Saturday, April 13, 2013

Tales of hermits in the woods fuel romantic dreams of freedom...

For 47-year-old Christopher Knight, the the game of cat and mouse is over. After spending the last 27 years hidden in Maine's isolated north-eastern woods, the "hermit" was finally arrested after he tripped a surveillance sensor. His crime? Having allegedly stolen food and supplies from camps and private properties. Knight's last verbal contact with another human being was in the 1990s. He is now in jail. At the time of writing, attempts to contact any family members have not borne fruit and his sudden disappearance from home at the age of 19 remains unexplained.

People who choose to live the life of a hermit don't tend to elicit much sympathy. Others regard their motives with suspicion. The lifestyle of Christopher McCandless, the self-styled "supertramp" whose lonely tribulations in the 1990s were documented in the book and biopic Into The Wild, was disparaged by those who couldn't fathom his decision to give up everything – a privileged upbringing, belongings, his life savings – in order to explore his country's open roads and wilderness. When he died of starvation after a particularly rough winter spent living in an abandoned bus in Alaska's back country (his lifeless body, when weighed, came in at 67 pounds), many Alaskans spoke with disdain of his experiment, blaming him for not being resourceful enough, mocking his amateur ways. The adventure blogger Jill Homer, a former Alaska-based journalist, pointed out that her friends and colleagues thought he was a "total douche". They saw his demise as entirely avoidable.

But for me, hermits, tramps and assorted train-hoppers are a source of hope. They remind me that no matter how caught up we might be in the rat race, there is always a way out. If towering buildings, fumes and overcrowded buses become too overwhelming, those freedom seekers remind us that we can make the choice to just opt out and hit the road. It's not a lifestyle which would be adopted by many – the vast majority of us would never dare to leave our comfortable life behind – but it is there. Full story...

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  2. Cambodia's "jungle woman" wants to return to the wild...
  3. A "wild" child found in Siberia...
  4. "Jungle Laxmi" comes home after 22 years...
  5. Switzerland: missing woman found living in the woods...
  6. I want to be alone: the rise and rise of solo living...
  7. Mystery of Berlin 'forest boy' Ray solved!!!
  8. Two Frenchwomen live in a cave to escape wireless electro-magnetic rays...

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