The Last Empty Places by Peter Stark Page B

as he saw it, looks flat on top.
    That day the party made fifteen miles before camping at the mouth of Murch Brook and the Aboljacknagesic, both streams which drained off Mount Katahdin into the Penobscot’s West Branch. The foot of the mountain lay several miles away through dense forest. That evening, using birch poles and pork-baited hooks, they caught a mess of trout for supper from the creeks, tossing the wriggling, rainbow-colored fish up onto shore. Thoreau stood over them in starry-eyed wonder “that these jewels should have swum away in that Aboljacknagesic water for so long, so many dark ages;—these bright fluviatile flowers, seen of Indians only, made beautiful, the Lord only knows why, to swim there!”
    The rainbow fish reminded him of Proteus, the shape-shifting, future-telling Greek god who rules over certain beautiful sea creatures. History, writes Thoreau—and by history he appears to be referring to “actual” facts and events, like the fish wriggling at his feet—“put to a terrestrial use, is mere history; but put to a celestial use is mythology always.”
    Call it an act of genius, or, as Henry James, Sr. (father of the novelistand the philosopher), did after meeting Thoreau, an act emanating from a personality that was “literally the most childlike, unconscious and unblushing egotist 43 it has ever been my fortune to encounter in the ranks of mankind.” Here’s Henry David come along to take history—those wriggling rainbow fish at his feet—and make
mythology
out of it. Here’s Henry David come along to take the historical fact of
himself
and make mythology out of it. He aims to climb to the high, wild summit of Mount Katahdin, and there—almost as an equal, his tone implies, or at least an honored guest—consort with the gods themselves. On that high, wild summit would climax, like on some great altar, his passionate embrace of Nature.
    M OUNT K ATAHDIN lay about sixty miles south of us. Thoreau had never made it as far north—as deep into the wilds—as the St. John. As we packed up that morning at Nine-Mile Bridge after the previous evening’s rainy encounter with Nine-Mile Mike, the heavy gray sky finally dissolved into fleecy clouds and patches of blue. It was the first we’d seen of the sun in five days on the St. John. It blinded us. We paddled down through quick water and bouncy little rapids in a perfect combination of cool breeze and warm patches of sun. We drifted along talking, then broke into canoe races. Molly and Skyler loved to steer the canoe bows so they would plow through the biggest waves they could find in these minor rapids. Drifting along midstream, we nibbled a lunch of goat cheese and smoked oysters on crackers. I’d gotten over my high pique from the previous day’s river lunch when I’d left a whole unopened salami—our only one—on a cooler lid while waiting to slice it. Skyler, amusing himself by making one of his pirate boardings, leaped from one canoe to the next. The canoe rocked, my precious salami rolled from the lid, dropped into the river, and sank from sight with me groping madly after it. My curses echoed from shore to shore.
    Now Molly and Skyler decided they loved smoked oysters. I thought of the first French people in Acadia and how they picked shellfish off the mudflats at Port-Royal.
    The river braided at Seven Islands downstream from Nine-Mile Bridge. The forest briefly opened here to the sky, leaving the islands beautiful and serene and airy. We paddled past grassy banks and wove through narrow channels. Birdsong drifted from the meadowy shores. Iheard the throaty melodious trill of a redwing blackbird, reminding me of my Wisconsin childhood and the little pothole swamps I loved to explore in the woods. More geese and their goslings paddled busily along shore, and ducks—mergansers, we thought—swam in the river. An occasional seagull swooped in the distance. Seven Islands projected a sense of fertility and peace.
    What it didn’t