Here’s the requisite amazon link

I love it when I finish a book in a day. I could have read it in a few hours, had I been fully committed and devoted, but Easter. Not that my family is unaccustomed to me having my nose stuck in a book the majority of the time, I do try to pretend to be in the mix of things on holidays.
I always read the one star reviews on Amazon. Always. I find they are more honest than the gushing five stars. Also, you can tell by the grammar and spelling whether their opinions are valid. Additionally, a surprising number of people don’t seem to understand the star system, or perhaps they get too excited and hit one when they mean to choose five. Whatever.
The disparaging reviews came from two types of people: Gossip mongers who read primarily tabloids who found the research about hermits through the years tedious, and people who thought the book was an invasion of privacy. ………the question begs to be asked: Sooooooo why did you buy it? Obviously Mr. Finkel planned to capitalize on the story. He may have donated some funds to Christopher’s family, but from what I read, they would have instantaneously rejected it.
I found the book fascinating, as I knew I would after coming upon an article about him on Facebook last year. From that moment I had hoped a book would come out detailing his life. I didn’t realize I was so entranced with hermits, until I was reading the end of the book for suggested reading. I have read, or have on my shelves to read, a number of the books mentioned. I fell in love with Walden way back when in high school when a few passages were required reading I’ve remarked many times in my life that I would love to do it myself. Maybe not forever, but maybe start at a year and see where it takes me. But I’m lazy, which is part of why I want to do it, and also why I’ll never be able to. I’m of the hermit variety that needs running water and indoor plumbing. And someone to split firewood and bring me game.
Really, I just want to read undisturbed and uninterrupted for long stretches.
Alright, I gotta get on with this book review before I lose you.
“Those with less become content, those with more become confused.” ~The Tao Te Ching

“One becomes free not by fulfilling all desires, but by eliminating desire.: ~Socrates.

