Index
Northwestern Wilderness Of Maine
Personal Essays
Behind The Mountain
A friend of mine, now living in rural Vermont, told me her dad enjoyed hunting. When his wife asked him where he had been, he would tease, "behind the mountain."
During my early teen years I spent as much time as I could behind the mountain. I never built a raft like my literature friends, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but my dad had boats and canoes I could borrow - there was a large lake between our log cabin and the mountain. I would travel by water to Wood Stream on the north side of the mountain and leave my canoe on shore then travel by foot, following a series of streams westward behind the mountain.
Traveling by foot from our log cabin, I would walk south along the Canadian Pacific Railroad and cross Moose River on the McKenny Bridge and continue westward along the tracks to the back of the mountain.
Big Wood Lake was at the foot of my bedroom and at sunrise the first thing I would notice was Sally Mountain. Looking westward its shape would fool you. The mountain looked like a large mound, but viewing it from the north or the south its shape was a stretched out ridge of large stone cliffs poking above the trees.
For a long ride on the water, it was possible to travel behind the mountain by paddling under the railroad bridge on the Moose River to Attean Lake on the south side of the mountain traveling westward to the narrows. If you had the energy, you could portage your canoe the quarter mile to Holeb Pond, but this is where I usually pulled the canoe out of the water and traveled northward along the streams on foot northward to my destination, behind the mountain.
I sometimes wonder what drew me to that magical area of the wilderness. Perhaps it was because I never saw another human being. While sitting on a rock, it was fun to watch for wildlife. During the warm weather the snowshoe rabbits were brown and flip-flopped around unaware of someone watching. Moose were standing in the water raking the bottom with their large antlers while White-Tail Deer stood on the shore sipping the cool stream water.
Beaver bogs were plentiful. The beaver is exceptionally clever. He can cut down a tree by nibbling it with his teeth, build a dam without a blueprint, and erect his house without belonging to a union.
Otters would make me laugh. During the daytime otters float on their backs eating freshwater clams. To open the fresh water clam shell they place a small rock on their chest and smash the shell against it.