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Comment by digler999 | Hacker News Reader

I dont even think it's worth reading about him. He's a criminal who got away with it for a long time because of geography and the supply and demand relationship between cold weather and unoccupied cabins.

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If you think of him in that terms, sure. I think much of the disappointment people have here is that they were expecting a man vs nature story and instead read about a thief who lived off the fat of the modern world. The responses in this thread differ from those from the earlier discussion [0] oska linked. I suspect it's due to the different titles and resulting expectations.

Personally, I didn't know about original thread when it was posted, and your original comment actually prompted me to find the GQ story and read it under the expectation that I was going to learn about a societal mooch.

What ended up making an impression was Christopher Knight's unique writing style, his observations on everyday interactions we take for granted ("I’m not used to seeing people’s faces," he said. "There’s too much information there. Aren’t you aware of it? Too much, too fast."), and how he survived those winters.

And yes, I get it, he stole. He used stolen propane tanks to fire up the stolen Coleman to melt snow in a stolen pot to drink water. But still, he fattened himself up for winter and camped in the winter months of Maine while not leaving behind footprints for 25 years. I was impressed. Yes it's not Primitive Technology [0] ingenuity, but Mr Knight is still an outlier and shared an experience I don't encounter every day.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205993 [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA

The morality of his actions aside, it's a little disappointing because it's not as if he lived without human contact for all that time, there were always people in the visible distance but he just chose not to engage with them. There's recluses in every neighborhood who live like that. I think I was expecting more of a Robinson Crusoe/Castaway type situation.

Contact is engagement. Just because you can see someone doesn't mean you're in contact with them.

I can see that. He's not Crusoe, but I still found his story interesting because this is someone I usually don't get a chance to talk to (as most recluses are).

And maybe it's my age and experience, but 25-27 years is a really impressive time span to be focused on doing one thing.

The singular focus is definitely interesting.

I would like to have learned more about how he feels about how the world has changed, he's like Rip Van Winkle or a time traveler in that respect. But most likely as a person who would voluntarily isolate himself from society in the first place, he probably doesn't care about the world.

Not leaving a footprint? I remember when this was on the local news - he had a helluva mess in the hobo camp he was living in. It's also not exactly a big secret that he was in the area stealing shit all those years - people knew, and some of them left stuff out for him.

A literal footprint: "The first snow usually came in November. Chris was always fearful about leaving a single boot print anywhere, which is impossible to avoid in a blanket of snow. And so for the next six months, until the spring thaw in April, Chris rarely strayed from his clearing in the woods."

So you don't like stories or movies about pirates, heists, gangsters, rebels, and so forth, because they're just criminals?

I dont like articles that bait and switch. The title says "into the woods" when it should read "squatting in vacant cabins: how this homeless man lived off other peoples' supplies and shelter for a quarter century".

"He's a criminal who got away with it for a long time because of geography and the supply and demand relationship … "

So pretty much Uber-but-for-some-homeless-guy-in-the-forest-in-Maine then?

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