know, text messages. My phone's binging constantly and I'm

00:11:02.100 late for not only my projects, but the meeting I'm supposed to be at. And I'm sort of stressed out

00:11:07.000 and I'm thinking that, you know, it's not really Chris Knight. It's crazy. It's, it's the rest of us.

00:11:11.380 And I really mean that.

00:11:12.820 Yeah. And like he, he was kind of self-aware of that. He, when you talk to him, you know, he'd say like,

00:11:17.840 I know people think I'm crazy. I understand that. But like, maybe you guys are the crazy ones. Like

00:11:23.120 he was very, like, he was very philosophical about his solitude, even though he wouldn't say that he's

00:11:28.120 being philosophical.

00:11:29.220 Right. So, you know, just briefly to, you know, to keep the story a little coherent, you know,

00:11:33.800 Chris Knight planned to spend his entire life in the woods. He never wanted to come out ever,

00:11:41.580 not 27 years, not ever. He wanted to, he planned to die completely anonymously. But as I mentioned,

00:11:47.160 he did steal food and other survival supplies and books and was eventually caught. And we can get

00:11:54.240 into that. But, um, and so it was forcibly removed from his solitude. And that's the only reason I was

00:12:00.700 able to talk to him. He was actually in jail. And so most of our, the time we met was in a jail

00:12:05.660 visiting room. And if there is one thing I can say about Chris Knight, and there's lots of things I can

00:12:11.520 say about him, but he is extraordinarily intelligent. I rarely encountered someone who

00:12:18.420 could not just quote from a thousand books. He seemed to have a photographic memory, though.

00:12:23.500 He denied it. I don't have a photographic memory. I just remember everything. Seems to me like,

00:12:28.360 and as you mentioned, he said he didn't leave the world to make any statement. He wasn't trying to

00:12:32.320 make any of us feel bad about our decisions. He just did what he wanted to do. He did feel terrible

00:12:37.920 about having to steal. And we can, you know, that's a whole other issue, whether, you know,

00:12:42.960 whether, whether Chris Knight should be forgiven or not for his crimes. And nobody's wrong on that

00:12:47.760 one. But he, you know, he felt that he found the place where he was most content in the world. And

00:12:53.020 if, if for other people, it was, you know, in the middle of a office building or, you know,

00:12:57.560 sitting in front of a computer most of the day or raising a family, then he never, he never wanted

00:13:01.840 anyone to feel bad about their own choices, but had this very sort of, I don't know,

00:13:06.060 sophisticated, intelligent, this sort of inscrutable air about him where he felt that

00:13:10.240 his choices were completely logical for him. And it wasn't like scary. Cause like a lot of

00:13:14.440 times, you know, hermits or people are going to go out, like they kind of scare you because they 0.98

00:13:17.180 go out there for like scary reasons. Like I just said, he didn't judge others. He's like,

00:13:20.540 I just want to do my thing and be left alone. Yeah. Unfortunately. And Chris Knight was aware of

00:13:24.800 this. He did frighten other people. He broke into about, there are a couple of maybe 300 houses

00:13:31.800 second homes in the Lake region where Chris Knight, he camped in the same site, Chris Knight

00:13:37.320 for more than 25 of his 27 years. He'd basically spent a little more than a year wandering around

00:13:42.180 the woods of central Maine, really not knowing exactly where he was, but sensing it. And then

00:13:46.720 found this amazing spot in the woods, not too far from civilization, but certainly far enough so that

00:13:53.080 he could be completely alone and broke into approximately, he had about a hundred cabins in

00:13:57.860 his repertoire. And really some people were extraordinarily disturbed by his actions.

00:14:03.400 And he knew this and didn't feel great about it, but sort of made the decision that he would

00:14:08.200 rather be alone and steal and in the world and law abiding. And so it's a very complicated and sort

00:14:13.820 of, he never quite, uh, Chris Knight himself never quite resolved the conundrum about being a thief.

00:14:20.380 So let's talk about, okay, you know, how he survived for 27 years. So you've been talking about

00:14:23.660 he's been stealing food. What was his camp like? And, you know, cause like I just said,

00:14:28.680 Maine winters are crazy cold during the springtime. They have this terrible black fly season where

00:14:34.160 they just swarm you and bite you. It's terrible. He never lit a fire. So how was he able to build

00:14:40.680 himself a place to live comfortably? I mean, yeah, relatively comfortably for 25 years.

00:14:45.800 Yeah. So, I mean, Chris Knight's story is literally unbelievable. Like, uh, you know,

00:14:49.700 everybody I asked, I'd say about 80% of the residents of central Maine, the victims of his

00:14:56.040 crime. And normally the closer I get to a story, the more people explain it, the more believable

00:15:00.000 it is. But this was, this was almost the opposite. The closer I came to the area Chris lived, the less

00:15:05.960 people could believe it, you know, and a few of the things people said to me were like, you know,

00:15:09.420 how is it possible to go 27 years without lighting a fire? How is it possible to go 27 years without

00:15:15.260 seeing a doctor? You know, how is it possible to have a campsite, not that far away that no one's

00:15:19.920 ever in by, you know, how did Chris Knight survive the great ice storm of 1998 and on and on and on.