“Hell is other people.” ~Sartre

“I have no friends of any sort and I don’t want any.” ~Michelangelo
“What did Knight do for a living? He lived for a living.”
His situation was not ideal. He had to steal for the whole quarter century he was out there. He never built a fire to heat himself or cook his meat on (he used stolen camp stoves hooked to stolen propane tanks), and he couldn’t-or wouldn’t- fish or hunt. He didn’t have some lofty idea of what he was trying to accomplish or some fantastic ideals to incorporate into society. He wasn’t on a religious pilgrimage (although he does admit to praying when it was 20 below and he was cocooned in his sleeping bags. Like he said, there’s no atheists in the foxhole. Ha!). He just wanted to leave, and be left alone. He didn’t fit in anywhere besides by himself. “His commitment to isolation was absolute.” Once he was arrested, people offered him all sorts of help, from offers of land to use to be a permanent hermit, bail money, TV interviews (seriously?? Know your subject), and marriage (again…). But he accepted nothing.
In the first encounter with the author, Chris comes across abrasive and snarky. He said the letters they had exchanged had gone through a series of rough drafts to remove unnecessary insults. “only necessary ones remained.” However, sarcasm doesn’t seem to be something he understands and I was frequently reminded of the Sheldon character on Big Bang Theory. “I’m not going to miss you at all,” he tells the author on one visit. And on the last, ” I deny you my magnificent presence.”
He hates all his labels, especially the term crazy. “‘I understand I’ve made an unusual lifestyle choice. But the label ‘crazy’ bothers me. Annoys me. Because it prevents response.’ When someone asks if you’re crazy, Knight lamented, you can either say yes, which makes you crazy, or you can say no, which makes you sound defensive, as if you fear you really are crazy. There’s no good answer.” Crazy hermit has a point 😉 “Knight said he cannot accurately describe what it felt like to spend such an immense period of time alone. Silence does not translate into words.”
There are several hauntingly beautiful insights to the hermit’s habitat, among them: “At last came the call of the loons, the theme song of the North Woods, pealing like a laugh or a cry, depending on your mood.” Sometimes I read lines like that and wonder how close they were to being cut. What resonates with me and paints a picture may not strike the same chord in others. But I can see those ducks, with their necks stretched up in the moonlight, their red eyes glinting. And I see the shadow of Chris dart behind a tree.
One of his most endearing qualities, I thought, was his burning desire and craving for certain books and the difficulty of procuring them. “He stole every book on military history he saw. He pilfered a copy of Ulysses, but it was possibly the one book he did not finish. ‘What’s the point of it? I suspect it was a bit of a joke to Joyce. He just kept his mouth shut as people read into it more than there was. Pseudo-intellectuals love to drop the name Ulysses as their favorite book. I refused to be intellectually bullied into finishing it.” I could not agree more. Chris wasn’t totally out of touch-he had stolen a tiny black & white TV but after listening to all the news on September 11th, 2001, he never watched it again. I felt the same way. Imagine being totally isolated and hearing all that. You would believe nothing would ever be the same again…and in a way, it wasn’t. He lost track of the years and charted time by the moon, by seasons, and later, in jail, by chin hair. “His closest companion may have been a mushroom…this particular one, a shelf mushroom, jutted at knee height from the trunk of the largest hemlock in Knight’s camp. He began observing the mushroom when its cap was no bigger than a watch face. It grew unhurriedly, and eventually, after decades, expanded to the size of a dinner plate….The mushroom meant something to him; one of the few concerns Knight had after his arrest was that the police officers who’s tromped through his camp had knocked it down. When he learned that the mushroom was still there, he was pleased.” I think I get it. I used to get so mad to see children taking their aggression out on tree limbs, stripping them of their leaves and kicking them relentlessly. A tree doesn’t have feelings, but I do. That was my biggest complaint with the desert: There are simply not enough trees.
There is a section on noise, which I find endlessly interesting. I didn’t have cable TV until just last November, and I rarely had it on at all. When I got married, things changed. My husband feels the need to constantly have the TV on, all the TVs, as a matter of fact. Even if he’s outside mowing the yard. This drives me absolutely bonkers. And even that isn’t enough. He’ll be surfing on his phone, too. I absolutely cannot stand it and usually retreat to another room. It’s all too much. My brain feels like it’s vibrating in my head and is trying to combust, which obviously interferes with my concentration. A quote by Nicholas Carr from his book about the correlation between brain science and screen time: “The internet steadily chips away at one’s capacity for concentration and contemplation.” I know that’s a fact. I can no longer read for more than half an hour before I feel compelled to check my phone. Notifications are addicting. “According to more than a dozen studies conducted around the world, Knight’s camp–an oasis of natural quiet–may have been the ideal setting to encourage maximum brain function. These studies, examining the difference between living in a calm place and existing amid commotion, all arrived at the same conclusion: noise and distraction are toxic. The chief problem with environmental noise one can’t control is that it’s impossible to ignore. The human body is designed to react to it. Sound waves vibrate a tiny chain of bones–the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, the old-time hardware store of the middle ear–and these physical vibrations are converted to electrical signals that are fired directly into the auditory cortex of the brain. The body responds immediately, even during sleep. {I KNEW sleeping with the TV on was terrible for you!!!} People who live in cities experience chronically elevated levels of stress hormones. These hormones, especially cortisol, increase one’s blood pressure, contributing to heart disease and cellular damage. Noise harms your body and boils your brain. The word ‘noise’ is derived from the Latin word nausea. You don’t need that much quiet to change things, or even have to be alone. But you do have to seek out a soothing environment, and do it often. Japanese researchers found that a 15 minute walk in the woods caused significant decreases in cortisol, along with a modest drop in blood pressure and heart rate….a Duke biologist working with mice found that two hours of complete silence prompted cell development in the hippocampus, the brain region related to the formation of memory. Studies of humans in the US, Great Britain, Holland, and Canada have shown that passing time in quiet, rural settings, subjects were calmer and more perceptive, less depressed and anxious, with improved cognition and a stronger memory. Time amid the silence of nature, in other words, makes you smarter.” Right?! I’m not one to blindly accept everything I read, but I absolutely, 100%, steadfastly believe every bit of that.
I found the history intriguing and pertinent. Perhaps some of the information about became a little repetitive, but I’m sure that was from lack of material due to Chris’s reluctance to talk. We learn about the estimated million protester hermits living in Japan RIGHT NOW. They have “rejected their country’s competitive, conformist, pressure-cooker culture. They have retreated into their childhood bedrooms and almost never emerge, in many cases for more than a decade. They pass the day reading or surfing the web. Their parents deliver meals to their doors, and psychologists offer them counseling online. The media has called them ‘the lost generation’ and ‘the missing million’.” Some Hindu followers (about four million) “file their own death certificates as their lives are considered terminated and they are legally dead to the nation of India.” One of the stranger passages refers to the “ornamental hermits” in eighteenth-century England. “The job paid well, and hundreds of hermits were hired, typically on seven-year contracts, with one meal a day included. Some would emerge at dinner parties and greet guests. English aristocracy of this period believed hermits radiated kindness and thoughtfulness, and for a couple of decades it was deemed worthy to keep one around.” Tell me that isn’t the weirdest thing you’ve read today.
There was a woman named Diane Perry (who changed her name to Tenzin Palmo, I think because she became a Buddhist nun-the 2nd in the world!) who, in 1976, at the age of 33, moved into a cave in the remote Himalayas. She spent 12 years there. “Her solitude, she said, was ‘the easiest thing in the world’. Not for a moment did she want to be anywhere else. She overcame the fear of death, she insisted and felt liberated. ‘The more you realize, the more you realize there is nothing to realize. The idea that there’s somewhere we have got to get to, and something we have to attain, is our basic delusion.'”
“Everyone dreams of dropping out of the world once in a while. Then you get in the car and drive back home.
Knight stayed. He followed a very strange calling and held true to himself more fully than most of us will ever dare to. He clearly had no desire to be a part of our world.”
Now that I’ve ruined all the best parts for you, please read it.