Posthumously published in 1864, The Maine Woods depicts Henry David
Thoreau's experiences in the forests of Maine, and expands on the
author's transcendental theories on the relation of humanity to Nature.
On Mount Katahdin, he faces a primal, untamed Nature. Katahdin is a
place "not even scarred by man, but it was a specimen of what God saw
fit to make this world." In Maine he comes in contact with "rocks,
trees, wind and solid earth" as though he were witness to the creation
itself. Of equal importance, The Maine Woods depicts Thoreau's contact
with the American Indians and depicts his tribal education of learning
the language, customs, and mores of the Penobscot people. Thoreau
attempts to learn and speak the Abenaki language and becomes fascinated
with its direct translation of natural phenomena as in the word
sebamook--a river estuary that never loses is water despite having an
outlet because it also has an inlet. The Maine Woods illustrates the
author's deeper understanding of the complexities of the primal
wilderness of uplifted rocky summits in Maine and provides the reader
with the pungent aroma of balsam firs, black spruce, mosses, and ferns
as only Thoreau could. This new, redesigned edition features an
insightful foreword by Thoreau scholar Richard Francis Fleck.