00:15:25.000 And I was able to ask Chris Knight all of these questions. And I was searching for like one,

00:15:31.600 you know, when someone tells you a story and you find one tiny thing that, that contradicts what

00:15:36.740 they're saying, well, then the whole story falls apart. Like a house of cards, like if I had gone to

00:15:40.240 his site and found one charred piece of wood that indicated there was a fire, the whole thing would fall

00:15:44.380 apart. And I'm going to tell you, I never, after I spent three years working on this book, I never

00:15:50.060 found a single thing that contradicted anything Chris Knight said. And even the police officers

00:15:55.840 that arrested him exclaimed that they probably had rarely met someone who seemed so honest as Chris

00:16:02.040 Knight. So just quickly, like, how do you go 27 years without getting sick or needing to see a doctor?

00:16:07.100 Well, the way we get sick is by being around each other. We exchange bacteria, we exchange germs,

00:16:13.400 we exchange viruses. If you're not around other people, you don't get sick. I mean, you can still

00:16:17.680 get something like diabetes or cancer. But when I talked to doctors, they said it made perfect sense

00:16:22.320 that Chris Knight never got sick. It's in terms of, say, the great ice storm of 1998, as Chris Knight

00:16:26.720 himself said, you know, it was like 28 degrees during that great ice storm. It really wasn't that

00:16:30.220 cold. It was terrible for the electrical wires and he couldn't drive a car 10 feet without skidding off

00:16:34.440 the road. But it was perfectly fine for him. Not only that, he actually liked it to put a layer of ice

00:16:39.240 over the snow and he could walk around without leaving footprints, he wished it was a great ice storm

00:16:43.240 every week. Now, he told me to find his site and a lot of the answers would be clear.

00:16:49.660 And I spent most of my life in Montana, I've spent a lot of time camping and hiking in the woods. I

00:16:54.900 consider myself a decent woodsman. But wow, I have never seen woods as thick, as dense, as difficult

00:17:03.400 to navigate as Chris Knight's forest. Not only were there tons of trees tangled all over each other

00:17:08.200 in a very thick undergrowth, the last ice age smothered Maine in glaciers. And when the glaciers

00:17:13.480 retreated, they left behind these enormous automobile-sized boulders, which are just everywhere

00:17:18.440 in Chris Knight's woods. The woods are so thick, not even that many deer walk through. It's just

00:17:22.540 impossible to navigate. Chris Knight learned to walk in these woods almost silently. He memorized all

00:17:29.200 these patterns where you could step on a root and on a rock. He could not snap a branch. He could

00:17:33.640 not even leave a footprint. And it took me a long time to find this site, even though I knew

00:17:38.540 approximately where it was and that it was very close, you know, within, if you knew exactly where

00:17:42.740 you're going, three minutes to the nearest mud driveway. And it was one of the most, I'm still

00:17:51.620 imagining right now as I'm talking to you, the first time I found this site, it was like the entrance

00:17:55.780 was between these two boulders that when you looked at it, most directions, it looked like

00:18:00.500 it was one big rock. I called it the elephant rock, but from a certain angle, you could see

00:18:03.900 that there was a big crack in the rock where I guess it had split during the glacial period.

00:18:08.400 And you could sort of twist your body and sneak between these two rocks. And I did that.

00:18:15.000 And there was a site and it was like one of the most gorgeous things I've ever seen. And I told you,

00:18:20.900 I've spent a lot of times in the woods is like Chris Knight had cleared out like a cube of forest.

00:18:25.760 Imagine the forest is dense as a Brillo pad all around you. And suddenly you walk into this clearing, 0.98

00:18:30.440 but it even had a roof overhead because the tree branches linked. And, you know, Chris Knight was

00:18:35.720 aware of this. And a couple of police officers said they did a few flyovers looking for this dude's

00:18:40.040 camp. Well, you know, I never found it. And it was understandable why, because there was a roof

00:18:44.240 overhead. It was completely cleared out. His floor was perfectly flat. And what Chris Knight had done

00:18:49.700 for years and years and years, he stole and read a lot of magazines and books. And very often when

00:18:54.340 he was finished with them, he would make what he called bricks. He would tie stacks of them together,

00:18:59.580 tape them with electrical tape, which he stole the electrical tape and bury them in his site and

00:19:05.100 make a perfectly flat floor that also was excellent for draining rainwater. And so he had this perfectly

00:19:11.900 flat floor, this beautifully cleared out space, an impossible to find spot in a dense woods. And I spent

00:19:19.180 five nights there across all seasons. And, you know, even, even to this moment right now talking

00:19:24.780 to you when I'm, when I feel stressed out, when I feel like the world is getting a little too loud

00:19:29.060 and crazy, I think about that spot. I never went there with anybody else. I spent that time alone

