When Henry David Thoreau nurtured his spirit with long forays into the North Woods of Maine more than a century and a half ago, he traveled principally by canoe, and he followed a trail of sorts.

For centuries before Europeans came to these shores, Native Americans had used rivers and lakes to traverse the thick forests that blanketed the eastern half of the continent. These water routes, linked by portage trails and traversed in the light and maneuverable birch canoes that evolved with them, later made possible the fur trade, lumber industry, and European settlement of this part of the continent.

When Thoreau made three extensive trips into the Maine Woods in 1846, 1853, and 1857, he traveled the old route with Penobscot guides, their paths scribing a broad circle across Moosehead Lake and down the West and East branches of the Penobscot River. Thoreau wrote about those trips in The Maine Woods, published in 1864. The book represents perhaps the first appearance in literature of the phenomenon we now call eco-tourism.

Thoreau used the ancient canoe routes in a new way as well—not only as a means to traverse dense forests, but also to experience what he called their wildness. He was the first to use a water trail the way we use them now—as Thoreau himself put it, “for inspiration and our own true recreation.”

Inevitably though, Thoreau’s beloved Maine Woods fell to the ax, only to be floated downstream on the same waterways that had brought the lumbermen. Rail and road supplanted the old canoe routes. The portage trails grew over, and the very notion of a linked network of canoe routes slipped out of the public consciousness.

When recreational canoeing boomed in the late 20th century, those who wanted to make long canoe trips faced a new challenge. Lakes and rivers were public, but launch access and camping areas were not.

The time had come for a new paradigm—organized water trails with designated access points and campsites, a route marked by signs and with troves of additional information on interpretive maps and interactive websites. The last decade has seen a tremendous boom in such water trails, and many of the best are in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions.

Some of these trails are short routes suitable for day trips or weekend overnights; others, like the 325-mile Maine Island Trail, are coastal routes best traveled by sea kayak. The five trails we profile are long inland routes, equally suited for a quick get-away or a weeks-long sojourn. They no longer are the most efficient way to cross great distances as they were in Thoreau’s time, but they transport us to places of which he would surely approve: untrammeled woodlands, pristine waterways, and unexpected islands of wildness amid suburban sprawl.

1 | 2 | 3

NEXT PAGE