The Maine Woods (1864)

AUTHOR: Thoreau, Henry David

The Maine Woods was the second work to be published after Thoreau’s death, assembled by William Ellery Channing. The trip itself was encouraged by Horace Greeley and his absence for two weeks is referenced in Walden, when Thoreau mentions that his house was safe and unbothered though he left it open for a fortnight while he traveled to Maine.

The text provides evocative descriptions of American wilderness, as well as how people lived in these areas at this time. Thoreau also provides numerous descriptions of what they ate and how they came by their food. These meals frequently include salted pork, pickled salmon, and/or fresh-caught fish, and it is important to note that Thoreau was not always veg*n but ate “simply”: what was easiest in view of the activity in which he was engaged (hence he is a locavore, more than a vegan).

KEYWORDS: food, animals, land usage, environmentalism, nature, Transcendentalism

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):

Early in the narrative, Thoreau notes the destruction of the forests: “No wonder that we hear so often of vessels which are becalmed off our coast, being surrounded a week at a time by floating lumber from the Maine woods. The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver-swamp and mountain-side, as soon as possible” (4). Later, an evocative description of the untrammeled wilderness stresses the otherness of nature, "vast and drear and inhuman ... savage and awful, though beautiful ... made out of Chaos and Old Night. Here was no man’s garden, but the handseled globe. It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor lea, nor arable, nor waste land. It was the fresh and natural surface of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever, -- to be the dwelling of man, we say, -- so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. It was Matter, vast, terrific, -- not his Mother Earth that we have heard of, not for him to tread on, or be buried in, -- no, it were being too familiar even to let his bones lie there, -- the home, this , of Necessity and Fate. There was clearly felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. It was a place for heathenism and superstitious rites, -- to be inhabited by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we were” (94-95).

Thoreau describes in detail the customary diet consumed in the woods of Maine:

There were piping-hot wheaten cakes, the flour having been brought up the river in batteaux [a uniquely American pseudo-canoe and boat, used by hunters and traders of the area], -- no Indian bread, for the upper part of Maine, it will be remembered, is a wheat country, -- and ham, eggs, and potatoes, and milk and cheese, the produce of the farm; and also shad and salmon, tea sweetened with molasses, and sweet cakes, in contradistinction to the hot cakes not sweetened, the one white, the other yellow, to wind up with. Such we found was the prevailing fare, ordinary and extraordinary, along this river. Mountain cranberries (Vaccinium Vitis-Idoea), stewed and sweetened, were the common dessert. Everything here was in profusion, and the best of its kind. Butter was in such plenty that it was commonly used, before it was salted, to grease boots with” (29).

Note that the owner of the public house, McCauslin, grows “oats, grass, and potatoes,” but that “melons, squashes, sweet-corn, beans, tomatoes, and many other vegetables, could not be ripened there” (30). Their provisions for the trip farther north includes “fifteen pounds of hard bread, ten pounds of ‘clear’ pork, and a little tea” (83), as well as salmon: “The last of the salmon for this season had just been caught, and were still fresh in pickle, from which enough was extracted to fill our empty kettle, and so graduate our introduction to simpler forest fare” (37). At the logging camp: “We had hot cakes for our supper even here, white as snowballs, but without butter, and the never-failing sweet cakes, with which we filled our pockets, foreseeing that we should not soon meet with the like again. Such delicate puff-balls seemed a singular diet for backwoodsmen. There was also tea without milk, sweetened with molasses” (45). Breakfast at camp along Ambejijis Lake consisted of “tea, with hardbread and pork, and fried salmon, which we ate with forks neatly whittled from alder-twigs, which grew there, off strips of birch-bark for plates. The tea was black tea, without milk to color or sugar to sweeten it, and two tin dippers were our teacups. This beverage is as indispensable to the loggers as to any gossiping old women in the land, and they, no doubt, derive great comfort from it” (59).

Throughout the narrative Thoreau notes the animals they encounter, especially the presence of wolves, moose, beavers, and otters in Maine, which are no longer to be found in Massachusetts. Thoreau denounces arbitrary values; here, moose versus oxen, hunting trophy versus meat: “Joe told us of some hunters who ... had shot down several oxen by night, ... mistaking them for moose ... . what is the difference in the sport, but the name? In the former case, having killed one of God's and your own oxen, you strip off its hide, — because that is the common trophy. . . — cut a steak from its haunches, and leave the huge carcass to smell to heaven for you. It is no better, at least, than to assist at a slaughterhouse” (161).

Thoreau presents animals as living beings with a fundamental right to life: “Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine-trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its  life than destroy it” (164). Quoting physician and long-time Maine resident John Josselyn, Thoreau writes: “There are certain transcendentia in every creature, which are the indelible character of God, and which discover God” (201).

 

Last updated on March 8th, 2024

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