00:19:33.860 and it was amazing. You could hear the forest, you could see not too far into the forest because it was

00:19:39.360 so dense, but you really felt like you were in this, I don't know, have you ever been to like one of

00:19:42.940 those aquariums where there's like a tube where you can walk through and you're like underwater? I could felt

00:19:46.920 like I was like in a room in the forest with like, but yet able to breathe and have my own little

00:19:51.360 space. It, I don't think I could really overstate how fantastically lovely this spot was. And I

00:19:57.740 understood why he wanted to stay there. You know, I don't know if I want to stay there 25 years, but

00:20:02.120 boy, I could use a couple of long weekends there now and again. Right. We're gonna take a quick break

00:20:06.040 for your words from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So as I said earlier, this book, you use it to

00:20:13.160 explore the idea of solitude and hermitage. Let's talk about, I mean, as you mentioned earlier,

00:20:16.940 since the beginning of recorded history, there've been hermits. Can you kind of give us the rough 0.99

00:20:21.280 thumbnail sketch of the history of hermitage in humanity? Yeah. The very first, some of the very

00:20:27.840 first writings we have that exist, some writings etched on animal bones from ancient China and some

00:20:33.980 writings scratched onto clay tablets from Mesopotamia mentioned wild men are shamans, people living alone

00:20:40.180 in the wilderness. And so, as I said, you know, certainly before recorded history and for all of

00:20:45.740 recorded history, there have been people that wanted to be by themselves. The majority of these

00:20:51.140 people did it for religious reasons to seek a closer relationship with God. There's the famous

00:20:57.620 desert fathers of early Christianity. Many Buddhists, of course, go on long retreats. Now, Chris Knight 0.90

00:21:03.680 did not follow a formal religion and did not escape for any religious reasons. But the

00:21:09.600 religion is the main reason. A secondary reason is sort of what I call protester hermits. You know,

00:21:14.460 a lot of people left the world because of war, because of pollution. Even right now in Japan, 0.98

00:21:20.900 there are approximately a million young kids, most of them male, called hikikomori, which means

00:21:27.100 pulling away people that live in their rooms, often for more than a decade. And, you know, this is sort of

00:21:34.100 a, there's more than a million of them. It's sort of a epidemic in Japan. There's even like therapists

00:21:38.280 that offer counseling through the internet, but people that sort of just quit the pressure

00:21:42.000 cooker society that's especially prevalent in Japan. And so these are like people that are

00:21:47.220 protesting. And then the last type of hermit is someone like a Henry David Thoreau, someone who 0.78

00:21:53.120 does, who leaves for maybe artistic or self-fulfillment reasons. You know, there's been

00:21:58.680 also some sort of, sort of tangential hermits. In the early 1800s, there was a fad in England among

00:22:03.940 the aristocracy. If you had a large estate, it was a fad to have a, to hire a hermit. They were 0.95

00:22:09.580 called ornamental hermits. And there's these people put advertisements in newspapers offering

00:22:13.880 to pay, it was like $7 a month for a person who was willing to grow a long beard and live in a cave

00:22:20.840 on a estate in the British countryside. And, you know, these, these aristocrats felt that hermits 0.98

00:22:25.920 sort of had the air of wisdom and maybe, I don't know, mystery or something. And it became this

00:22:30.920 very amusing fad that lasted 30 or so years. Yeah. And are there hermits still today that, 1.00

00:22:36.740 I mean, I'm sure there are hermits still today. You just mentioned the people in Japan, but like, 1.00

00:22:40.000 I think you mentioned there's like internet forms dedicated to being a hermit, which seems sort of

00:22:43.760 counterintuitive. Yeah. You know, actually. Paradoxical. I have hermit-ish tendencies. I am

00:22:49.400 certainly by no means a hermit, but, you know, my job writing involves spending a lot of time by

00:22:53.940 myself and sometimes I even find it enjoyable. And I, you know, I was a long distance runner and things

00:22:59.080 like that. So while I am by no means a hermit, I sort of get the need to be apart from people.

00:23:05.200 I do need my alone time. There are hermits today. Now I want to say one more thing, which I sometimes 0.89

00:23:10.920 I'm almost like, I don't know if shy is the right word. Like sometimes there's things that are so

00:23:15.580 extraordinary that you just don't even bother to say it because people don't believe it. But I'm

00:23:18.680 just going to say one more thing. I lost my mind researching hermits. Now I will not brag about too 1.00

00:23:24.140 many things on this world, but I will tell you might never speak to anyone who knows more about

00:23:28.500 hermits than I do. I read more than a hundred books about hermits. I read thousands of articles

00:23:33.060 about hermits. I read everything there was to know. I just wanted to compare Chris Knight's

00:23:36.980 experiences with other hermits. And I'm going to tell you, I never found a single example of another 1.00

00:23:45.120 person who went 27 years without at least somebody checking up on them, bringing them food, just asking

00:23:52.080 if they were okay. Never did I find a single example. I will say that with pretty fair authority

00:23:59.280 that Chris Knight right here with 7 billion or so people on planet earth in the age of, you know,

00:24:03.940 Facebook and Twitter, I think Chris Knight might be the most solitary known human who ever lived.

