Journey to Thoreau’s Maine

In mid-May 2014, they came together on Indian Island, the heart of the Penobscot Nation. They were Thoreau scholars, Maine Guides, advocates of North Woods tourism, members of the Penobscot Nation, whose ancestors had guided Henry David Thoreau into the wilderness. The 325-mile journey would follow his 1857 trip with Penobscot guide Joe Polis into the fabled heart of the Maine wilderness: Moosehead Lake, across the Northeast Carry, into the West Branch of the Penobscot River, into Chesuncook Lake and Umbazooksus Stream, over the legendary Mud Pond Carry, into the Allagash waterways before spilling down Webster Stream into the East Branch of the Penobscot and a return to Indian Island on the first day of June.

The occasion was the 150th anniversary of the publication of Thoreau’s The Maine Woods—a literary milestone that few outside of the expedition’s organizers and Thoreau scholars had probably paid much attention to. But as a spur to arouse interest in one of the last great wild places in the East, it became a rallying point. So the media came—in little bursts and at times, as with CBS Sunday Morning, a big splash. There were daily Twitter feeds, and the Maine Woods Discovery site let armchair travelers follow along without blackfly bites or aching shoulders.

But once the paddlers set off in a driving rain on windswept Moosehead Lake, the experience became what it has always been in the Maine woods: to take what comes, through all weather, over rugged terrain and fast rivers and wide lakes. All the while forming deep friendships with people who are depending on you as you’re depending on them. Soaking in the utter beauty and stillness, and eating food that lingers in memory because of where you were, beneath stars so bright they seemed to burn, and because you were truly hungry and you heard loons calling all around you.

When they finally paddled into Indian Island with faces burned and legs welted, to the sound of ceremonial drums and Native chants, everyone, but especially those who had paddled start to finish, calling themselves the “Thor­eauic 8” (including photographers Jarrod McCabe and Dominic Casserly), knew that though they had followed the trail forged by Joe Polis and Thoreau, they no longer needed to. It was their trip now.