The Maine Woods
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~110,000 words · 502 passages
Cite this work
- APAHenry David Thoreau. (n.d.). The Maine Woods. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/the-maine-woods
- MLAHenry David Thoreau. "The Maine Woods." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/the-maine-woods.
- ChicagoHenry David Thoreau. The Maine Woods. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/thoreau/the-maine-woods.
What it is about
The account of three journeys into the northern woods of Maine, between 1846 and 1857, and the book in which Thoreau meets a nature that resembles Walden's not at all.
Context and history
Walden was a pond two miles from town; this is real forest, and the difference shows. The best-known passage is the climb of Mount Katahdin, where Thoreau meets a landscape that rejects him and writes some bewildered pages about pure, inhuman matter that waits for nobody: 'Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?'. The rest is canoe travel with Penobscot guides — Joe Polis above all, who appears as a person and not as a type — and exact observations of trees, rivers and the timber business that was already eating them. It was published posthumously in 1864. This is the least domesticated Thoreau, and the one most read today in ecology.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachusetts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine, by way of the railroad and steamboat, intending to accompany a relative of mine, engaged in the lumber trade in Bangor, as far as a dam on the West Branch of the Penobscot, in which property he was interested. From this place, which is about one hundred miles by the river above Bangor, thirty miles from the Houlton military road, and five miles beyond the last log hut, I proposed to make excursions to Mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England, about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there. It is unusual to find a camp so far in the woods at that season, when lumbering operations have ceased, and I was glad to avail myself of the circumstance of a gang of men being employed there at that time in repairing the injuries caused by the great freshet in the spring. The mountain may be approached more easily and directly on horseback and on foot from the northeast side, by the Aroostook road, and the Wassataquoik River; but in that case you see much less of the wilderness, none of the glorious river and lake scenery, and have no experience of the batteau and the boatman’s life. I was fortunate also in the season of the year, for in the summer myriads of black flies, mosquitoes, and midges, or, as the Indians call them, “no-see-ems,” make traveling in the woods almost impossible; but now their reign was nearly over. Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804. It was visited by Professor J. W. Bailey of West Point in 1836; by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837; and by two young men from Boston in 1845. All these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties have made the excursion, and told their stories. Besi