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Shortly before he left Walden pond in 1846, Thoreau spent two weeks in
the woods of Maine, hiking up Mount Katahdin by way of the Penobscot West
Branch, with three Bangor businessmen. He preferred the Indian spelling
of the name; Ktaadn means "Highest Land." This section was written shortly
after that trip; he returned twice in the 1850s as he was writing Walden
and added two more sections ("Ktaadn" was published as a long essay in
the Union Magazine of Literature and Art). He was completing The
Maine Woods when he died in 1862. This was not his only notable "mountain-top experience;" he
records another that he took years earlier to Saddle-back Mountain in "Tuesday" in  A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.
Comparison of the two experiences can be quite enlightening.
 Criticism on the passage
In the morning, after whetting our appetite on some raw pork, a wafer
of hard bread, and a dipper of condensed cloud or waterspout, we all
together began to make our way up the falls, which I have described;
this time choosing the right hand, or highest peak, which was not the
one I had approached before. But soon my companions were lost to my
sight behind the mountain ridge in my rear, which still seemed ever
retreating before me, and I climbed alone over huge rocks, loosely poised,
a mile or more, still edging toward the clouds; for though the day was
clear elsewhere, the summit was concealed by mist. 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 ,
with cavities between, but scarcely any soil or smoother shelf. They
were the raw materials of a planet dropped from an unseen quarry, which
the vast chemistry of nature would anon into the smiling and verdant plains and valleys
of earth. This was an
extremity of the globe; as in lignite, we see
At length I entered within the skirts of the cloud which seemed forever
drifting over the summit, and yet would never be gone, but was generated
out of that pure air as fast as it flowed away; and when, a quarter
of a mile farther, I reached the summit of the ridge, which those who
have seen in clearer weather say is about five miles long, and contains
a thousand acres of table-land, I was deep within the of clouds, and all objects were obscured by them. Now the
wind would blow me out a yard of clear sunlight, wherein I stood; then
a gray, dawning light was all it could accomplish, the cloud-line ever
rising and falling with the wind's intensity. Sometimes it seemed as
if the summit would be cleared in a few moments, and smile in sunshine;
but what was gained on one side was lost on another. It was like sitting
in a chimney and waiting for the smoke to blow away. It was, in fact,
a cloud factory,--these were the cloud-works, and the wind turned them
off done from the cool, bare rocks. Occasionally, when the windy columns
broke in to me, I caught sight of a dark, damp crag to the right or
left; the mist driving ceaselessly between it and me. It reminded me
of the creations of the old epic and dramatic poets, of , and
Such was Caucasus and the rock where Prometheus was bound.
had no doubt visited such scenery as this. It was vast, Titanic, and
such as man never inhabits. Some part of the beholder, even some vital
part, seems to escape through the loose grating of his ribs as he ascends.
He is than you can imagine. There is less of substantial thought
and fair understanding in him than in the plains where men inhabit.
His reason is dispersed and shadowy, more thin and subtile, like the
air. Vast, Titanic, inhuman Nature has got him at disadvantage, caught
him alone, and him of some
of his divine faculty. She does not smile on him as in the plains.
seems to say sternly, Why came ye here before your time. This ground
is not prepared for you. Is it not enough that I smile in the valleys?
I have never made this soil for thy feet, this air for thy breathing,
these rocks for thy neighbors. I cannot pity nor fondle thee here, but
forever relentlessly drive thee hence to where I am kind. Why seek me
where I have not called thee, and then complain because you find me
but a stepmother? Shouldst thou freeze or starve, or shudder thy life
away, here is no shrine, nor altar, nor any access to my ear.
"Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy
With purpose to explore or to disturb
The secrets of your realm, but . . .
. . . . . . . as my way
Lies through your spacious empire up to light."
The tops of mountains are among the unfinished parts of the globe, whither
it is a slight insult to the gods to climb and pry into their secrets,
and try their effect on our humanity. perchance, go there. Simple races, as savages,
do not climb mountains,-- their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts
never visited by them. is always angry with those who climb to the summit of Ktaadn. According
to Jackson, who, in his capacity of geological surveyor of the State,
has accurately measured it,--the altitude of Ktaadn is 5300 feet, or a
little more than one mile above the level of the sea,--and he adds, "It
is then evidently the highest point in the State of Maine, and is the
most abrupt granite mountain in New England." The peculiarities of that
spacious table-land on which I was standing, as well as the remarkable
semi-circular precipice or basin on the eastern side, were all concealed
by the mist. I had brought my whole pack to the top, not knowing but I
should have to make my descent to the river, and possibly to the settled
portion of the State alone, and by some other route, and wishing to have
a complete outfit with me. But at length, fearing that my companions would
be anxious to reach the river before night, and knowing that the clouds
might rest on the mountain for days, I was Occasionally, as I came down, the wind would blow me a
vista open, through which I could see the country eastward, boundless
forests, and lakes, and streams, gleaming in the sun, some of them emptying
into the East Branch. There were also new mountains in sight in that direction.
Now and then some small like a fragment of the gray rock blown off by the wind.
I found my companions where I had left them, on the side of the peak,
gathering the mountain-cranberries, which filled every crevice between
the rocks, together with blueberries, which had a spicier flavor the
higher up they grew, but were not the less agreeable to our palates.
When the country is settled, and roads are made, these cranberries will
perhaps become an From this elevation, just on the skirts of the clouds,
we could overlook the country, west and south, for a hundred miles.
