The Stranger in the Woods -- Take 2

I enjoyed reading The Stranger in the Woods, if for no other reason than that it told a truly incredible story.  How does a person disappear into the Maine woods and live and largely apart from society for months, let alone for 27 years? 

It failed as a psychological profile, in part because Christopher Knight, the Stranger, didn't particularly want to be profiled.   There are a lot of theories thrown around, but none of them stick.  He's not schizophrenic; he's not autistic.  He was just a guy who had an idea about how he wanted to live, and he did it.

In the meantime, he also committed over a thousand burglaries and terrorized a community who never asked for trouble.  The part that was the most bothersome to me was his refusal to take handouts -- when people left bags of supplies on their doorknobs so he wouldn't break in -- he left the supplies and broke in anyway because he wanted to do it on his own.  Which he wasn't anyway, because he was stealing!

Nevertheless, it took an incredible amount of determination to repeatedly tough out cold Maine winters on the brink of starvation.

Perhaps most strangely of all, the family that he left behind when he was 20 years old never even reported him missing.  Weird.  Talk about a psychological profile.