The mountain seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if some time it had rained rocks, and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides, nowhere fairly at rest but leaning on each other, all rocking-stones, with cavities between, but scarcely any soil or smoother shelf. They were the raw materials of a planet dropped from an unseen quarry. … This was an undone extremity of the globe.

– Henry David Thoreau

“Ktaadn”

BANGOR – Anyone who has toiled up the stony flanks of Katahdin acknowledges the awe, the sense of trespass and trepidation that accompany the sight of that most desolate and lovely of mountains. For decades, nature writers have tried to convey the formidable majesty and scale of the place, but Henry David Thoreau – among the first of the white men to climb to the tablelands – tapped into the wild spirit of “Ktaadn” perhaps more compellingly than anyone before or since.

“The Maine Woods,” Thoreau’s mid-1800s record of three separate excursions into the timbered heart of our state, continues to reveal the essence of Maine’s natural beauty – and the people who live and work within it – despite a century and a half of change.

“It’s a wonderful, relevant book,” said Barbara McDade, director of the Bangor Public Library. Her staff has chosen “The Maine Woods” for the 2003 Bangor Reads! program, and the library is offering a series of free discussions, presentations and activities to encourage wide participation in the community reading project.

“The Maine Woods” resonates on many levels, according to McDade. Thoreau was not simply a compelling nature writer, she points out, but he also was concerned with the fate of native American tribes, environmental degradation, and the delicate tensions between traditional Mainers and tourists, sports and “rusticators” from Massachusetts – all still hot-button topics in Maine today.

Additionally, Thoreau’s commitment to the abolition of slavery and his stance on civil disobedience have particular relevance in these political times.

Last-minute additions to the line-up of activities at the library include dramatic presentations on Thoreau’s jailing for refusal to pay his taxes – in protest of the Mexican War – and a dramatic presentation about Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery in Maryland and made many trips back to the South to help others escape as well.

Bangor Reads! 2003 kicked off last week with an overview by USM reference librarian and paddle-pro Zip Kellogg, who has written extensively on canoeing in Maine. Before his talk, Kellogg said Thoreau was attracted to the “spirit of the land” in Maine.

“There were not a lot of people at that time who were studying nature for nature’s sake,” Kellogg said. “He really tried to stand apart from things, to study and understand them.” Because Thoreau wrote with such detail and clarity, Kellogg said, his journals can be used to see what has changed in the Maine woods, and what remains the same.

Kellogg’s sister Judy Markowsky, director of Fields Pond Nature Center in Holden, will close out the library program at the end of the month with a discussion of the plants and animals identified in Thoreau’s journals.

Even in the 1800s, Massachusetts was vastly more settled and civilized than Maine.

“Maine must have seemed miraculously wild to him,” Markowsky said. Thoreau “did the best he could” with the field guides available at the time, she said, but he made many errors in identification.

According to Markowsky, Thoreau’s greatest contribution was not to science, but to poetry and philosophy. Referencing an early passage from “The Maine Woods” – Think how stood the white-pine tree on the shore of Chesuncook, its branches soughing in the four winds, and every individual needle trembling in the sunlight, – think how it stands now, – sold, perchance to the New England Friction-Match company! – Markowski said, “Thoreau was one of the first to say that a pine tree was not simply useful in terms of board feet, but that it had a life and a kind of nobility and a value of its own.”

Last year’s Bangor Reads! book was Michael Shaara’s 1975 Pulitzer-winning Civil War novel “Killer Angels.” McDade said the program drew many participants and she expects this year’s to do the same. In selecting a title, library staff look for:

. Appropriateness for readers age 12 and older.

. Relevance to Maine.

. Opportunities for extended discussions and activities, and, most important,

. “A good read.”

“The Maine Woods,” McDade says, should be a great success on all fronts. Most local libraries have lent out all copies of the book, but several editions are available in area bookstores.

University of Maine professors will lead discussions at the library. Spin-off events include informational sessions on camping, mapmaking, canoe-building and journal-keeping. There will be an evening of music, a presentation about becoming a Registered Maine Guide, an exhibit of early photographs of the Maine woods, and a fashion show.

All events are free and open to the public. Call the Bangor Public Library at 947-8336 for more information. The schedule is listed under “Special Events” on the library’s Web site, http://www.bpl.lib.me.us.