To the man or woman who has once tasted the ecstacies of life in the deep woods of northern Maine, the "call of the wild" is simply irresistible. To them no summons is sweeter, or more welcome, or more delightful to obey; and though it comes, clear and penetrating, with every recurring vacation season, yet it comes ever to gladly receptive ears and finds an instant response in the heart of the erstwhile vacationist.

There comes a time in many a man's life when the tired mind, wearied with the hurly-burly of modern business, steals away from the tasks in hand and refreshes itself with sweet memory pictures of the deep Maine woods. And what pictures they are! Exquisite paintings which no hand but nature's could originate and no thought but one's own produce; entrancing scenes with the supreme delights of camp and its environments in the foreground, and ideal woods and water settings at the back. It is no ordinary vacation trip that one makes when he wends his way into the forest fastnesses of Maine's great wilderness.

When early man went off on a vacation he invariably "took to the woods " -- because he had no other place to go to. He hunted, he fished, he roamed the forests with such delight as can come only to a true lover of the woods; and it is possible that, "just for fun," he may have worked a log into the waters of some winding stream and, sitting astride of it, have been borne along with the gliding current, enthusing all the while over the sylvan splendors which spread out in panoramic magnificence on every side. Today, the vacationist "takes to the woods" from choice; and if his route leads him into the depths of the great Maine forests where the woods are well-nigh primeval and where the lakes and rivers and lesser waterways lave the same shores they have known for centuries, then his cup of joy becomes filled to the very brim.

It was more than half a century ago when Thoreau, plunging deep into the wilderness of the Katahdin country, got his first taste of the ecstasies of existence in the great Maine woods. We have his own enthusiastic account of the trip -- of endless windings up river, lake and stream; of panoramic splendors by green -- girt shores and forest-covered ridges; and of life ideal in silent sylvan fastnesses. He went to seek a wilderness; he found a mammoth park of nature's most picturesque making, where naught but great green forests covered hill and dale as far as eye could see and where sinuous waterways offered the only path by which the traveler could get in touch with this wildly rugged land of beauty.

Kipling has told us much about the tangled jungles of the far East; Stanley has sent out glowing accounts of jungle life in Darkest Africa; now why not turn for a while to jungles nearer home -- to the greatest sporting and recreation ground in all America -- the widespread pine-tree jungles of northern Maine? Here is sport unbounded; fisherman and huntsman are equally blessed, and bountifully. Or, if one comes merely for the good which an untrammelled forest existence can do him, he gets rejuvenation and health in fullest measure, and in a most delightful way. Should the reader wonder what there can be about the Maine woods that is so universally attractive, he can best satisfy his curiosity by an actual visit to this sylvan paradise. Let him join the great army of autumnal sojourners who slip away annually from the cares and problems of city life and dive deep into the great Maine forests.