But consider poling or warping up those rapids and you might begin to shiver, no matter the season. Stand in front of Miller's photo of Haskell Pitch, East Branch, or his West Branch image of the Penobscot, and you see such lyrically running waters that you can almost hear their delightful babble. Miller's photographs retain that wonder they are breathtaking portraits, many of them reflections of lakes and streams captured in the rosy light of dawn or dusk. While Thoreau's words convey a quizzical eye toward humanity-at turns praising, critiquing, and laughing at the foresters and hunters he comes across-his take on nature is purely reverential. It coincides with the publication of Miller's Thoreau, The Maine Woods: A Photographic Journey through an American Wilderness (Levenger Press, 2013). The show features contemporary photographs by Scot Miller, who spent 120 days in the Maine woods over seven years, retracing Thoreau's steps in all seasons. I then visited 'Thoreau's Maine Woods,' a celebratory exhibit mounted by Harvard University, Thoreau's alma mater, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. I was both captivated by Thoreau's observations and passionate concerns, and amazed by how little has changed over the many decades since the philosopher-naturalist tromped around our northern swamps, sinking at times to his knees in the mud. To commemorate the anniversary, I spent some time rereading The Maine Woods. If Thoreau's sojourn at Walden Pond exposed him to solitude and to himself, the Maine voyages brought him into direct contact with 'primeval, untamed, and forever untamable Nature,' that 'Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night.' Thoreau's austere cabin appears quite luxurious when compared with the conditions of his northern adventures, where he slept under a blanket-tarp, or in a tent, or-when the tent burned, as it did his very first night in the woods on his first journey-under his bateau. Photo by Scot Miller, Courtesy of Harvard Soft, damp moss which carpets that forest,'

The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau