I’ve never been to Mt. Katahdin, but I have heard stories about the place, seen video taken by my nephew via drone, and watched my nephews traverse what’s called (I think) Knife’s Edge. Even today, the Wabanaki look to Katahdin as a sacred place, where the Spirit roams freely and powerfully. Because I was privy to some nightmare stories of scoundrels soiling the beauty of the place and violating the mountain’s sanctity, I sometimes have thought of Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock and what a tale the two combined could tell. Horror and torture.

But, when I saw this picture recently, I went back to Thoreau. He wrote about Ktaadn (as he called it) in a beautiful book called The Maine Woods.

I hope one day to go explore Ktaadn with someone who is a curious and kind soul, with a lyrical appreciation of majestic beauty and sensitive enough to have read the author and absorb the spell of what Thoreau and others tried to convey. And treat the place with the respect it deserves.

Thoreau climbed Ktaadn, but never made it to the summit. However, he did actually go fishing and caught his own trout!

From The Maine Woods:

“In the night I dreamed of trout-fishing; and, when at length I awoke, it seemed a fable that this painted fish swam there so near my couch, and rose to our hooks the last evening, and I doubted if I had not dreamed it all. So I arose before dawn to test its truth, while my companions were still sleeping. There stood Ktaadn with distinct and cloudless outline in the moonlight; and the rippling of the rapids was the only sound to break the stillness. Standing on the shore, I once more cast my line into the stream, and found the dream to be real and the fable true. The speckled trout and silvery roach, like flying-fish, sped swiftly through the moonlight air, describing bright arcs on the dark side of Ktaadn, until moonlight, now fading into daylight, brought satiety to my mind, and the minds of my companions, who had joined me.”