Customer Reviews

The Maine Woods (Penguin Nature Library)

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"The Maine Woods" relates three separate trips Henry Thoreau made to the Mount Katahdin and Allagash Wilderness Waterway region of Maine At 29 years old in 1846, at 36 years old in 1853, and at 40 years old in 1857. In each of the stories he travels with a friend by rail, steamboat, and coach to the starting point, hires a guide, and embarks on his adventure. Even for a reader familiar with the region, it is essential to keep a map handy to follow the author in his travels. In the first trip he hires a local outfitter as a guide, and poles up the West Branch of the Penobscot River, across lakes and up streams, as close to Mt. Katahdin as he can get, then climbs to the summit of what the Indians called Ktaadn, or "highest land," and now called Mt. Katahdin. His route up the mountain approximated what we now know as the Abol trail, though with no trail to follow, his experience was very different from today's Abol daypacker. He summited on a cloudy day, and missed out on the breathtaking views, though he did get infected with the spiritual bug, and he waxes philosophical as he makes his way back down. Thoreau's enduring memory of the region is "the continuousness of the forest." Thanks to the generous 209,501 acre gift of one of Maine's Governors, Percival Baxter, that memory of Thoreau's is also likely to be yours.

By contrast, the second story is less adventurous, being a canoe-camping trip on Chesuncook and surrounding lakes. Thoreau ends the story reflecting on man's vulnerability in the wilderness, and prays that man will not become "civilized off the face of the earth." I take this trip to be fundamentally a reconnaissance for the third and most ambitious of his trips, titled "The Allagash and East Branch." He went to Maine this time intending to make the standard Allagash Wilderness Waterway trip that many of us plan and few ever make. He lets himself get talked out of it and into a considerably more difficult trip. He starts as with the Chesuncook trip, but carries on northward into Chamberlain, Eagle, Telos, and Webster Lakes, and through Webster Stream to Second Lake and Great Lake Matagamon. From there it's flat water down the East Branch of the Penobscot. The Webster Stream segment was basically a ten mile portage. Fortunately he had hired a most remarkable Indian Guide, Joe Polis. Polis took his homemade birch bark canoe down through the Webster Stream rapids alone, and Thoreau and his companion (whom he unaccountably never names), fought their way through the thick underbrush and the jumble of trees along the riverbank. In summary, he takes the West Branch upstream as far as it goes, traverses the high elevation lakes over to the headwaters of the East Branch, and completely circles the Katahdin massif in the process.

Thoreau does not consistently delight the reader with is craft; his creative spirit is intermittent. But when inspired, he rises to the task:

Referring to the logs which get hung up along the shore, waiting for a freshet to carry them down to the sawmill, he writes, "Methinks that must be where all my property lies, cast up on the rocks along some distant and unexplored stream, and waiting for an unheard of freshet to fetch it down."

And about the noises he hears at night, "When camping in such a wilderness as this, you are prepared to hear sounds from some of its inhabitants which give voice to its wildness."

And his boatmen: "...so cool, so collected, so fertile in resources are they."

And anyone who has trod through the dark, damp woods between those lakes will recognize this: "It was impossible for us to discern the Indian's trail in the elastic moss, which like a thick carpet, covered every rock and fallen tree, as well as the earth.

And while experiencing one of the Allagash's classic thunderstorms: "I thought it must be a place where the thunder loved, where the lightning practiced to keep its hand in, and it would do no harm to shatter a few pines.

What a shame most people will never get beyond Walden...

This title is a joy and stands on its own. First up is a short piece about an early ascent of Ktaadn, followed by a longer one on the Allegash & East Branch. If you read nothing else, open it to the middle of pg 22 (& ends on 23). It will take 1 minute and enthrall you with observations and the call of the Wild Boreal North Woods as they were long before roads or even trails and certainly before the great northern paper companies cut their unending swaths through virgin lands. His reflections on the ponds and natives (the Brookies) are as intimate and priceless as the jewels themselves. His opine references to the Greeks are as relevant today as they were then or 4,000 years ago. I first came across a copy in the White House Library (at a dinner reception i could not resist seeing what comforted our leaders during long & troubled nights). It took me several years to track down a copy but it was worth the process.

Do not read this and compare it to Walden or as a some window into Thoreau, but for sheer joy of kicking off the canoe at Telos and the wonder of the north country.

