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Home : nature writing books and essays by Eric PinderClouds wash over Mount Katahdin's Tablelands, just a mile or so from the northern terminus of the Appalachian TrailSandy Stream Pond in Baxter State Park, with a view of Mount Katahdin. This is moose country. I have never not seen a moose at Sandy Stream Pond.







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Nature Writing : From Thoreau's Solitide to Today's Crowds in Baxter State Park and along the Appalachian Trail

North to Katahdin
 Paperback, 178 pages,
Milkweed Editions, 2005

This picture of Katahdin's Knife Edge is available as a postcardListen to author Eric Pinder discuss his book North to Katahdin on New Hampshire Public Radio’s The Front Porch, with host Shay Zeller. What scared Thoreau? What happened to Donn Fendler? What’s the allure of walking the Appalachian Trail, and how is the wilderness experience changing? This half-hour interview originally aired on August 16, 2005.

Listen to The Front Porch: North to Katahdin

“A descriptive, insightful book that
makes us think about our place in nature.”
-David Breashears, director, IMAX-Everest

“Well written and descriptive”
Leslie Mass, Library Journal

Why do we like to hike? Why do we walk through the tick-infested woods, risk getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and mooseflies, endure windburn and hypothermia on rugged mountain slopes until our feet ache and our knees throb and our forty-pound packs squeeze our spinal cords like an accordion? Why do we willingly lose brain cells in the headache-inducing thin air of Mount Everest, or go for weeks at a time without a shower along the Appalachian Trail? Why do we do these things, and then go back and do them again and again? North to Katahdin is my nearly 200-page attempt to find an answer.

This year, hundreds of thousands of people—hikers, families, school groups, and urbanites alike—will turn to the mountains. In North to Katahdin, Eric Pinder probes the allure of the wilderness experience. Using Maine’s Mount Katahdin as his laboratory, Pinder considers what draws people to the mountains and how the experience they find there is changing. Are the urbanites who are now trekking the trails with cell phones, high-tech synthetic fabrics, and GPS units having remotely the same experience that Thoreau did in 1846, when he ventured into the Maine woods for the mere sake of seeing what was there? Are they even trying to? And if wilderness means “an absence of humanity,” what do we call it when it’s filled with people?

For some, Mount Katahdin is a symbol of accomplishment: the end of the 2,160-mile long Appalachian Trail, stretching from Georgia to Maine. For others, Maine’s highest peak and the mountains surrounding it in Baxter State Park are the closest they can come to wilderness. Pinder tells stories—at times hilarious, reflective, and terrifying—of this place and the people who flock to it every summer. Stories of thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail, of conflicts between wilderness devotees and their detractors, and the story of a mountain itself—its history, geology, mythology, and Thoreau’s long obsession with its clouded slopes—come together to shed light on the beginnings of the American wilderness obsession and its persistence today.

“An exciting and
colorful description of
the beauty, glories
and ruggedness of
Baxter State Park
and Mt. Katahdin.”
-Donn Fendler, author of Lost on a Mountain
in Maine

Read more about
Donn Fendler’s mountain misadventure in this North to Katahdin excerpt.

Book Reviewers Opinions
of North to Katahdin

Bookslut: a review

Nature’s Song. A review by
Keith C. Heidorn, “The Weather Doctor.”

A
New Hampshire
Writer’s Project
revew

Deer at Sandy Stream Pond at the foot of Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park

A scenic view along the Appalachian TrailWhat is Nature Writing?

“Going out into the boonies and interviewing plants” is how Gary Nahban describes nature writing, in the excellent (and sadly out of print) anthology Words from the Land. Here are some interviews with Eric Pinder and nature writers John McPhee, Annie Dillard, Barry Lopez, Linda Hassalstrom and others in the natural history field.

Interviews with Nature Writers

Best Nature Writing Books

Into Deep Slush” Nature Writing about weather from Eric Pinder’s Tying Down the Wind

Eric Pinder

“So many fascinating
aspects to this book...I scarcely dare to try to summarize them, for fear that I’ll omit something
 very important.”

-Bradford Washburn
Mt. Everest cartographer

Read
the rest of Dr. Washburn’s thoughts about this unusual book in his
letter to a young writer

Contents

TRAVELERS
Following in Thoreau’s footsteps, with a GPS unit and a bumblebee

BLACK CAT’S CRADLE
Bambi, Teddy Roosevelt’s walking stick, and Henry Thoreau’s poor attempt at onomatopoeia (did I spell that right?)

THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL
Walk 2000+ miles from Georgia to Maine.
Watch out for bears
.

WHERE THE
WILD THINGS WERE
A deer in a barbershop, and Thomas Huxley takes on Bishop Wilberforce.

ANIMAL TALES
Bears and bobcats,
moose and...cows
?

GOING TO KATAHDIN
Nearly five million footsteps.
Many start. Few finish
.

BAXTER PEAK
Gov. Percival Baxter opens his wallet and creates
Baxter State Park

THE CLOUD MAKER
Hiking above timberline. Beware of Pamola.

BUILDING A MOUNTAIN, TAKING IT DOWN
The Carl Sagan “Ooh! Ah!” deep time chapter. How long does a white pine live? How long does a mountain?

RURAL PLACES
Tourists vs natives. Hunters vs people “from away.”

BICYCLES AND BAGPIPES
Get lost in the woods. Which way to Brigadoon?

A TALE OF TWO MOUNTAINS
Compare Mount Washington’s gifts shops with “Forever Wild” Katahdin.

FOREVER WILD
What is wilderness?

MEMORIES
Coyotes bark, bull moose fight, and a chipmunk in a lean-to steals my lunch.

PAMOLA
He’s watching us.

DAWN TO DUSK
Nature writing.

EPILOGUE
Finding solitude at last on a once-crowded peak.

Katahdin’s Knife Edge, deer at Sandy Stream Pond, and sun in trees along the Appalachian Trail (photos by Eric Pinder)
Directly above: The author “doing research” (photo by Jennifer Paigen)

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Text and photographs © Eric Pinder

Clouds wash over Katahdin's tablelands. This photograph by Eric Pinder and other scenic images are available on magnets, mugs and postcards.