In Woods Where Thoreau Got Lost

We are paddling on wind-hazed water, in another century. Spruce, jack pine and balsam cozen the shore of this drinkable lake, an unbroken expanse of green under a cloud-streaked sky that is both broad, and intimate. Floating below us, the inverted reflection of Spencer Mountain is scored by the long, straight wakes of two cruising loons.

Maine, for me, has always been synonymous with the outdoors and the ramblings of Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden and the assertion, made in a time before boom boxes and squealing electronic devices, that people “lead lives of quiet desperation.” But he wrote another book that captured a different place and different sentiments, The Maine Woods, about the wild north country that made me, when I read it, want to see a moose knee-deep in a tea-colored river and discover other remnants of a landscape that profoundly moved this the most famous of American nature writers.