This screed from Thoreau is obviously not as classic as his work on Walden, but here we may be seeing the beginning of the travelogue business. Thoreau is often misrepresented (by those who haven't read his works, or have read them too many times) as a hardcore back-to-nature hermit who lived off the land and rejected civilization. One read of his Walden story disproves that stereotype, and in this work about three trips to Maine's wild country, we can surely see Thoreau's social side all the more. At the time, the Maine Woods were surely a thrilling landscape ripe for exploration and adventure, and Thoreau gives us an enjoyable travelogue of his ramblings and recreations. A bonus is great coverage of the Indians of the area, especially Thoreau's longtime traveling colleague Joe Polis. The only problem here is that Thoreau's introspective naturalist philosophy is mostly missing at this stage of his career, and he pretty much accidentally invents descriptive travel writing instead. This is still a worthy exploration if you're interested in the Maine Woods either as they were then or if you wish to explore them today. But Thoreau's classic naturalism is better found in his other works. [~doomsdayer520~]

Thoreau takes the reader on a wonderful journey through the largely uninhabited forests of Maine. It is clear that Thoreau is a botanist. He is continually identifying trees and plants by Botanical as well as Common name. He also identifies the birds he encounters. Sadly the Maine woods were not pristine at the time of Thoreau's journeys. There were scars of loggers, who mainly came for pine trees, along Thoreau's entire route. His journeys also include a hired Indian and Thoreau has recorded Indian names for lakes, rivers, plants and such. Judging by this book, Thoreau has not a lick of humor, so don't expect a laugh. Bits of Thoreau's philosphy are strewn throughout, it's a shame he didn't elaborate. Many measurements were made in "rods" which I have yet to figure out how many feet one rod is. I was a bit surprised to find his journeys were made by canoe, with quite many portages. All in all, this is a great book and I highly recommend it.

Thoreau's meticulous attention to detail in nature is equalled or surpassed by his incisive observations of human nature which are sprinkled throughout the text. Would that the editor had the same attention to detail - the beautiful Eliot Porter photo gracing the front of the Hoagland-designed cover is of New Hampshire not Maine. HDT would be bothered by this sacrifice of reality on the altar of commercialism!

Published posthumously, this volume lacks some cohesiveness as it is divided into 3 separate trips. Thoreau is a master of blending materials from different experiences into one single cohesive and consistent volume -- he did that in Walden (which gives one the feel of one year even though he lived there for about two years) and Cape Code (which gives one the feel of one long walk, even though the material is from several trips), so it makes me wonder what he could have done had he been able to finish this book in his lifetime?

That being said, it is still a great book. Thoreau's observations of nature and of Native American people are vivid, his cry for conservation profound and still resonating. There are also sparks of the dry New England humor here and there, making it a very enjoyable read. One only wishes that he had lived longer and given us more -- what if he had been to the Rockies, the desert southwest? It gives me chills just thinking about it.

In a sense this is a travelogue, but I don't think we should be too critical in judging it -- not every book has to be Walden, and there can only be one Walden after all. It is a travelogue with authentic Thoreau flavor. I would gladly take 10 more travelogues like this one if only I could.

One day I took my children to Disneyland, found the quietest corner of the Material Kingdom, and read The Maine Woods. I read it later in the shadows of Ktaadn. In each case I found myself fading into damp, 19th century forests, cataloging with Thoreau the flora of central Maine.
Few could be the equal of Thoreau in making an account of wilderness travels: "The Jesuit missionaries used to say, that, in their journeys with the Indians in Canada, they lay on a bed which had never been shaken up since the creation, unless by earthquakes. It is surprising with what impunity and comfort one who has always lain in a warm bed in a close apartment ... can lie down on the ground without a shelter, roll himself in a blanket ... in a frosty, autumn night ... and even come soon to enjoy and value the fresh air."
The pace of the book is slow but rich in natural wonder: "Once, when we were listening for moose, we heard, come faintly echoing ... a dull, dry, rushing sound, with a solid core to it, yet as if half smothered under the grasp of the luxuriant and fungus-like forest, like the shutting of a door in some distant entry of the damp and shaggy wilderness. If we bad not been there, no mortal had heard it. When we asked Joe in a whisper what it was, he answered, 'Tree fall.' There is something singularly grand and impressive in the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly calm night..."

