The Maine Woods, By Henry David Thoreau (1864). Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) made three trips to the then largely unexplored Maine woods. In his 1846 essay “Ktaadn” he traveled by foot and canoe to Mount Katahdin. He returned to Maine in 1853 traveling the West Branch of the Penobscot to Chesuncook Lake, which he chronicles in the essay “Chesuncook.” His final trip to the Maine woods occurred in 1857 when he again paddled Moosehead Lake, crossed at Northeast Carry onto the West Branch and continued across the top of Chesuncook, up Umbazookus Steam, across Mud Pond Carry and Mud Pond into Chamberlain Lake. After a visit to Chamberlain Farm, Thoreau made the crossing onto Eagle Lake and Pillsbury Island, the northernmost point of his three journeys. This final trip he writes about in “The Allegash and East Branch.”

The Maine Woods combines these three essays. His attention to detail and expressive style opened up Northern Maine to generations of travelers to come. He took notes constantly, entering into his journal the many plant and animal species he found, describing the rivers, streams, lakes, ponds and the land, creating a realistic minds-eye picture for future travelers. Through his conversations with his Indian guides, Joe Aitteon and Joe Polis he recorded many words and expressions of the Penobscot language and identified the names of several of the bodies of water and mountains along the way. The notes from these conversations offer a glimpse of the Native American history of the area.

His scribbled thoughts by the campfire became a call to nature for future generations. Post Civil War America looked toward the western frontier for wilderness, but posthumously, Thoreau opened a new wilderness and created a further awareness of nature where no one at the time thought to look.

Canoe and Camera: Two Hundred Miles through the Maine Forests, By Thomas Sedgwick Steele (1880). In 1879 the author departed Greenville for Mt. Kineo, on Moosehead Lake the usual starting point for what was then referred to as the St. John Trip. A St. John trip wasn’t necessarily a journey to or along the St. John. It was a term used to describe a voyage into the Maine woods at that time.

Steele and a photographer friend hired three Indian guides to take them from Mt. Kineo up the West Branch, across to Chamberlain Lake, and after a visit to Chamberlain Farm, down through Telos Lake and Webster Stream to the East Branch and down to Mattawamkeag.

The author explains their method of camping in 1879, how they handled rips and rapids in birch bark canoes and their general travels over water and land in the steps of Thoreau. (Thoreau’s Maine Woods was published in 1864.) Although Steele was certainly aware of Thoreau’s earlier trip (1857), he seldom refers to the Concordian’s writings, preferring to offer his own interpretation of the journey.

Steele’s focus is more on the actual passage and the impediments the woods and waters provided, while Thoreau took the time to study the surroundings along his passage with a naturalist’s eye.

The Wildest Country: Exploring Thoreau’s Maine, By J. Parker Huber (1981).This book follows Thoreau’s journeys in Maine. The author travels the same routes as Thoreau and offers updated descriptions of how the waters and land have changed. The book includes updated maps and pictures and descriptions of the local flora and fauna. The book is convenient travel guide for those following Thoreau’s route as well as descriptive look at the past and present for armchair adventurers.

Woods and Lakes of Maine: A Trip from Moosehead Lake to New Brunswick in a Birch-Bark Canoe, By Lucius L. Hubbard (1884). In the autumn of 1881 the author and a companion, Captain Sartor, admittedly inexperienced in the woods and two Indian guides, Joe and Silas, traveled the Maine woods from Greenville at the foot of Moosehead Lake to the St. John River and New Brunswick. Their travels took them up the West Branch of the Penobscot River, across the top of Chesuncook and up Umbazookus Stream to the lake by the same name. They crossed Mud Carry onto Chamberlain Lake and then portaged to Eagle Lake. From Churchill Lake, rather than continue up the Allagash, the party crossed to the Musquacook chain of lakes, rejoining the Allagash south of Five Fingers Brook. From there the four travelers paddled to the international boundary along the St. John.

