I love listening to adventure survival books and stories about missing people, so this was an obvious recommendation that kept popping up on my radar.

I had heard about Christopher Knight before, and his story is fascinating. One day when he was 20 years old he quit his job, went on a solo road trip, and then decided to get lost. He entered the woods in northern Maine with basically just his clothes on his back and didn't emerge until he was arrested nearly three decades later. He had never gone camping even once before that.

So many versions of "why?" that even Knight could not (and in some cases would not) answer--but I think the author did a great job at researching and provided satisfying hypotheses.

Can you call him crazy? If your definition of crazy is "does not conform to societal expectations in the American 20th century" then yes. But that is hardly fair -- it would be crazy to say that those expectations are a healthy standard to hold someone to! But if your definition is "is a danger to themselves or others" then the answer is a definitive No.

I enjoyed thinking about that question, it is an interesting one. I also liked thinking about how honesty is such an important value to many of the hermits that the author cited: it might not have been high on the list before their hermitage started but it was certainly priority number one after they emerged from it. Who would have been lying to them while they were all alone? Themselves. What made lying become intolerable to them? Perhaps because it could have lead to death, in Knight's case. Or maybe because it is the foundation of an entire society that they find intolerable.

Anyways... good read!