00:24:10.960 That's great. What's interesting, you talk about how even like the hermits, like they sort of debated

00:24:15.740 whether Chris Knight was a true hermit. I mean, what was going on there? Cause yeah,

00:24:19.720 he didn't see anybody except for a lone hiker. You know, there's a little hermit community, 0.96

00:24:23.460 which sounds like an oxymoron, but yes, there's a, there's a wonderful website called

00:24:28.180 hermitary.com. Check it out. I read every single article on it. It's a great, if you're at all

00:24:32.780 interested in hermits, this is a great storehouse and they actually have a, you know, a, I guess you

00:24:37.860 could call it a chat room. Now you have to prove that you're a hermit and I did not qualify to join the 0.98

00:24:42.380 chat room, but I was privy to some of the things that people write. And mostly, you know, it's not

00:24:46.780 like they're chatting with each other. You just sort of post a message and log off. Usually there

00:24:51.220 was only one or two people on the site at a time. And even Chris Knight said to me that the internet

00:24:55.860 sounded interesting to him because you could, you could send a message to someone without actually

00:25:01.200 talking to them via telephone or meeting them in person. So in a very strange way, if you are a very

00:25:07.180 shy person or have hermit tendencies, email is a great way to communicate with someone because

00:25:12.320 there is no face-to-face, there is no back and forth. There's no conversation at all. It's a,

00:25:16.760 it's, it's, it's, it sort of makes sense if you think about it, but this community really debated

00:25:22.980 whether you could consider Chris Knight to be a hermit because he stole. And that goes against the

00:25:28.700 ideal of hermits. Now there are no official rule books for hermits by the way. So it's not like,

00:25:34.700 you know, you know, there's a, it's, it's not baseball here. It's not like, you know,

00:25:38.160 we can do the replay and decide whether he's hermit or not a hermit, but they thought that

00:25:42.180 anyone who invaded other people's privacy or their lives didn't, didn't deserve the lofty

00:25:47.820 label of hermit. And Chris Knight himself said he didn't care whether he was a hermit or not.

00:25:51.500 That wasn't that he didn't put a label at all on what he did and putting a label on anything is a

00:25:55.720 really worthless exercise. And, you know, I sometimes love talking with Chris Knight because

00:25:59.120 he always made me feel that even writing an entire book about him was sort of a, just a egotistical trip

00:26:04.080 on my part. And I would sometimes, uh, you know, he's like, Oh, you're just, so you're going to take

00:26:08.080 your thoughts and package them in a commodity and ask people to spend money to read it. Well,

00:26:12.100 very, very good for you. Well, you mentioned Thoreau. He's kind of held as America's prototypical

00:26:17.440 hermit, but Knight, when you asked, you brought up Thoreau with Chris, like Chris said, no,

00:26:21.740 he's a dilettante. He's a phony. Why, why did Knight have so much disdain for Thoreau?

00:26:26.220 Oh man, you know, I love, I think that Walden is one of the most, uh, it's, I reread Walden

00:26:33.300 doing this research for this book. And I may be, maybe I was too young when I read it the first

00:26:38.020 time, because I was like, all right, I'll give Walden a shot. It's a very difficult thing, but

00:26:41.340 boy, I really found it to be beautifully written. And I'm a fan of Thoreau now, you know, so I was

00:26:47.400 like, of course, you know, Walden Pond was in Massachusetts, not that far from, you know, New

00:26:51.000 England, crotchety people, guys going off by themselves. I'm like, of course, I'm going to,

00:26:55.060 you know, compare you to Thoreau. I meant that as a compliment, Chris Knight had a such humorously

00:27:00.000 negative reaction to Thoreau. Now, let me just tell you a couple of things about Henry David

00:27:04.300 Thoreau. First of all, Thoreau spent only two years in his cabin in Walden Pond. He walked into

00:27:09.180 the town of Concord frequently. His mother did his laundry. He once had a dinner party that had 20

00:27:14.140 guests. And the worst thing Thoreau did, of course, was write Walden. And the reason why Chris Knight

00:27:20.560 felt that Thoreau did not deserve to be a hermit is because when you write a book, you're basically

00:27:25.860 telling everyone in the world, like, you know, look at me, here I am. This is what I think.

00:27:30.460 Chris Knight didn't care about anybody else. His back was totally turned to the world. The thought

00:27:36.060 of he didn't even write one sentence down his entire time. The Woods didn't take one photo,

00:27:40.640 didn't draw any pictures. These were all for other people to see. Chris Knight just really

00:27:45.300 wasn't interested in anybody else. And he thought that anybody who went off by themselves to write a

00:27:50.400 poem or, you know, paint a picture or do an opera was really just spending time alone so that they

00:27:55.700 could show off for the rest of the world. And Chris had no interest in that.