Hubbard was aware of Thoreau’s early journeys and looked to continue the scientific study the Concordian had begun. Hubbard took soundings in Moosehead Lake and made a study of the Indian place names he encountered. Like Thoreau he quizzed his Indian companions as to their language and created an index of Indian place names that is still one of the original sources for many of the names of Maine’s rivers, lakes and mountains.

His descriptions of his river, lake and overland travels are in some instances still accurate, with the exception of where dams have been placed for the control of water flow once used in log drives. The book also offers an intimate look at camp life and travel in the woods in 1881.

Paddle and Portage: From Moosehead Lake to the Aroostook River, Maine, By Thomas Sedgwick Steele (1882). In 1880 the author took his second long trip into the Maine woods. Once again striking out from Moosehead Lake, he traveled up the West Branch of the Penobscot, and over to Chamberlain Lake. From there he made his way to neighboring Eagle Lake and beyond to Churchill Lake. Steele was accompanied by Colonel “G” and three Indian guides. The Colonel had explored a route from Moosehead to the Aroostook River the previous year and Steele was eager to make the trip.

From Chruchill the party struck east on North Twin Brook to Spider Lake. Traveling overland they made their way to Echo Lake and Munsungan.

At the foot of Munsungan Lake they traveled the stream of the same name to the Aroostook. They paddled the Aroostook to Caribou and finished their journey to New Brunswick by train.

Steele, a seasoned and observant wilderness traveler offers the reader a look at the Maine woods when the canoe was the obvious way to travel. His descriptions of the route he took during 1880 paint a picture of a remote land where the sojourner is left to his own devices for weeks as he battles his way across the large lakes, struggles on foot along shallow streams and across wooded, pathless portages.

Campfires Rekindled: A Forester Recalls Life in the Maine Woods of the Twenties, By George S. Kephart (1977). His father loved the outdoors. One of his father’s favorite books was Woodcraft and Camping, which by the early 20^th century had become a classic.

His father’s love of the outdoors inspired the author to enroll in the School of Forestry at Cornell University. By the 1920’s he was in Northern Maine cruising the deep woods timber country.

Campfires Rekindled is a look back at life the 1920’s in the Maine woods from the perspective of a young forester. He talks about the rugged individualism of the people who lived in the area at the time and the painstaking work involved in surveying and estimating yields of timberland.

It’s life in the backcountry and the story of the backbreaking work of getting the harvest to the mill. His smooth narrative style makes the harsh conditions of life at the time seem romantic. It is a well told tale of a bygone era in an area that in places remains remote, where a traveler can still find that solitude of the 1920’s.

Woodcraft and Camping, By “Nessmuk” (1884) George Washington Sears (1821-90) grew up in Webster, Mass. and took his pen name from an American Indian who had befriended him in early childhood. He was fascinated by the books about Indians that his family possessed that left him with an abiding interest in forest life and adventure. At age 12 he started working with a commercial fishing fleet based on Cape Cod and at 19 he signed on for a three-year voyage on a whaler headed for the South Pacific; it was the same year (1841) that Herman Melville shipped out of the same port bound for the same whaling grounds.

Nessmuk could probably be considered a pioneer of the light-weight camping and hiking movement and a pioneer in the recreational use of our national lands. His letters in Forest and Stream magazine in the 1880’s and particularly his Woodcraft and Camping book originally published in 1884 and reprinted many times introduced his concepts, techniques, and experiences to a new class of the public. Those that did not have the spare money to spend on guides and resorts; but those that wanted to experience the outdoors on their own in a degree of comfort and style.

His travels took him over a wide range of country, but his favorite spot was New York’s’ Adirondacks. In Woodcraft and Camping he reaches back over a lifetime of wilderness travel, offering stories of his adventures and advice on the (then) best ways to travel and methods of camp craft.

Reflections from the North Country, By Sigurd F. Olson (1976). It is said that the author, “speaks in the tradition of Thoreau, but with a voice uniquely his own.”

