Summer Solstice greetings! Over the past six weeks, I’ve traveled from Saint Gertrude’s Monastery in Idaho back to my home in the Maine Woods. I’ve settled into my off-grid cabin on First Roach Pond and my work managing the Appalachian Trail Conservancy Visitor Center in Monson. In my next post, I’ll share highlights of my...Read More
As my long-term blog friends know, I’m spending the winter at the Center for Benedictine Life at the Monastery of Saint Gertrude near Cottonwood, Idaho. (For the full story of my initial stay at the monastery last spring, see https://www.wendyweiger.com/idaho-adventure-saint-gertrudes-monastery-spring-2023/.) The Sisters of Saint Gertrude’s steward 1,400 mostly-forested acres. Their land rises above the Camas...Read More
My mother and I moved to the Maine Woods in December 2003. It’s hard to believe that twenty years have flown by since then. Twenty years of exploring: traveling hundreds of miles up mountains and down rivers, in hiking boots, by canoe, on snowshoes and skis. Twenty years of getting to know my neighbors: trees,...Read More
In the Penobscot language, Katahdin means “greatest mountain.” It rises from the ancestral homeland of the Penobscots. According to tribal historian James Francis, the name does not refer to size, but to its spiritual significance to his people. In 1846, Thoreau journeyed to Katahdin’s Tableland. He experienced the mountain as “primeval, untamed, and forever untamable...Read More
Since 2014, I’ve been watching an eagles’ nest. It’s cradled in the boughs of a tall pine, above the North Inlet of First Roach Pond, about four tenths of a mile from my cabin. Over those years, the resident adults have raised six eaglets. In 2021, I followed the progress of the eagle family closely,...Read More
The Thoreau-Wabanaki Festival is an annual gathering in Greenville, at the southern tip of Moosehead Lake, the gateway to Maine’s North Woods. The festival celebrates the lifeways of the Wabanaki, the people indigenous to the land now known as Maine. It commemorates Henry David Thoreau’s three journeys in the Maine Woods, two of which began...Read More
Mud season in northern Maine, when trails are impassible and waterways are slowly thawing, is a good time for traveling to other climes. On April 11, I set off for a month as a volunteer at the Center for Benedictine Life at the Monastery of Saint Gertrude in Cottonwood, Idaho (https://stgertrudes.org/). The story of Saint...Read More
Early-spring greetings! The winter has surely flown by. In the Maine Woods, one week past the Spring Equinox, there is still snow on the ground, and lakes remain solidly frozen. However, we’ve transitioned into what I call “maple syrup” weather. Daytime temperatures rise well into the thirties – sometimes even into the low forties –...Read More
As my long-term blog friends know, I spent the winters of 2021 and 2022 in my off-the-grid cabin on First Roach Pond, deep in the Maine Woods. This winter, I’m living mostly on the grid. I’m seeking a publisher for my book manuscript Heaven Beneath Our Feet, and I’ve signed on as a substitute teacher...Read More
