• Penobscot alliance seeks special status for river The group wants U.S. officials to classify the waterway as an 'American Heritage River.'
• Maine trips provide a chance to delve into Indian culture Thoreau wanted to learn all he could of the Penobscots' language, traditions and customs.
• Thoreau Society keeps his ideas alive Thoreau fan club holds dear the naturalist's desire for conservation.

9 - Telos Lake - Thoreau stopped at a rocky point on the northeast shore to admire a stand of red pines - the first he had seen in Maine - and then continued to Webster Lake. As we passed by Highbank campsite - one of two pretty campsites on the lake - we heard a radio tuned to a classic-rock station. The sudden presence of Bob Seger did little to enhance the impression of solitude.

10 - Webster Stream - Thoreau got out of his canoe and walked here, allowing his Penobscot Indian guide, Joe Polis, to paddle the whitewater alone. At one point, Thoreau finds himself on the wrong side of the stream and takes off all of his clothes to cross back. I also shed my clothes here - to take a dip in one of the many deep pools along the way.

11 - Thoreau Island - Also called Louse Island, this "interesting high, rocky island" on Grand Lake Matagamon is today named for Thoreau because the author stopped here for a dinner of fried moose in 1857. As Polis, the Penobscot Indian guide, skinned the moose he shot earlier in the day, Thoreau cooked and also laid the party's "dewy blankets on the open sunny rock" to dry. Years later, lumbermen started fires here to burn their winter clothes - and the lice they contained.

12 - Baxter State Park - Thoreau approached Mount Katahdin in 1846 by way of Millinocket (then called McCauslin's Farm) and the West Branch of the Penobscot River. He and his companions canoed up the West Branch to a point beyond Katahdin Stream (which Thoreau called Murch Brook) and then entered the woods. Called "the burnt lands" by Thoreau, this area between Nesowadnehunk Deadwater and Katahdin Stream is the latest addition to Baxter State Park - 2,669 acres purchased from Great Northern Paper Co. last spring. It showed the effects of fire in Thoreau's time and still does today, having burned in 1903 and again in 1977. On the evening before he climbed the mountain, the author fished Katahdin Stream and described the trout he caught as "bright fluviatile flowers."