First of a two-part series. The second installment will appear on Dec. 31.
On a cold January morning, my rugby pals – “Surfer” John Hearin, Mike Zizza – and I set out for Baxter State Park, bumping along a two-lane road. We encountered several flatbed trucks piled high with 60-foot logs, barreling along at frightening speeds.
Logging was the primary local industry when Henry David Thoreau visited in 1846. Now it’s tourism, especially during the summer and fall.
In his book, “The Maine Woods,” published in 1864, Thoreau noted that there were 250 sawmills on the Penobscot River. With a sense of alarm, he wrote, “The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country.”
Traveling from Concord, Massachusetts, by railroad, steamboat and bateaux, Thoreau journeyed into the wilderness 100 miles north of Bangor. Then 29 years old, the writer wanted to have “a whole heaven and horizon” to himself.
By 8 a.m., Surfer, Mike and I reached the Abol parking lot. Then we donned our snowshoes and started up the Foss and Knowlton Trail toward Kidney Pond, 12 miles north.
The park is named for Percival P. Baxter, Maine’s governor from 1921 to 1925. Baxter negotiated with the paper companies to buy vast parcels of land and donate them to the state. By 1955, the footprint of today’s Baxter State Park was established.
Baxter wrote, “Buildings crumble, monuments decay, wealth vanishes. But Katahdin, in all its glory, forever shall remain the mountain of the people of Maine.”
From left to right, Mike Zizza, Jay Atkinson and “Surfer” John Hearin embarked on a three day, 23-mile snowshoe trek into Baxter State Park. Mike Zizza photo
The landscape was empty and quiet, blanketed with snow. The morning sky was a fine light shade of gray and temperatures were in the low 20s with very little wind. We were well provisioned, and physically fit for the challenges ahead.
As the trail ascended, the 60-foot firs thickened around us. All you could hear was the occasional creak of a tree trunk. Mike was out front, Surfer 50 yards back. Soon, I was alone in that infinity of trees. The only sound was the chuff of my breathing.
After 40 minutes, we arrived at Foss and Knowlton Pond. Standing on the snow-padded ice, we gauged the time we’d save by cutting across. I stood eyeballing the cabins a half mile away. It was an easy walk.
But there were mottled patches of ice along the edge of the pond. Surfer lives in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and I spend the winter playing hockey on local ponds.
I shook my head. “No.”
The map showed a trail running alongside the pond. It was actually a frozen brook, running beneath snow bridges that couldn’t support a single hiker. The fir trees were packed to either side, offering little opportunity to travel along the embankment.
It took an hour to walk a mile, the clouds pressing down forcefully, hastening the arrival of colder air.
Beside the pond, we found an unlocked cabin. We piled in to change our base layers and share some energy bars. It was like going into the locker room at halftime, a respite from a very tough game.
But we needed to keep moving.
The wilderness had a cold, damp feel to it. Overall, I feared getting wet more than being cold. The hint of a thaw represented nature’s sleight of hand, the trek becoming more dangerous with the fading light.
With the fir trees closing in, we reached the Lost Pond Trail.
Of this forest, Thoreau wrote “the various evergreens, many of which are rare with us, – delicate and beautiful specimens of the larch, arbor-vitae, ball-spruce, and fir-balsam, from a few inches to many feet in height, – lined its sides.”
The afternoon was dissolving into an ancient in-between time. On Daicey Pond, the ice had formed a thick rind, curved like a pie crust. The wind had rushed the snow off the ice, and the glassy slabs were several inches thick.
“It’s safe,” I said.
We hiked along the snow-padded ice, the sky pushing upward from the tree-line, glowing with a faint, silvery light.
On Daicey Pond, the ice had formed a thick rind, curved like a pie crust. The wind had rushed the snow off the ice, and the glassy slabs were several inches thick. Jay Atkinson photo
The Sentinel Mountain trail was the shortest route to Kidney Pond. But at ranger headquarters in Millinocket, we’d learned there was a brook that had to be forded. The ranger said nobody had seen it lately, so it was a gamble.
The stream was hidden by the trees. Then the snowfields opened up, and the brook entered the clearing. A sign marked the ford, with the flat glassy water sliding along.
It was waist-deep, swift in its undercurrents, and very cold.
“We’re gonna be out after dark,” Mike said.
At the trailhead, Surfer had handed each of us a whistle. If we got separated, we were to give it a single blast. The reply was two blasts. Once the location of each party was established, the first whistler would close the distance.
Four miles north of Daicey Pond, we crossed a bridge pitched over a stream that flowed down from Nesowadnehunk Lake. In the last light from the western sky, I paused on the bridge, gazing upriver, thinking of all you leave behind when you enter the wilderness, your pocket change and money clip and keys, all the luxuries, the microwave ovens and electric dryers, the accumulating pile of bills, the work-a-day deadlines and snarled bureaucracy, the ease of travel, the necessity of oil and gasoline and kowtowing to the Saudis and other questionable purveyors; the thinning of relationships, the glimmers of regret growing more faint as you went deeper into the woods, the faces of your family and friends and lovers, all flickering in the dark, projected onto the ghostly fir trees like the Pathe News and then fading away.
A bridge at Baxter State Park crosses a stream flowing from Nesowadnehunk Lake. Author Jay Atkinson writes, “In the last light from the western sky, I paused on the bridge, gazing upriver, thinking of all you leave behind when you enter the wilderness.” Jay Atkinson photo
There, in the middle of all that new country, the darkness and the cold was as real as anything you’d left behind, more palpable than your life insurance policy, driver’s license, and mortgage, just you and your surroundings and the beat of your heart, something you’d lost that seemed so long ago and distant, and something you’d found and were immersed in that centered on your breathing, inhaling and exhaling as you looked upon the snow-dusted firs lining the river and the fading shadow of Barren Mountain beyond. It seemed impossible to carry all that you’d lost way out here.
Pushing off the rail, I switched on my headlamp.
The forest was a gloomy netherworld lit by the glow of the snowy bulwarks made by plows that had come through.
Soon, the cold was sifting downward like a million black particles. No stars appeared, and my head lamp shone on the panels of snow.
Groping in my pocket, I gave the whistle a blast that ran outward and then trailed off.
I heard two tones in reply. Buoyed by one of Thoreau’s principles – “a man must find his occasions in himself”– I kept plodding up the road.
Jay Atkinson has published nine books, including “Massacre on the Merrimack,” “Legends of Winter Hill” and “Ice Time.” He teaches writing at Boston University.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