Henry David Thoreau :: _Walden_ :: _The Maine Woods_
John Muir :: _My First Summer in the Sierra_ :: _Travels in Alaska_

The analogy is almost perfect. Each of these writer-naturalists is most often identified geographically with the setting of his best-known work (i.e., Walden Pond or the Sierra Mountains). Each was intrigued by a vastly different habitat located north of his usual stomping ground -- and was so enticed by that wilderness region that he made multiple visits and took copious notes on everything he saw. For Thoreau, it was the forests and mountains of Maine, while Muir delighted in the glaciers of Alaska. Both made their trips by water with native guides but also with at least one old friend along for companionship. They later produced travelogue essays and / or lectures about their journeys, both describing miles and miles of terrain and the very few residents they encountered along the way. Both _The Maine Woods_ and _Travels in Alaska_ chronicle the discoveries made during three separate trips: Thoreau's adventures occurred in 1846, 1853, and 1857; and Muir's happened in 1879, 1880 and 1890. Both men died of a lung disease (tuberculosis, pneumonia) before making final edits on the third portion, the last journey, of each book. Both of the resulting books were put together by surviving relatives and were published posthumously. Eerie, isn't it?

That being said, my advice to the reader of Thoreau is the same as written in my review of Muir's _Travels in Alaska_: Don't read this one first if you haven't read anything else by him. Read _Walden_ and some of the shorter travel pieces before moving on to _The Maine Woods_. Here Thoreau is at once fascinated by the thickness of the forests and appalled by the devastation caused by the lumber industry. You'll follow him up Mount Katahdin and canoe along with him on lakes and down rivers. You'll learn about the kind of true camping that could be done only in the wilds of sparsely-inhabited country. You'll see lots of trees and plants and animals and hear some of Thoreau's opinions about nature and mankind. And you'll be pleased to know that everyone returns home safely in the end.

Thoreau was asked on his deathbed if he had made his peace with God. His retort was, "I did not know we had ever quarrelled." Even though he told a friend that he would die without regret, these kinds of last-minute questions must have forced him to take quiet mental stock of the events of his life in search of something that didn't quite fit with his philosophy. It is said that his final words were "moose" and "Indian." I believe that, with those utterances, he had finally realized his sole regret in life: that he had witnessed the killing of several Maine moose -- the last one, by his Indian guide -- and had done nothing to stop the slaughter. Whenever the hunters were thus engaged, Thoreau retreated to his botanizing and documenting the plant life in the area. He deliberately put blinders on at a time when he could have prevented the animals' deaths. And perhaps his own rationalizing behavior was not made clear to him until the end. For as he says here in the "Chesuncook" chapter, "Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it." That statement could be a personal chastisement, a reminder to himself. If that's the only wrong performed during your lifetime, Henry, then you did pretty well.

These trips taken before the Civil War, Thoreau makes the journey that people dream of today. He had to be one of the first conservationists, noting that killing animals indiscrimenatly and over-harvesting the forest was a bad thing. Yet even back then he recounts seeing these practices being done. It was fun to follow his trail on the Gazetteer, and find the names of the rivers and lakes that the Indians had given them.

This is a sad book for me. It marks the end of Thoreau's greatness as a writer. There are a thousand Naturalists, brilliant in their field of expertise, who could have have written works just as good as The Maine Woods and, in fact, have done so. But not one of them could have written a book like Walden. Where is the Thoreau who, as Emerson remarked at his funeral elegy, seemed to have had a sixth sense which the rest of us were deprived of? A sense that could feel and detect the mystical power in Nature trembling all aroung him at all times?...He is not in The Maine Woods in any case. Thoreau was essentially America's Wordsworth. In virtually all of Walden, particularly in chapters such as Higher Laws, there is that sense in his delicious prose and in his descriptions of his interactions with Nature, that there is an unseen power just beyond the veil of the visible, that we stand in the midst of some deep mystery which unadulterated Nature lifts aside from time to time; The same sense famously to be found in Wordsworth's best Nature poems....But you won't find much of this in The Maine Woods. Thoreau seems depressed and morose much of the time, and it is clear that he spends much of his time in his endless classifications of flora and fauna as an escape from the harsh conditions surrounding him through much of the journey. By harsh, I mean aesthetically harsh (as, for example, a previous reviewer has noted concerning the logging already felling trees apace.) Thoreau was a famously physically vigorous man until the end. Physically harsh conditions were nothing new to him. Also, I don't mean to belittle Thoreau as a Naturalist. All are agreed that he was a serious (what we would nowadays call a "professional" one), in no sense amateur. But there is none of the sheer wonder and joy that we find in Walden and which made it my favorite book and Thoreau my favorite writer for years....I keep thinking of a line by Yeats, "...Who could have foreseen that the heart grows old?"