There it was, the State of Maine, which we had seen on the map, but
not much like that,--immeasurable forest for the sun to shine on, that
eastern stuff we hear of in Massachusetts. It did not look as if a solitary traveler had
cut so much as a walking-stick there. Countless lakes,--Moosehead in
the southwest, forty miles long by ten wide, like a gleaming silver
platter at the end of the table; Chesuncook, eighteen long by three
wide, without an island; Millinocket, on the south, with its hundred
islands; and a hundred others without a name; and mountains, also, whose
names, for the most part, are known only to the Indians. The forest
looked like a and the effect of these lakes in its midst has been
well compared, by one who has since visited this same spot, It was a
large farm for somebody, when cleared. According to the Gazetteer, which
was printed before the boundary question was settled, this single Penobscot
county, in which we were, was larger than the whole State of Vermont,
with its fourteen counties; and this was only a part of the wild lands
of Maine. We are concerned now, however, We were about eighty miles, as the
bird flies, from Bangor, or one hundred and fifteen, as we had ridden,
and walked, and paddled. We had to console ourselves with the reflection
that this view was probably as good as that from the peak, as far as
it went; and what were a mountain without its attendant clouds and mists?
Like ourselves, neither
Setting out on our return to the river, still at an early hour in the
day, we decided to follow the course of the torrent, which we supposed
to be Murch Brook, as long as it would not lead us too far out of our
way. We thus traveled about four miles in the very torrent itself, continually
crossing and recrossing it, and jumping with the stream down falls of seven
or eight feet, or sometimes sliding down on our backs in a thin sheet
of water. in the spring,
apparently accompanied by a slide from the mountain. It must have been
filled with a stream of stones and water, at least twenty feet above
the present level of the torrent. For a rod or two, on either side of
its channel, the trees were barked and splintered up to their tops,
the birches bent over, twisted, and sometimes finely split, like a stable-broom;
some, a foot in diameter, snapped off, and whole clumps of trees bent
over with the weight of rocks piled on them. In one place we noticed
a rock, two or three feet in diameter, lodged nearly twenty feet high
in the crotch of a tree. For the whole four miles, we saw but one rill
emptying in, and the volume of water did not seem to be increased from
the first. We traveled thus very rapidly with a downward impetus, and
grew remarkably expert at leaping from rock to rock, for leap we must,
and leap we did, whether there was any rock at the right distance or
not. when the foremost turned about and looked
up the winding ravine, walled in with rocks and the green forest, to
see, at intervals of a rod or two, a red-shirted or green-jacketed mountaineer
against the white torrent, leaping down the channel with his pack on
his back, or pausing upon a convenient rock in the midst of the torrent
to mend a rent in his clothes, or unstrap the dipper at his belt to
take a draught of the water. At one place by seeing, on a little sandy shelf by the side of
the stream, the fresh print of a man's foot, and for a moment realized
how felt in a similar case; but at last we remembered that we
had struck this stream on our way up, though we could not have told
when, and one had descended into the ravine for a drink. The cool air
above and the continual bathing of our bodies in mountain water, alternate
foot, sitz, douche, and plunge baths, made this walk exceedingly refreshing,
and we had traveled only a mile or two, after leaving the torrent before
every thread of our clothes was as dry as usual, owing perhaps to
After leaving the torrent, being in doubt about our course, Tom threw
down his pack at the foot of the loftiest spruce-tree at hand, and shinned
up the bare trunk some twenty feet, and then climbed through the green
tower, lost to our sight, until he held the topmost spray in his hand.
in his younger days, had marched through the wilderness with a body
of troops, under General Somebody, and with one other man did all the
scouting and spying service. The General's word was, "Throw down the
top of that tree," and there was no tree in Maine woods so high that
it did not lose its top in such a case. being lost once in these woods, nearer
to the settlements than this, who climbed the loftiest pine they could
find, some six feet in diameter at the ground, from whose top they discovered
a solitary clearing and its smoke. When at this height, some two hundred
feet from the ground, one of them became dizzy, and fainted in his companion's
arms, and the latter had to accomplish the descent with him, alternately
fainting and reviving, as best he could. To Tom we cried, Where away
does the summit bear? where the burnt lands? The last he could only
conjecture; he descried, however, a little meadow and pond, lying probably
in our course, which we concluded to steer for. On reaching this secluded
meadow, we found on the shore of the pond, and the water was still
unsettled as if they had fled before us. A little farther, in a dense
thicket, we seemed to be still on their trail. It was a small meadow,
of a few acres, on the mountain side, concealed by the forest, and where one would think that Pursuing this course,
we soon reached the open land, which went sloping down some miles toward
the Penobscot.
Perhaps We were passing over "Burnt Lands," burnt
by lightning, perchance, though they showed no recent marks of fire,
hardly so much as a charred stump, but looked rather like a natural
pasture for the moose and deer, exceedingly wild and desolate, with
occasional strips of timber crossing them, and low poplars springing
up, and patches of blueberries here and there. I found myself traversing
them familiarly, like some pasture run to waste, or partially reclaimed
by man; but when I reflected what man, what brother or sister or kinsman
of our race made it and claimed it, It is
difficult to conceive of a region uninhabited by man. We habitually
presume his presence and influence everywhere. Nature was
here something savage and
though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see
what the Powers had made there, the form and fashion and material of
their work. This was of which we have heard, Here was no man's garden, but the It was not lawn, nor pasture, nor mead, nor woodland, nor
lea, nor arable, nor waste land. It was the fresh and natural surface
of the planet Earth, as it was made forever and ever,--to be the dwelling
of man, we say,--so Nature made it, and man may use it if he can. There was clearly
felt the presence of a force not bound to be kind to man. --to be inhabited
by men nearer of kin to the rocks and to wild animals than we. We walked
over it with a certain awe, stopping, from time to time, to pick the
blueberries which grew there, and had a smart and spicy taste. Perchance
where our wild pines stand, and leaves lie on their forest floor, in
Concord, there were once reapers, and husbandmen planted grain; but
here not even the surface had been scarred by man, but it was a specimen
of what God saw fit to make this world.
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