Beyond the scandals

Mount Katahdin, in northern Maine.

“We were beyond fences, away from the clash of town-clocks, the clink of town-dollars, the hiss of town scandals. As soon as one is fairly in camp and has begun to eat with this fingers, he is free.’’

— Theodore Winthrop (1828-1861), in Life in the Open Air, an account of the author's adventures in northern Maine and the ascent of Mount Katahdin in the mid-19th Century. The Connecticut native, writer, lawyer and traveler was killed in the Civil War; this book was published posthumously.