All the while forming deep friendships with people who are depending on you as you’re depending on them. 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.īut 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.

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. In mid-May 2014, they came together on Indian Island, the heart of the Penobscot Nation. “We want people to know that the woods hold the potential to change a life.” Of all the places Jarrod McCabe and Dom Casserly, the Little Outdoor Giants (L.O.G.) photo team, saw during their 16-day journey, Grand Lake Matagamon was, they said, the most beautiful place of all to paddle. “This is the Alaska of the East-this is where you have the guided experience,” he says. As senior program director for the Northern Forest Center and its Maine Woods Discovery marketing offshoot (), Wilson’s goal is to excite people about experiencing the North Woods. The Maine Woods was published in 1864, shortly after Thoreau’s death, and today is viewed as a classic portrayal of the North Woods’ landscape and people. Wilson was the primary catalyst and organizer of the 325-mile expedition marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s The Maine Woods, which collected Thoreau’s accounts of his three wilderness journeys to Maine in the mid-1800s.

“WE HAD A GLORIOUS VIEW” -THE MAINE WOODS After camping at Birch Point on Grand Lake Matagamon, Mike Wilson readies for the day’s paddling.

The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau