A Different Life in Maine.

    Home in the Woods. Address Unknown.

     By jumpins, it must have come as one awful shock to Christopher’s mother.

     In any other year, folks up this way in Maine might well have been preoccupied this week with the predicted late Winter snowstorm not just now kicking in that’s expected to drop Northern Maine half a foot of heavy snow.  But the fact is, the entire State of Maine  has been a buzz with the reappearance – make that the arrest – of the Hermit Burglar who has been living alone, undetected, year-round in a tarp encampment in the Maine woods for the last 27 years.

     When twenty year old Christopher Knight up and disappeared without a trace in 1986 from his home in Fairfield, Maine - no note, no call - it was certainly a queer thing.  In time, the worst came to be assumed.  And while Maine was tending her potato crops and  lobster traps and chainsaws and skidders and ice fishing lines and herring nets and snowplows,  no one imagined that one among us was living in solitude, no more than ten miles from Waterville. He was gaining his sustenance by gently breaking into Summer camps – what we call cabins here in Maine - and stealing the necessities of his life: food, liquor, batteries and the occasional propane barbeque tank. The fact is Christopher never ever built a wood fire for fear his hidden lair would be discovered from the fire’s smoke.

     Christopher is thought to be responsible for a thousand break-ins – that’s almost one per week over his 27 year habitation.  He is thought to have burgled at night and was always predisposed to enter empty camps by an unlocked window and he carefully locked up when leaving. He took no money, just the bare essentials he needed to live.  When Christopher was arrested at Pine Tree Camp, he was wearing boots identified as having been stolen five years ago.  The discovery of those familiar boots was the first hint this was no simple burglary. Truth be told, the arresting game warden was just the second person Christopher had spoken to in 27 years of his solitary life.

     If you’d like to learn more details about Maine’s Hermit Burglar and see his photo, the Bangor paper did an awful good writeup the other day which a feller could find here.

 Jim & Megan Gerritsen & Family

 Wood Prairie Farm

 Bridgewater, Maine
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