00:27:58.660 Yeah. And as I was reading your book, you know, reading about the history of hermits and being 0.99

00:28:02.720 alone and even Chris Knight's, I thought it was interesting that being a hermit, both conceptually 0.82

00:28:07.000 and practically, requires other people, right? Like, as you said, these hermits in the past, 1.00

00:28:13.080 they have people bring them food, make pilgrims, check on them. Like, but even Chris, even though he

00:28:17.220 didn't see people, he still depended on people in their cabins to provide food for him.

00:28:22.900 So it's like, it's like pretty much like this idea of like the self-contained,

00:28:26.080 self-reliant person. Like it's kind of a myth. Like you need, we need other people.

00:28:30.580 I think you're absolutely right. I mean, there's no shortage of contradictions in this tale.

00:28:35.320 Even Chris Knight would nod and say that there are the, Chris Knight, of course he relied on

00:28:39.740 other people. He stole everything he needed to survive. In fact, when he was arrested after 27 years,

00:28:47.920 the only thing in the world he had that he could say was his, that he didn't steal, were his eyeglasses.

00:28:54.640 And in fact, the arresting officers were also disbelieving of his story. They found a high

00:28:59.960 school photo of Chris Knight. He actually went to school in central Maine, not too far away from

00:29:04.440 where he was arrested. And the high school yearbook was brought to them. And lo and behold, there was

00:29:09.500 Chris Knight in a high school yearbook at the age of whatever, 18, wearing the same set of glasses

00:29:15.940 glasses that he was arrested in at age 47. And when they saw that there were, that there were

00:29:21.420 the same pair of glasses, both arresting officers said to me that there was something in their head

00:29:25.440 that clicked, that this guy was telling the truth. It would have been really, really complicated for

00:29:30.540 a shy person, not seeking publicity to make this all up. It just didn't make sense that he would

00:29:35.780 make this up. And, uh, you know, the, the, the pair of glasses really was the moment when

00:29:40.860 people realized that Chris Knight was telling the truth.

00:29:44.340 Did Chris ever describe to you like what it felt like being alone all those years?

00:29:50.460 He did. Yeah. You know, why, how, and then what did it feel like? And I have to tell you,

00:29:56.200 again, this is one of those topics that just sort of defies imagination. Chris Knight, he read a lot.

00:30:02.420 He even played a couple of old handheld video games that he stole. He had a handheld video game policy

00:30:06.980 that he only stole them that were at least two generations old. He didn't want to deprive any

00:30:10.520 children of their Christmas presents. He said, and besides in a couple of years, he'd be stealing

00:30:15.000 them anyway, but he didn't listen to the radio a little bit, but for the most part, what Chris

00:30:20.760 Knight did, what do you do for 27 years old by yourself? For the most part, what Chris Knight did

00:30:25.460 was what you and I would term nothing. He just sat there, but Chris Knight told me that he was

00:30:32.340 never for an instant bored. In fact, he said that he didn't really even understand the concept of

00:30:40.140 boredom. And then what's even more impressive, and I don't think I could capture the poetry of

00:30:45.020 Chris Knight as well as he, you know, he spoke very beautifully and I tried to capture it in the book,

00:30:48.360 but I will paraphrase. He said to me that he didn't actually even feel alone. In fact, he told me,

00:30:56.720 and this sentiment was repeated in various forms in dozens upon dozens of books written by hermits,

00:31:02.860 religious and non-religious alike. He said that rather than feeling alone, he felt absolutely and

00:31:09.320 entirely connected to like the rest of the universe, the world. He said that, you know, there was not

00:31:15.940 even a mirror in his camp, so he didn't even know what he looked like. He said that after a very short

00:31:21.680 period of time alone, he wasn't entirely aware of where he ended and the forest began. He said he

00:31:28.420 just felt intimately connected with everything and never lonely. It's, the way he described it was,

00:31:34.940 in fact, it frankly, it gave me sort of, it sort of gave me chills. It's like, I feel like people in

00:31:40.200 this outside world, you know, as opposed to Chris Knight's world where we have a billion video games

00:31:44.140 and a million books and a lot of things to occupy our mind, people often express that they're bored or have

00:31:49.920 nothing to do. And Chris Knight, without any of these distractions, never felt that for a second.

00:31:55.620 So why is it that Chris Knight and these other hermits can feel that? And then we use solitude

00:32:00.620 as punishment in our prisons. And that, you know, there's research that says that people basically go

00:32:04.540 crazy when they're alone like that. So what's the difference? What's going on there?

