Wilderness is central to the image of Maine most of us carry in our minds. In this extraordinary collection nearly forty writers, poets, artists, and photographers bear witness to the central role it plays in Maine, its importance to our understanding of nature, to our sense of who we are in the world, to our very souls. And some of them devote practical thinking to how we might recover and nurture wilderness in the future.

At this time of major changes in land ownership in the North Woods and of development pressures and sprawl threatening the rural landscape of southern and central Maine, these voices for wilderness could not be more relevant.