A sunset along the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. Clicking on this photo will allow you to download a Quicktime movie of a sunset over the Allagash by WGME-TV photographer Scott Episcopo. This NUMBER K file will take several minutes to download. To view this video, your browser will need the QuickTime System extension version 2.1 or later. QuickTime is available at http://www.quicktime.apple.com

"That kind of contact that led him to ask the bigger questions - as he says in his book- 'Who are we, where are we?'," said Jym St. Pierre, director of a northern Maine forest preservation group. "We're still asking those questions, I'm sure we'll always be asking those questions, but he was one of the first people to articulate that."

Jym St. Pierre is the Maine director of "Restore: the North Woods," a group working to preserve 3.2 million acres of northern Maine as a national park. On the shores of Moosehead Lake, St. Pierre explained that Thoreau's ethic is inspirational to Restore's cause.

"To honor the history of Thoreau," he says, "and the heritage of thousands of people who have lived here, who have come to visit here, who have sought to find out who they are, who we are, by coming to experience raw nature in person."

Nature is at its most raw on Mount Katahdin, Thoreau's first Maine destination. He also trekked to Greenville and Moosehead Lake, up Mount Kineo, across Chesuncook and the west branch of the Penobscot River. He returned to Maine to explore the East Branch and the Allagash wilderness.

On each trip he was awed by the unimaginable vastness of the Maine woods, but startled at its exploitation. In reference to logging, he wrote, "The mission of men...seems to be...to drive the forest all out of the country...as soon as possible."

Because of his passion, he has been nearly deified by some, and vilified by others.

Still balancing preservation and conservation in the Maine woods

Photo by Scott Episcopo.

Visible from its shores are majestic mountains, quilted now with clearcuts - a harvesting method that outrages some Mainers. But which others see as a useful tool of forest management.

Paul Miller is a forester for Bowater, a paper company which owns 2.1 million acres of the Maine woods.

Miller says clearcutting became the management tool of choice with the spruce budworm infestation of 20 years ago.

"It's like anything else. Anything can be used or overused."

Miller insists that unlike logging operations of Thoreau's time, thought and planning are at the heart of harvesting decisions.

"When we harvest a stand of wood today, or cut a piece of the forest, we don't see it as a snapshot in time, we see it as part of a 60-year cycle that we have a plan for."

At its peak, clearcutting was taking about 35,000 acres of forest a year - Miller says it's now down to below 5,000 acres a year - but clearcutting and forest use as a whole are volatile political issues in Maine.

When Thoreau was sounding the alarm about exploiting the wilderness, no one was listening.

As Jym St. Pierre says, "He was not at all popular while he was alive. It was only after he passed away that his writings started to be popular. And even then it was a long time. It was half a century before he really started to become better known and appreciated."

A century and a half after Thoreau came to Moosehead, the region is one of Maine's premier inland destinations for recreation. It is also the gateway to Maine's working forest - a place where arguments still rage over preservation versus conservation.

Searching for Thoreau at Chesuncook Lake

Canoeing in Thoreau's wilderness. Clicking on this photo will allow you to download a Quicktime movie of canoeing in Thoreau's wilderness by WGME-TV photographer Scott Episcopo. This 990 K file will take about three minutes to download. To view this video, your browser will need the QuickTime System extension version 2.1 or later. QuickTime is available at http://www.quicktime.apple.com

If you take a trip into the Maine woods today, you'll see a lot of what Henry David Thoreau saw 150 years ago. But obviously, much has changed. For instance, the Chesuncook Lake that Thoreau saw is much different from the one you'll see today, thanks mostly to Ripogenus Dam, which now connects Ripogenus Lake with Chesuncook Lake.

Those who came to Chesuncook Lake around Thoreau's time came not for pleasure, but for product. Loggers came here. In reference to the logger's relationship to nature, Thoreau observed, "Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires...."

But through the years, Chesuncook has cycled through being a sparsely populated wilderness, to a thriving logging community, to a sparsely populated recreational area. Where the west branch meets Chesuncook Lake is where we hooked up with Mark Shanahan and John Ewing of The Portland Newspapers. They have canoed the entire west branch en route to the Chesuncook Lake House. Built 11 years after Thoreau's visit, it's a favorite destination of many.