00:32:08.260 Right. As you mentioned, the harshest punishment in the United States penal system, besides the death penalty,

00:32:14.620 is solitary confinement. And in fact, Amnesty International has declared that, you know,

00:32:19.340 spending more than two weeks in solitary confinement, injured torture. A huge percentage

00:32:25.720 of prisoners that are in solitary confinement lose their mind and go crazy. Solitude is a very

00:32:32.900 interesting state. Some people seek it and love it. Most people avoid it at all costs and absolutely

00:32:41.260 hate it. It is one of the reasons why it is fascinating. And so when I talk about people finding solace and

00:32:48.200 people finding joy, I'm talking about voluntary solitude, involuntary solitude is practically

00:32:56.980 torture. And it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's one of the reasons why the subject is extremely

00:33:02.040 fascinating. Most of us just hate it. There was a study conducted by the University of Virginia a couple

00:33:07.800 of years ago in which they showed that about 60% of men and 35% of women would rather give themselves

00:33:14.880 electric shocks than sit quietly with nothing to do for 15 minutes. We really don't like to be alone

00:33:23.180 with ourselves. Humans, you know, humans were one of the reasons most anthropologists consider humans

00:33:29.100 to be the dominant species on the planet. Isn't because we're the fastest animal or the strongest

00:33:33.420 animal, but because we have really big brains. But more importantly, we're able to link them up and

00:33:38.200 work together. We're sort of programmed to work together. And even in the, in Genesis in the Bible,

00:33:43.680 it said, you know, God did not want Adam to be alone. It was like the, one of the first things

00:33:48.260 that God did was like, Oh, he needs, he can't be alone. It's just, it goes to be alone voluntarily

00:33:53.740 for most of us seems to go against everything we've ever felt or heard. But there are, like I said,

00:34:00.880 those that love it, speak so highly of it and talk about such rich experiences. This is voluntary

00:34:06.300 aloneness. There have been like 20 studies done around the world that sort of examine the effects

00:34:13.760 of solitude and quiet on humans. And every study has come up with the exact same conclusions, which

00:34:21.060 is that time alone, time in nature, time by yourself makes you calmer. It makes you healthier.

00:34:29.340 There's the, all the stress hormones are reduced. It makes you smarter. There are tests of memory

00:34:35.340 and reading retention. And it makes you happier. There's really time alone. Voluntary time alone

00:34:43.060 is great for you. You know, humans are what our species is about 2 million years old. And for 99%

00:34:49.360 of the time that we've been humans, we all lived in small groups of hunter gatherers and spent a lot

00:34:53.780 of time alone or in tiny groups in quiet situations. And every single one of our senses

00:35:01.660 is calibrated to that, you know, technology, you know, change, changes very quickly. Evolution

00:35:07.740 is very slow. All, you know, take a hike in the woods. All of us feel good about it. Why? Because

00:35:13.120 that's what all of our senses are calibrated to being quiet in the woods, not playing Nintendo.

00:35:19.040 Right. So 27 years and I was alone. How did he eventually get caught? What, what changed?

00:35:24.420 So as I mentioned, there was this sort of legend that built up, you know, there's several hundred

00:35:30.480 houses around these lakes and everybody was missing, you know, people are missing stakes,

00:35:35.180 their Stephen King novel, their flashlights, their batteries, their sleeping bag. But there

00:35:39.280 were no smashed windows. There was no kicked in doors. Your TV's there, your computer's there,

00:35:44.200 your jewelry's there. People were very confused, but there was definitely something going on. When

00:35:49.220 people examine their cabins very closely, they saw that sometimes the hasp on their window,

00:35:53.560 the lock on their window was open and there were file marks and even some file shavings. So someone

00:35:57.900 had been inside and the police had been called and they couldn't find it. And nobody knew, was it a,

00:36:03.020 was it a neighbor? Was it a, some Vietnam vet that was disgruntled? Was it a gang initiation? Was it,

00:36:09.320 you know, two brothers that both owned cabins on a pond, thought the other was the one who was

00:36:13.880 stealing, you know, nobody knew. And this went on for five, 10, 15, 20, 25 years and became this legend.

00:36:19.740 And the people around the lake gave the legend a name. They called it the North

00:36:23.240 pond hermit, but they really didn't know if there was a hermit. In fact, most people assumed

00:36:27.540 no way would a guy be out there for that long. It was probably some neighbor, some gang initiation,

00:36:32.220 some prank, something. Anyway, finally, after more than a quarter century and intermittent

00:36:38.000 police searches, I mean, really it just sort of fell between the cracks. Like, you know, there's a lot

00:36:41.760 of problems in, in central Maine and somebody stealing hamburger meat and batteries just never made it to

00:36:46.860 like the number one problem for the police department. But a game warden named Terry Hughes,

00:36:52.160 who lived in the area where this legend took place, realized that this was not, this was not

00:36:57.180 the Loch Ness Monster or the Himalayan Yeti. There was something happening and damn it, he was going to

00:37:01.240 solve it. And Terry Hughes is a great guy, but when he puts his mind to something, he sort of puts his

00:37:06.960 mind to it. And like he contacted Homeland Security and I won't get into all the details, but he put like

00:37:11.500 electric eyes around in the forest and he had silent alarms that would ring his cell phone in

00:37:16.460 the middle of the night. And finally, after 27 years, Terry Knight caught the North Pond Hermit

00:37:23.140 red-handed stealing some hamburger meat and cheese from a local summer camp that was closed for the

