Climbing Mt Katahdin


… Thoreau Spring. Thoreau’s account of his 1846 climb of Katahdin (which he spelt Ktaadn) includes the following vivid description of the mountain: “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 …”