For the last 40 years, Maggie McBurnie with her late husband, Bert, has welcomed guests to this lakeside inn. The Parisian-born Maggie lives here year round, and embodies Thoreau's vision of what he called the "pioneer... who contends with winter as well as the wilderness."

As Maggie says, "...the Thoreau route is still very much used by many groups. He's still very much alive...."

Managing Maine's wilderness

A few years after his first trip to the Allagash in 1962, Bennett, as a state legislator, was among those who voted to make it a state wilderness area, rather than have it become a national park. And he's been a tireless advocate ever since. He says, "Because I know the Allagash and have visited here a great many times, and I feel that the Allagash needs advocates, this is where I've put a lot of energy in recent years."

Bennett's now on the Citizen's Advisory Committee, drafting a new management plan for the Allagash to address some of the threats to the waterway. It's long been criticized for its "beauty strip" buffer zone of just 500 feet on either side of the water. During the spruce budworm epidemic of the 1980s, clearcutting was done right up to the buffer. Today, logging roads to those cut areas, have made access to the waterway much easier.

But state regulations allowing powerboats and motorized canoes are also blamed for tainting the wilderness experience. Several people have formed a committee to decide a new plan for the Alligash. Due later this fall is a draft of a new management plan. Chances are it's only going to escalate the already contentious debate about how best to manage the Allagash. The management plan being drafted for the Allagash Wilderness Waterway is the first plan ever for the wilderness site.

Maine's Penobscots, then and now

It was here that Thoreau had one of his biggest scares in Maine. While his guide ran the rapids of Webster Stream, he and his other companion lost each other overnight in these thick woods.

We met Scott Phillips, a member of the Penobscot tribe, who's been making canoes since childhood. He's now a marketer for Old Town Canoe, a company that still hand-crafts wooden canoes, as well as a fleet of lighter boats. When he wants to get away, he paddles Webster Stream and the east branch, as Thoreau did. Though many sections of the river still run wild, Phillips laments the loss of many Native American water trails and, perhaps even more, many fish. First, because of dams built for hydro power. Then came the paper mills and other industries that spoiled the waters with dioxin, mercury and other poisons. Few are more troubled by this than the Penobscot tribe.

To Katahdin's peak

A father and child enjoy the view from an overlook on Mt. Katahdin.. Clicking on this photo will allow you to download a Quicktime movie of Mount Katahdin by WGME-TV photographer Scott Episcopo. This 671 K file will take about 2 and a half minutes to download. To view this video, your browser will need the QuickTime System extension version 2.1 or later. QuickTime is available at http://www.quicktime.apple.com

When Thoreau first came to the Maine woods in September of 1846, he knew he wanted to climb the most prominent peak on the landscape. At that time, fewer than 10 white men had made it to the top. The Abol trail approximates the route Thoreau took up Mt. Katahdin, and it really - in places - isn't much of a trail. It's just a rock slide with lots of loose rock and loose gravel. Keep in mind when Thoreau climbed Katahdin, there was nothing, no trail. He bushwacked his own way to the mountain.

The rock slide known as Abol Trail is one of the steepest routes up Katahdin. While hikers today can follow the blue blazes to the top, Thoreau's only guide was his compass. He made it to the Krumholtz, or "crooked wood" which grows above the treeline. And he was rewarded with incomparable views from the flanks of Katahdin.

Today, seeing these views often means shuffling up the mountain with many other hikers above and below us. In the summer, there's a line to get a picture taken at the cairn marking the very top of Baxter Peak. When Thoreau declared "...it will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way," he could not have envisioned this sight at 5,200 feet.

Even though Thoreau began his adventures here on Mount Katahdin, we ended our search for the Maine woods at the top of the mountain that's been beckoning us from as far away as Chesuncook Lake and the west branch of the Penobscot River - as far north as the Allagash Wilderness Waterway - and all the way around to the Penobscot's east branch. As we look out at the Maine woods, we recall Thoreau's words, that this country is "...far more extensive... more interesting perhaps... than... going a thousand miles westward."