This book is a collection of reflections in the form of essays. Olson has become know to many as the “Voice of the North.” His writings are considered on a par with those of Muir, Burroughs, Leopold and Thoreau. “Reflections” outlines his wilderness philosophy. An advocate of wilderness conservation, Olson served as president of the Wilderness Society and the National Parks Association and has received numerous honors including recognition by the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation.

Well traveled in his love affair with preserving nature, he calls Northern Minnesota and the Quetico-Superior country home. His essays and stories transcend the natural world and are useful guides to everyday life.

Grizzly Maze, By Nick Jans. This is the story of Timothy Treadwell’s fatal obsession with Alaskan bears. In 2003 Treadwell and his girlfriend Amie Huguenard were eaten by the grizzly bears they believed they had befriended.

Treadwell spent years doing everything he was told not to do when it came to the coastal brown bears of Alaska. He believed that they were misunderstood creatures and was seeking to overturn the perception of them as dangerously aggressive animals. A Californian, he spent his summers at Katmai National Park living with the bears. His methods are certainly questionable (they didn’t work, he was eaten) as was his purpose. When not in coastal Alaska, he was back in California raising money for his “research.”

Untrained, and with little experience in the Alaskan bush, Treadwell seems a meal waiting to happen.

Never Cry Wolf, By Farley Mowat. This story by Canadian author Farley Mowat is based on two summers he spent in the subarctic of northern Manitoba as a biologist studying wolves and caribou. With the belief that the wolf population was killing off the caribou herds, the government of Canada sent Mowat north to learn more about the wolf population and to find ways to stop, what they then felt was the wonton slaughter of the herds by wolves.

Mowat lived mostly alone on the tundra studying the wolves and over the course of his study developed a deep affection for the much maligned wolves. His work determined that the wolves in fact were not a threat to the caribou or to man. His story is not only entertaining, but offers insight into the lives of wolves and the misconceptions of man regarding these animals.

Mawson’s Will, By Lennard Bickel. The incredible hardships encountered in 1911 by Australian Dr. Douglas Mawson are hard to imagine from the comfort of a readers chair. His will to survive is monumental and inspiring. When things go wrong on an Antarctica expedition, to chart fifteen hundred miles of Antarctic coastline and claim it for the British crown, Mawson is left to his own resources hundreds of miles from help. He encounters daunting mountains, crevasse-filled glaciers and 60 mph winds. The weather is some of the cruelest on earth, yet he fights his way through, against blistering winds, snow, cold, thirst, starvation, disease and snowblindness.

Canoe Trip: Alone in the Maine Wilderness, By David Curran. The author canoed the Moose and Seboeis Rivers, and while he mentions them in his book, the focus is on his trip on the Allagash. While the merits of canoeing alone in any wilderness area are debatable, Curran manages well. On of the greatest proponents for solo travel, however not necessarily wilderness travel was Thoreau, who said something to the effect of, “He who travels alone waits for no man.”

Curran’s Allagash journey begins when he is flown into Umsaskis Lake by Jim Stang of Kathadin Air, skipping most of the big lakes. Curran races through his trip finishing it in three days. As quick as it is, he does provide useful information about the river trip, spots to watch for and places to camp.

Two in the Far North, By Margaret E. Murie. The author grew up in Alaska and was the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. She married Olaus Maurie, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and after 1946 the director of the Wilderness Society and accompanied him on his travels through the Alaskan wilderness in the early and mid 20^th century. Their travels through the Alaskan back country up previously unexplored rivers and across unmapped mountains ranges together are fascinating. After her husband’s death, Murie continued her work for the cause of conservation.

Cold Summer Wind II: Twenty Years of Canoe Camping North of 60, By Clayton Klein. I read Cold Summer Wind several years ago and enjoyed Klein’s easy style and learning about his adventures in the far north. In this volume he returns to the remote Canadian north and paddles some of the most remote, least accessible lakes and rivers. The hardships of this brand of travel, and the wonders explored, are more real to anyone who has experienced a lengthy canoe trip.

