30. The Maine Woods, Saturday, October 3, ‘15

It is a country full of evergreen trees, of mossy silver birches and watery maples, the ground dotted with insipid, small, red berries, and strewn with damp and moss-grown rocks, — a country diversified with innumerable lakes and rapid streams, peopled with trout and various species of leucisci, with salmon, shad, and pickerel, and other fishes; the forest resounding at rare intervals with the note of the chicadee, the blue-jay, and the woodpecker, the scream of the fish-hawk and the eagle, the laugh of the loon, and the whistle of ducks along the solitary streams; at night, with the hooting of owls and howling of wolves…. Such is the home of the moose, the bear, the caribou, the wolf, [Alas, we have now lost the caribou and the wolf.], the beaver, and the Indian. Who shall describe the inexpressible tenderness and immortal life of the grim forest, where Nature, though it be mid-winter, is ever in her spring, where the moss-grown and decaying trees are not old, but seem to enjoy a perpetual youth; and blissful, innocent Nature, like a serene infant, is too happy to make a noise, except by a few tinkling, lisping birds and trickling rills?

— H.D. Thoreau, “The Maine Woods”, 1864

So, ya up for a walk in the Maine woods?

Perfect morning: temperature’s about 45; clouds cleared out last night; still a bit breezy, but when the woods close in around us we’ll be snug as a bug in a rug.

Got some good hikin’ boots? Maybe a light jacket and a hat?

OK then, we’re off. Some friends of mine are just opening a new trail in Mariaville, about 30 miles from here. We can be there for the grand opening at 10:00. It should not be far now. Just past this blueberry barren, held in place by these ancient glacier-rounded, granite boulders. Isn’t that great fall color?

There’s the sign; now about a quarter mile down this rough road. There they are: about 30–40 “guests”.

It’s like they were waiting for us, fellow hikers, eager for a new trail to explore.

Yeah, we have to listen to a few words of introduction, but it won’t be long. It’s just the Director of Frenchman Bay Conservancy telling us about the tiny snapping turtle his son caught down by the river this morning (and will soon release). And, of course, the former Director needs to give us a bit of history. Did you know that back in logging days Mariaville was the financial hub between Ellsworth and Eddington? I thought not.

See, I told you it would not be long. Yes, too long but not THAT long.

This first part of the path is an old logging trail. We’re gradually dropping down to the river. Watch your step; lots of tree roots to snag a toe on.

The deciduous trees are still mostly green;

the ferns are also still green (though curling a bit); some are brown around the edges.

Looks to me, (philosopher’s know about these things), as if frost has not yet penetrated these woods.

Yes, that new bridge over the creek was just put in.

You’re right: one of Thoreau’s “damp and moss-grown rocks”.

What we are walking toward is the Union River, about 20 miles north of Ellsworth. The river is perhaps fifteen yards wide — except where it is wider, or for that matter, where it is narrower.

This is a legendary fly-fishing stream, but now that the trail has been made so “easy”, (Watch that root; step over this log. Yes, another of Thoreau’s, “moss-grown and decaying trees.”),

it will soon be less productive. Our former Director is an avid fly fisherman. (He used to be an executive for LLBean.) He tells me,(and anyone else who will listen), that he once caught over 20 small-mouthed bass here in less than an hour without changing a fly. Used a “Woolly Bugger”. No, it’s really called that.

Was that a deer?

LOOK at those eyelashes!!! (Maybe it’s Maybelline???)

Hear the falls? We’re getting close. The rain we had Wednesday has it running pretty strong. Before that the river was low due to the lack of rain.

There’s the falls, through those trees. Yeah, I know it’s not Niagara, but still well worth the walk.

We’ll walk out by a different trail — more along the river, and across another creek on the way back. It’s about a mile to the trailhead.

I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of their work. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man’s garden, but the unhandselled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste-land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made for ever and ever, — to be the dwelling of man, we say, — so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific, — not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or be buried in, — no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there, — the home, this, of Necessity and Fate. There was there felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place for heathenism and superstitious rites, — to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we. We walked over it with a certain awe, stopping, from time to time, to pick the blueberries which grew there, and had a smart and spicy taste.

__ H.D. Thoreau

Can you feel it, too? Thoreau’s, “force not bound to be kind to man,” and (perhaps because of that?) the sense of awe.