Wildest Country: Exploring Thoreau's Maine

Back in print by popular demand, this fully updated and revised edition of The Wildest Country: A Guide to Thoreau’s Maine follows the famed naturalist Henry David Thoreau’s sojourns in Maine and offers modern commentary on how the route has changed. Drawing on Thoreau’s faithfully recorded itineraries in his classic book The Maine Woods, author J. Parker Huber provides comprehensive color maps and summaries of Thoreau’s travels. Huber artfully organizes these excursions into one grand tour of Maine’s most impressive scenery. From Moosehead Lake to Katahdin, returning to Bangor down the Penobscot River, today’s traveler can trace these routes for an hour, a day, or several weeks. Throughout, The Wildest Country is illuminated with Thoreau’s distinctive observations of his natural surroundings and his fellow man: his delight in the illusive laughing loons; his sampling of indigenous tea substitutes; and his pact with Indian guide Joe Polis to exchange every bit of knowledge each possessed—within 11 days. This beautiful edition, illustrated with beautiful color and historic black-and-white photographs, is the perfect choice to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Maine Woods, first published in Boston in 1864.