"We struck it lucky," Ray said, echoing my thoughts. This July night had it all: a half-moon shimmering over misty water, steady breezes to keep bugs away, laughing loons, and plenty of good, witty company.

It was our final night on the West Branch of the Penobscot River, which runs through upper Maine northwest of Bangor. We had spent four days paddling in the wake of America's first great naturalist writer, Henry David Thoreau, and his Penobscot Indian guides. Our journey was a small part of the recently inaugurated Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail, a network of paddling and hiking routes through what was then–and still is–New England's largest expanse of wilderness. The 200-mile path forms a rough circle from Bangor to the northern border of Baxter State Park.

Thoreau journeyed to northern Maine several times in the mid 1800s, traveling with friends and relatives, river men, and Native American guides. He talked and wrote often of the "numerous forest-clad islands, extending beyond our sight both north and south, and the boundless forest undulating away from its shores on every side, as densely packed as a rye-field, and enveloping nameless mountains in succession."

Though the forests are no longer uninterrupted, most of Thoreau's descriptions hold true. This has to be one of the few places in New England where you can read an account of a place written 150 years ago and know exactly where you are...