Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Great
North Woods
M
aine's Great North Woods is a
land where mighty rivers are
born, the forest seems tractless, and
where more deer and moose roam today
than 100 years ago. It is a place the
great nature writer Henry David
Thoreau would still recognize today, al-
though
he
would
find
it
greatly
changed.
Gone are the sprawling lumber camps
peopled by hard-working loggers who
spent months at a time felling and
moving timber by river to the hungry
mills to the South. In their place today
heavy equipment allows just a handful
of people to process as much wood in a
day as a dozen men could do in a week
a century ago. In their air-conditioned cabs these machine operators look
out on a forest much different than that visited by Thoreau. Granted, the
mix of species of trees remain the same - although mechanized harvest-
ing and planned replanting have resulted in wide areas of a single spe-
cies, most the same age. This groomed monoculture seems out of place in
the lush, chaotic landscape that characterizes wilder areas.
Most of Maine's woods have been cut two or even three times now. In
some areas, massive clear-cuts shock even those who understand the eco-
nomic and silvacultural reasons behind the practice. Some argue clear-
cutting amounts to land control by large, multi-national corporations
concerned only with short-term profits. Others argue the cuts were
needed to salvage trees ravaged by disease that would have only rotted
anyway. The debate over the practice has been raging for years in Maine
and will undoubtedly continue long into the future.
Still, it is the paper and lumber companies that drive the economic en-
gines of the Great North Woods. They are the ones who put in the roads
enjoyed by mountain bikers, campers, canoers, fishermen and hunters -
most with little or no fees. And while no traditional working lumber
camps remain (clusters of cabins and campers do, however), lakeside
