The Maine Woods (Penguin Nature Library)

Rating:
Summary: Visit Maine in the mid-1800s
Review:

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.

Rating:
Summary: Visit Maine in the mid-1800s
Review:

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.

Rating:
Summary: Travel wild rivers with Thoreau.
Review: 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..."

Rating:
Summary: Classic tale of exploration!
Review: The Maine Woods (Penguin Nature Library) by Henry DavidThoreau, Edward Hoagland (Designer) is a classic tale of Thoreau's three adventures Ktaadn, chesnucook and the allegash and east branch. In this novel, especially in the last part, Thoreau, mixes a wast knowlege of flowers and herbs with an uncanny wit for the outdoors: In the last part he shows a weird sense of humor in the way he describes Joe Polis and his peculiar behavior. I would definetely recommend reading The Maine Woods and I must say that I found this novel to be both thoughtprovoking as well as hightly entertaining ( which in itself is quite rare).

Rating:
Summary: A Naturalist, No Longer A Transcendentalist
Review: 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?"

Rating:
Summary: A Naturalist, No Longer A Transcendentalist
Review: 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?"

Rating:
Summary: Live Like a Philosopher
Review: 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 Ponis. 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~]

Rating:
Summary: Classic 19th century backwoods adventure.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A classic of natural philosophy
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: A classic of natural philosophy
Review: 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!