In this volume he incorporates several different trips, accompanied most often by his grown son or daughter. By the time he reaches the last trip of the book, Klein is in his 80’s and feeling the effects of his age. Realizing that these may very well be his last canoe trips, a passion he has pursued his entire life, and in the final years with his son and daughter, make them even more poignant.

Allagash: A Journey Through Time on Maine’s Legendary Wilderness Waterway, By Gil Gilpatrick. The author, a Maine Guide, who has spent a lifetime in the Maine North Woods, divides his story into three parts. The book opens with a description of paddling the waterway today. Gilpatrick talks about the big lakes, the river and the conditions paddlers may encounter along the way. He talks about campsites along the waterway, offers suggestions as to places to explore and things to see.

In part two he offers a brief look at the lumbering history of the area, through the fictional character of Mushrat Murphy. Gilpatrick tells to story of the growth of lumbering in the area over the decades, talks about the men that changed the course of the water’s flow so as to float their logs south to Bangor, and spends some time explaining what life was like during those years when the Allagash was a booming business.

In the final part of the book the author creates a scenario of Native American life 1,000 years ago in Northern Maine. How the Penobscot Indians probably lived and interacted with their environment.

For anyone interested in the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and the history of this area, Gilpatrick will not disappoint.

A Place Beyond: Finding Home in Artic Alaska, By Nick Jans. This is a collection of essays by one of Alaska’s best authors. Jans is a pleasure to read. Originally from Maine, Jans went to Alaska in the late 1970’s in his Grandfather’s 1966 Plymouth Belvedere, eventually finding his way to the Inupiaq village of Ambler in the Kobuk River Valley. He became the local school teacher and high school basketball coach in this village of 350 and lived in the shadow of the Jade Mountains of the Brooks Range in artic Alaska for 17 years. His stories of life with this vanishing culture and in the remote Brooks Range are worth the read.

Wager with the Wind: The Don Sheldon Story, by James Greiner, was first published in 1974. One of the pioneers of early Alaskan aviation, Sheldon became the “guardian angel” of climbers on Denali (Mount McKinley). From his base at Talkeetna, Sheldon flew some of the earliest climbers to the high mountain glaciers. He perfected the glacier landing and became the pilot most sought after by serious climbers.

Sheldon, along with other early Alaskan aviators, defined what the Bush Pilot would become. His story is fascinating and full of daring as he accomplished with an airplane, things never done before.

Artic Bush Pilot: From Navy Combat to Flying Alaska’s Northern Wilderness, by James Anderson, published in 2000 is the story of James “Andy” Anderson, and the establishment of regular Bush flying in the Bettles, Alaska region. A former Navy combat pilot, Anderson was one of the first to bring aviation to the Koyukuk River area, serving miners, sportsmen, scientists, sourdoughs, adventurers and the Native population. He flew what ever was needed and in conjunction with Wein Airlines brought scheduled air service to the Artic.

His adventures and the story of the growth of the industry and how people of the region came to rely on the airplane for supplies, medical emergencies and mail brings to life this period of Alaskan history, it’s beauty and dangers, and opens a window on the people of the Koyukuk region in the period following World War II.

Alaska’s Wolf Man: The 1915-55 Wilderness Adventures of Frank Glaser, was published in 1998 earned author Jim Reardon the “Alaska Historical Society’s Historian of the Year Award” for 1999. Described as a latter-day “Far North Mountain Man,” Glaser traveled across wilderness Alaska by foot, wolf-dog team and eventually, by airplane. He was a naturalist at heart, but to survive worked as a market hunter, trapper, roadhouse owner, musher and federal predator agent. He learned many of the secrets of wilderness survival by observing the Alaska wildlife, especially wolves. He prospered in far-off lonely places in the Alaska bush; surviving encounters with grizzlies and Mother Nature in a place were temperatures would often drop to 50 and 60 degrees below zero.