00:37:29.600 season. And the 27-year reign of the Hermit came to an end. And what was that like for Knight to have

00:37:36.020 his reign in the woods ended? Well, Knight was an extremely cautious thief, but he knew that every

00:37:43.440 time he left his camp in the woods, and even in his camp in the woods, which by the way was on

00:37:47.940 private property, a 200-acre lot, he knew that his time in the woods could come to an end at any

00:37:53.600 moment. And he sort of, he sort of sensed it. He, over the 27 years, he saw technology improve. He's,

00:38:01.260 you know, first there was no security system, then there was these very large clunky cameras,

00:38:05.500 and then they got so small that they could hide inside of smoke detectors. And he knew that

00:38:09.720 technology was getting better, locks were getting better, and that he hoped to stay out there all

00:38:14.040 his life. But while he was certainly startled and shocked, it was, there was always a peace of his

00:38:19.600 mind. As I mentioned, he was a very bright person. There was no part of him that thought,

00:38:23.240 you know, this is a sure thing that I could live out here forever. You know, he was, let's just say he

00:38:28.840 was stoic. He was certainly not happy, but realized that this was a possibility. Terry Hughes,

00:38:35.340 the straight-up law and order man who spent a decade in the Marines before he spent 18 years

00:38:41.840 as a forest game warden, had a very, very interesting reaction. The man who really did

00:38:46.420 most of the arrests was another officer named Diane Vance, who was also involved. But Terry Hughes

00:38:50.660 did most of the heavy lifting. He had a very interesting reaction to Chris Knight. Terry Hughes

00:38:55.540 is an extraordinarily able woodsman, you know, has found many lost hikers, children that were lost in

00:39:01.960 the woods, has just a sixth sense of able to read the woods so well, looking for any snapped branches

00:39:07.680 or even a trace of a partial footprint, couldn't notice these things, and never was able to find

00:39:13.440 Chris Knight. The night of his arrest, he asked Chris Knight to show him his camp in the woods,

00:39:18.900 and Chris Knight led him to it. And Terry Hughes followed Chris Knight, step for step, and is the

00:39:25.400 only known person ever to have witnessed Chris Knight walk in the woods. And he watched Chris

00:39:30.060 Knight walk absolutely silently through this crazily dense forest, stepping on roots that he had stepped

00:39:36.160 on for 20 years, moving, bending, twisting, striding, didn't need a flashlight, didn't break a branch,

00:39:42.720 had memorized the patterns of branches on hundreds of trees, knew how to duck and weave and brought him

00:39:48.480 to his magical site between the elephant rocks. And Terry Hughes said to me, it was possibly the most

00:39:54.740 extraordinary thing, event he had ever witnessed in his life. He had, he thought he was a great

00:40:01.140 woodsman. And then he basically met the king woodsman of all the world and told me that here

00:40:08.700 he is, a law and order guy that just arrested someone who confessed to breaking into homes a thousand

00:40:13.560 times. That's a thousand felonies. And he actually felt a little bit bad for arresting the hermit. 0.96

00:40:20.840 And I mean, what's, what's Chris Knight doing now?

00:40:24.560 So what do you do with a guy like Chris Knight? See, I think one of the, one of the things that

00:40:28.520 also interested me about this story is that, you know, Chris Knight is not clearly completely crazy.

00:40:34.220 And if someone is crazy, we have mental hospitals for them. And Chris Knight is clearly not a violent

00:40:40.400 and evil criminal. And if you are that way, then we have jails for you. What do you do with a person

00:40:47.440 who's not a criminal and not clearly mentally insane, but just doesn't fit into the world?

00:40:52.160 What do we do? What do we do with that person? And the answer is we don't have any spot for that

00:40:57.140 person. We just don't have, we don't know what to do with them. What do you do with Chris Knight?

00:41:01.420 There was a huge debate without getting into too many details. He ended up spending seven months

00:41:06.820 in the county jail. Now, even one break-in, as I mentioned, one unauthorized break-in can get

00:41:12.780 you 10 years in the state penitentiary. He confessed to 1000 of them. So it was possible

00:41:17.900 that he could have spent his entire life locked up in a cell. But even the district attorney realized

00:41:23.120 that someone who had just spent 27 years completely free in the woods, being locked in a cage with

00:41:28.640 another person, whether or not he deserved it was not a just thing. And he spent seven months and was

00:41:34.120 given an extremely harsh probation that if he broke it, he would spend seven years in jail.

00:41:41.260 And Chris Knight observed his probation to the very letter and never made a tiny misstep.

00:41:48.160 Where is he now? Well, Chris Knight gave me the most valuable thing he owns in all the world,

00:41:54.200 which was his story. And he asked for nothing in return. He did not want me to pay him.

