One with the woods

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey
Reader Staff

Like many origin stories, Karie Lee Knoke’s love for primitive skills and backcountry survival began with a book: My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George.

Karie Lee Knoke. Photo by Brendan George Ko for The History Channel.

The novel, published in 1959, tells the story of a young boy who learns lessons in courage and animal companionship while living alone in the Catskill Mountains. Knoke said she read the book when she was 8 years old.

“At that point, all I wanted to do was go out into the woods and survive with nothing but my knife like the boy Sam did in that book,” she said.

Also during her childhood, Knoke’s grandparents moved to Cocolalla, introducing her to North Idaho. She went to college and ended up in a corporate career in Seattle. Still, Sam’s story called to her.

“I told myself, ‘I’m going to move here when I retire,’” Knoke said of the Idaho panhandle. “Then, in the ’90s, I was ready to leave western Washington and I thought, ‘Why am I waiting until I retire?’ Sitting in rush hour traffic on I-5 in the middle of Seattle, it’s all smoggy — [I thought], ‘I can’t do this. I have to move.’”

Knoke moved to the Sandpoint area in 1997, and in the time since has built a lifestyle and new career based entirely on primitive skills — that is, skills applied to make one’s way in the woods. She now lives in an off-grid yurt where “she is surrounded and supported by the natural world around her,” and works as a primitive skills teacher at gatherings across the West under the moniker Scared Cedars Wilderness School.

“I went back to what I wanted as a child,” she said. “I wanted to camp out all the time.”

“Camping out” is a mild way of describing Knoke’s latest adventure, when she competed on Season 9 of the History Channel’s survival show Alone. Knoke and nine other contestants entered the wilderness valley of Labrador, Canada, with only 10 personal items in hopes of being the last one standing and earning the $500,000 in prize money.

New episodes are currently airing each Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

Knoke, who does not have TV, learned about the show from a friend after Season 2, and consequently knew several of the contestants due to her connections in the primitive skills world. She then pursued appearing on the show, and got her chance in Season 9. 

For her 10 items, Knoke chose paracord, a sleeping bag, a two-quart pot, a ferro rod, fishing line and hooks, a bow and arrows, trapping wire, a multitool, an ax and emergency rations.

While there is a safety net of show crew to support contestants if they need medical intervention, participants are truly alone and tasked with filming themselves. Knoke, who has embarked on extended primitive backcountry trips in the past, said that the filming often slowed her down.

“That was an adjustment, having to deal with camera gear,” she said. “But that’s also the creative piece.”

She said that the Season 9 cast has grown very close and that “exchanging knowledge” before and after the competition was a huge part of the experience. She said that camaraderie is something she has found during the past two decades of truly delving into the primitive skills world.

“These are my people,” she said, “and this is what I want to be doing.”

Something that surprised her while taking part in Alone, Knoke said, is how often she thought of people back home.

“When I travel to do other things, I’m just focused on where I’m at and I don’t think too much about home life. But when I was out there, I was amazed about how many people from Sandpoint I thought about. My dreams were really clear and I had dreams of so many random people from Sandpoint,” she said with a laugh.

“It was pretty unique and bizarre at the same time,” she added. “It was fun, too, because I felt really connected to my homeland, which I was not expecting. It was great to have that feeling.”

Catch new episodes of Alone on the History Channel each Thursday at 6 p.m. PST. Stream all past episodes at history.com. Learn more about Karie Lee Knoke and Sacred Cedars Wilderness School at karieleeknoke.com.