A review by st_urmer
The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau

5.0

Wonderful travelogue detailing Thoreau's three trips through the wilds of Maine in the mid-19th century. "What is it to be admitted to a museum, to see a myriad of particular things, compared with being shown some star's surface, some hard matter in its home!" What is remarkable to me is how a lot of the landscape he travelled through remains remarkably intact, heavy logging notwithstanding. The brook trout are still "bright fluviatile flowers"; the call of the loon remains "a very wild sound, quite in keeping with the place and the circumstances of the traveler, and very unlike the sound of a bird" and indeed I share the author's sentiment that "I could lie awake for hours listening to it, it is so thrilling." I have "heard the wood-thrush sing, as if no higher civilization could be attainted." Thoreau reminds us that wild places should be treasured and protected. "Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light, - to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure. there is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men."