00:41:59.560 He told his story because he realized that he would be hounded by journalists probably

00:42:05.240 all his life. I was one of 500 journalists that requested an interview. And as far as I know,

00:42:12.660 he only spoke to me. I'm very, very fortunate. And I will remain grateful to Chris Knight for

00:42:16.940 sharing his story with me for all my life. Thank you, Chris. He told me a story. He realized that he

00:42:23.500 would be hounded all his life. And if he told me his story, that he could sort of use it as a rampart,

00:42:27.700 as a wall, as a defense. Like if you want to read about Chris Knight, take a look at the book,

00:42:31.780 but please leave him alone. He told me a story. And then he said, please, Mike, we're not friends.

00:42:36.300 There was no phony journalist subject friendship going on here. He is a real true hermit, Chris

00:42:41.960 Knight. He said when he was done, he said, I really don't want to see you again. I'm done talking to

00:42:46.040 you. And while I would love to receive a letter or a call from Chris Knight one day, I have left him

00:42:52.140 completely alone. We're not in contact. So I'm not exactly sure where he is, but to the best of my

00:42:56.640 knowledge, he's still living in central Maine, has carved out, he's truly a survivor, has carved

00:43:02.420 out a very quiet life for himself and has, as far as I know, is not being disturbed by the outside

00:43:09.340 world. So writing this story and interacting with Chris all these years, what did you learn

00:43:16.780 about solitude? And did you find yourself looking for more of it in your life after interacting with

00:43:22.720 Chris? Yeah, I sort of touched on this during our conversation about how our senses are calibrated

00:43:28.920 to the woods and how it seems like we avoid being by ourselves at all costs. I mean, literally to the

00:43:36.140 point that we have an extra 90 seconds, we will fish out our phone and send a text message or view our

00:43:43.200 Twitter feed. We like feel this crazy need to be in constant connection. I have a weird idea and it's

00:43:48.640 possibly the simplest suggestion that anyone could ever make. I bet you I'm not alone here in thinking

00:43:56.840 that the tone, the tempo, the discourse, the public, what's going on in society right now seems a little

00:44:06.060 bit crazy. I think we are tearing ourselves apart. I think that it doesn't matter where you are in the

00:44:12.200 political spectrum. I think that we are really, really feeling like anger comes before any sort

00:44:18.320 of understanding or compromise. I think we're I think we're I think we're all going crazy to be to

00:44:22.400 be honest with you. I have an idea. I this is something that I have been doing. It would be

00:44:28.180 wonderful if every single person who is listening to this spends I'm not saying 27 years alone. I'm

00:44:33.800 saying 10 minutes. The next time you have nothing to do. Do nothing. Don't pull out your phone.

00:44:40.980 Don't call anyone. Don't check your email. Don't do anything. Just be there quietly. I don't care

00:44:49.180 if you're in the middle of a city street or in your bedroom or in a city park. Don't do anything for

00:44:55.600 just a couple of minutes. Try it. How can that be a hard thing to do? I'm just asking people to do

00:45:00.760 nothing. I'm not asking you to go and take some crazy meditation class or you know lift weights every

00:45:05.280 morning for two hours or take yoga. Just do nothing. I think if everybody in the entire world

00:45:11.500 did nothing for 10 or 15 minutes a day, the temperature of the society, this craziness

00:45:17.980 that's going on would be decreased by an essential margin. We might all actually get along a little

00:45:23.660 better. It's just my idea. I like that. Do nothing. Well, Michael, this has been a great

00:45:28.140 conversation. Where can people go learn more about the book? And I promise you, after you guys read this

00:45:31.800 book, you're going to kind of want to go out in the main woods by yourself. Literally. Yeah. Just

00:45:35.820 for take a, take a long weekend and maybe take this book along. It's called the stranger in the

00:45:39.560 woods. Take a long weekend. I have a website. Um, I go by Michael Finkel, very funny rhyming name. So

00:45:45.520 www.michaelfinkel.com. If you're inspired to, there's a contact tab. Send me a note. It takes me

00:45:51.780 sometimes a little while to get back in touch, but I answer everybody. Even if you want to say

00:45:56.240 something negative, positive questions, feel free to get me on my website, michaelfinkel.com.

00:46:01.360 Michael Finkel, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:46:03.720 Thank you for having me on. It really is a fun and rich topic to discuss and appreciate it.

00:46:08.480 I guess there's Michael Finkel. He's the author of the book, The Stranger in the Woods,

00:46:11.300 The Extraordinary Story, The Last True Hermit. Find that book on amazon.com and bookstores

00:46:15.220 everywhere. You can also find out more information about Michael's work at michaelfinkel.com. Also

00:46:19.100 check out our show notes at aom.is slash hermit. You can find links to resources where we

00:46:23.420 delve deeper into this topic.

00:46:31.360 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and

00:46:40.840 advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy the

00:46:44.360 podcast and have gotten something out of it, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to do this

00:46:47.220 review on iTunes or Stitcher. That helps out a lot. And if you've already done that, please share the

00:46:50.420 show with your friends and family. That's how more it gets out about the show, the more the merrier

00:46:53.920 around here. As always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay

00:46:57.900 telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - June 21, 2021

The Stranger in the Woods — The Story of the Last True Hermit

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