Trail relives Thoreau’s Maine journeys

PORTLAND, Maine

Henry David Thoreau made his third and final trip to Maine’s North Woods 150 years ago, traveling waterways and forests that shaped many of his ideas about nature.

A nonprofit group recently announced what it calls the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail to pay tribute to Thoreau — whom some consider the first eco-tourist — and the Penobscot Indian guides who accompanied him on two of his treks.

Maine Woods Forever has produced a detailed map of Thoreau’s trips and will erect informational kiosks along different parts of Thoreau’s route. The group also has worked in partnership with a photographer who is producing a book of photographs, “Wildness Within, Wildness Without,” retracing Thoreau’s steps.

The map is thought to be the first of its kind, tracking each of Thoreau’s trips, day by day as he canoed Moosehead Lake, the Penobscot River and its tributaries and climbed Mount Katahdin. The map gives a broad overview of Thoreau’s trips and includes his observations from selected points along the way, but it is not intended as a navigational tool for canoeists and hikers.

The project aims to raise public interest not only in Thoreau’s travels, but also in the wilderness spirit and recreational heritage of the North Woods.

“I hope what comes of this is a better understanding of the potential that the North Woods has to offer everyone in the world when it comes right down to it,” says Don Hudson, president of Maine Woods Forever. “If we can achieve that, we can move a step closer to broader awareness of these assets.”

Thoreau, an author and philosopher who lived from 1817 to 1862, is well-known today for his reflections on simple living in nature, especially through his book “Walden,” about his two-year retreat in a small house on Walden Pond in his hometown of Concord, Mass.

He also wrote “The Maine Woods,” a lesser-known book about his observations and thoughts during his three journeys to northern Maine in 1846, 1853 and 1857.

For its Thoreau project, Maine Woods Forever assembled a committee to exchange ideas on what should be done.

Butch Phillips, a Penobscot Indian from Milford, suggested that the trail be named to recognize the Wabanaki Indians, who include the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Mamiseet, Abenaki and Micmac tribes.

In his last two trips to the North Woods, Thoreau used Penobscot guides Joe Attean and Joe Polie to lead him through the wilds. His routes were part of an ancient canoe trail used by Wabanaki tribes for thousands of years as they traveled the area on its various waterways and connecting portages.

“The trail is going to bring recognition and publicity to a canoe trail that was made popular by Thoreau’s writings of his visits to Maine,” Mr. Phillips says. “It also memorializes Thoreau’s Penobscot guides, who played an important role in his travels and his stories.”

The trail was inaugurated on the final day of the three-day Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Festival.

The festival was being held in Greenville, on the southern end of Moosehead Lake, where Thoreau began his third trip exactly 150 years ago after taking a stagecoach from Bangor.

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