WRITTEN BY JUDY HARRISON
Have you ever been alone in the Maine woods at night? Can you still hear the rustling of leaves under your feet and the sound of nocturnal creatures scampering nearby? Can you smell the pines and see the Milky Way, Jupiter, the Big Dipper, and Orion overhead? Want to return there from a comfortable couch?
“North Woods at Night: Literary Reflections on Maine’s Largest Forest,” an anthology, takes readers into the darkness of the 3.5 million acres that make up the North Woods. The work of 38 writers includes essays, poetry, fiction, and memories about night time spent in the woods of Maine.
The book is the second anthology released in connection with the Bangor Book Fair held at the Bangor Public Library in December. Proceeds from sales will be donated to the Forest Society of Maine. The first anthology, “Rivers of Ink: Literary Reflections on the Penobscot,” was compiled in 2023.
Emily M. Leonard and Greg Westrich found peace and renewal along the Appalachian Trail. Leonard, who has thru hiked the trail twice, fell in love with the North Woods as a child when her family visited her father during the summers when he worked in a logging camp. Her father became very ill while she was on her second hike, and Leonard left the trail to be with him in his final days but returned to complete her long walk.
“I soon found myself in the same woods he had taken me as a young child, the place we vacationed because it was all we could afford,” Leonard, who has authored books about hiking the trail, wrote in her essay, “The 100-Mile Wilderness.” “Those woods were a source of joy in my childhood throughout my growing years. Now, as an adult they have become a source of healing when life becomes overwhelming.”
Westrich, a teacher at Deer Isle/Stonington High School, hiked the Maine section of the trail alone, but he encountered his son, daughter, wife, and dog along the way even though they weren’t with him.
“Six days in the wilderness and I felt more connected to the shadows than to the world beyond the woods,” he wrote in “100 Miles.” “… Reality and imagination were interchangeable. My world had been reduced to walking, drinking water, eating food, and inhabiting shadows. I knew if I didn’t get to the end of my hike soon, I never would.”
In “Hold It: Potty Talk for the Northern Maine Woods Camper,” Chris Davis wrote about the fear she felt as a teenager having to leave the family’s warm camp in the woods and walk outside in the blackness to the outhouse and back with just a flashlight for company. That fear was multiplied after she watched slasher movies at a friend’s house.
“You return to the camp as your 99-cent cone of light bounces with each step,” Davis wrote. “You’re relieved and less frantic but still cautiously racing the bobcats, fishers, bears, skunks, raccoons, and Freddy Kruegers to the safety of a latching door. …”
Sarah Walker Caron expresses a different kind of fear in her essay, “We Are But Guests in This Space,” which concerns the impact of global warming on the woods.
“We’ve brought the destabilization, the warming and weirdening of climate, the loss of native plants, and the destruction of invasive species,” she wrote. “We are an invasive species. We are ruining everything. We are but guests in this place.”
The next anthology will be “Echoes in the Fog: Literary Reflections on the Liminal Spaces of Maine’s Coast” to be released in December 2025. The deadline for submissions is April 30. Criteria for submissions can be found at 12willowspress.com/home/submissions.
A selection from “The Wisps of the North Woods” by Devin Gifford
The dark cloaks the wood
to sift out all but the brave.
Tree trunk golems guard the gate.
In their branches,
an owl’s eye gleams.
To find the right slice of night,
listen for the space between the trees
that whispers in a language you’ve never spoken,
and hold your heart close to your chest,
lest it snag on your sleeve.