A skilled woodman and a crack shot, he became an Alaskan legend.

Alaska’s Wolf Man brings to life the intense vastness of the country, it’s loneliness and savagery, while telling the story of a man and a time now past.

Flying Alaska Gold: Grizzlies, Gold, Gangsters, was published in 2005 and is the story of modern day gold seekers in the Alaskan backcountry.

David Hoerner tells the story of how he and family members put nearly everything they had into a gold mining operation northwest of Anchorage in the Talkeetna Mountains. Hoerner, who worked as a Montana logger and his family were from the northwestern area of the state and had spend time in Glacier National Park, an experience they felt would help prepare them for Alaska.

The group purchased a Cessna 206 with Hoerner, at the time a relatively new pilot, designated as pilot.

Hoerner tells a fascinating tale of his hair rising and near death flying experiences. The trials and tribulations of gold mining, and the greed associated with it. How the group became connected with the Mafia and of everyday life in back country Alaska.  For the author it turned into an accelerated learning curve, as he flew people and supplies over the course of a summer.

Flying the Alaska Wild: The Adventures and Misadventures of an Alaska Bush Pilot, by Mort Mason, was published in 2002. The author has since published a second volume “The Alaska Bush Pilot Chronicles.”

Mason takes the read on a series of adventures through wild weather conditions, over high mountain ranges, along river valley’s and across the Big Empty. He recounts trips typifying the rough-and-tumble life of the Alaskan Bush Pilot in exciting and fascinating fashion. Mason has flow the bush for 30 years and has plenty of stories to tell. At times he’ll leave the reader wondering how he survived some of the scrapes into which he got himself into and why he was in that position in the first place.

Noel Wien: Alaska Pioneer Bush Pilot, by Ira Harkey, was published in 1974 and is the story on one of Alaska’s first aviators. Wein arrived in Fairbanks in 1924 as a green kid with just a few hundred hours in the air. His story chronicles the history of aviation in Alaska and the establishment of commercial airline service. Wien was the first to establish regular airplane service between Fairbanks and Nome, Fairbanks to Seattle and from Anchorage to Fairbanks. He was also the first to fly an airplane beyond the Artic Circle and land and to make a round trip flight between Alaska and Asia.

The book describes the hardships and challenges faced by early Alaskan aviators. Wien’s vision was to bring aviation to Alaska and his story is one of wild experiences and aviation milestones in an unyielding land.

The Only Kayak: A Journey into the Heart of Alaska, by Kim Heacox, was published in 2005. It has been described as “a coming-of-middle-age memoir written in the tradition of Edward Abbey, John McPhee, and Henry David Thoreau.”

Heacox joined the National Park Service as a young man and was posted as a summer ranger at Glacier Bay in southeast Alaska. His story is one of friendship, risk, hope, and growing up in an ever increasingly commercial world. He asks, “What does it mean to fall in love with a place that cannot stay the same? When do you hold on? When do you let go?” His challenges and life at Glacier Bay become a metaphor for the changes in the human condition.

He offers the reader an opportunity to look within, asks “how we might live with greater deliberation, purpose, and thankfulness for the wild places we still have.”

Bear Man of Admiralty Island: A Biography of Allen E. Hasselborg, by John R. Howe, was published in 1996. The author suggests, “The events of Allen Hasselborg’s life could have been imagined by a clever novelist hoping to create just what every reader would want in a story about the north during the first half of the twentieth century.”

Finding his way to southeast Alaska as a young man, Hasselborg found work in gold mines, on fishing boats and doing whatever it took to survive. From Juneau he moves to Admiralty Island builds a cabin and for more than 40 years guides scientists and hunters. His familiarity with the island’s grizzly bears becomes legendary and he beings to refer to those around his Mole Harbor homestead as his bears. It is the account of a “rugged loner whose circle of acquaintances include some of the most prominent people of his day,and of a largely self-taught naturalist who made significant contributions to the scientific knowledge of bears.”