Quotes from Michael Finkel

Secrecy is a fragile state, a single time undone and forever finished.

Suffering is such a deep part of living," wrote Robert Kull, who lived alone on an island in Patagonia for a year, in 2001, "that if we try too hard to avoid it, we end up avoiding life entirely." The Tao Te Ching says that "happiness rests in misery.

Japanese researchers at Chiba University found that a daily fifteen-minute walk in the woods caused significant decreases in cortisol, along with a modest drop in blood pressure and heart rate. Physiologists believe our bodies relax in hushed natural surroundings because we evolved there; our senses matured in grasslands and woods, and remain calibrated to them. A

Get enough sleep," he said. He set his jaw in a way that conveyed he wouldn't be saying any more. This was what he'd learned. I accepted it as truth.

Christopher Knight, you could argue, is the most solitary known person in all of human history.

I like being alone. My preferred exercise is solo long-distance running, and my job, as a journalist and writer, is often asocial. When life becomes overwhelming, my first thought—my fantasy—is to head for the woods.

Our whole lives, Jefferies said, are wasted traveling in endless small circles; we are all "chained like a horse to an iron pin in the ground." The richest person, Jefferies believed, is the one who works least. "Idleness," he wrote, "is a great good." For Jefferies, like

I think that most of us feel like something is missing from our lives, and I wondered then if Knight's journey was to seek it. But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing; it's about learning to live with the missing parts

Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is

He was confounded by the idea that passing the prime of your life in a cubicle, spending hours a day at a computer, in exchange for money, was considered acceptable, but relaxing in a tent in the woods was disturbed.

But life isn't about searching endlessly to find what's missing; it's about learning to live with the missing parts.

Observing the trees was indolent; cutting them down was enterprising. What did Knight do for a living? He lived for a living.

Modern life seems set up so that we can avoid loneliness at all costs, but maybe it's worthwhile to face it occasionally. The further we push aloneness away, the less are we able to cope with it, and the more terrifying it gets. Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is.

It's better to be tough than strong, better to be clever than intelligent.

Lao-tzu's Tao Te Ching (I recommend the Red Pine translation), and started swimming from there. Excellent

How many things there are that I do not want. —SOCRATES, CIRCA 425 B.C.

I'm not sorry about being rude if it gets to the point quicker.

It's possible that Knight believed he was one of the few sane people left. He was confounded by the idea that passing the prime of your life in a cubicle, spending hours a day at a computer, in exchange for money, was considered acceptable, but relaxing in a tent in the woods was disturbed. Observing the trees was indolent; cutting them down was enterprising. What did Knight do for a living? He lived for a living.

Virtually every natural feature in Maine, pond to peak, has a proper name, but Knight saw such titles as human impositions and preferred not to know them. He sought a purity to his retreat beyond all measure.

More prized by his parents than good grades, Chris mentioned, was "Yankee ingenuity"—putting your smarts to work. "It's better to be tough than strong, better to be clever than intelligent," he said, repeating a family maxim.

We didn't feel the need to communicate everything all the time," Chris continued. "We're not emotionally bleeding all over each other. We're not touchy-feely.

Those with less become content," says the Tao, "those with more become confused.

There was no audience, no one to perform for. There was no need to define myself. I became irrelevant.

I have become solitary," wrote the eighteenth-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "because to me the most desolate solitude seems preferable to the society of wicked men which is nourished only in betrayals and hatred.