Could it be true that Thoreau was only seeking the adventure of
Mt. Katahdin for poetic “raw material”? Did he traverse the
range solely for a thrilling story for the public? As a hopeless
literary romantic, I would dare say not; and will go further to
defend the legitimacy of Thoreau’s expedition! In Claiming
Maine, Disabato accuses Thoreau of venturing into the wilderness
in order to obtain an economic gain, the likes of which he
claims to denounce in excerpts of The Maine Woods and the
Economy introduction of Walden. She states, along with other
authors, that Thoreau perhaps was only involved in such an
undertaking to “extract” what he needed from nature, in this
case the raw material for his journals. Now, it is simple to
equate that Thoreau, considering himself a writer or thinking –
man by profession, has the right to define the means of his own
income. For this span of his life, while residing at Walden
Pond, the successes of his labors were not the fruit of work or
of his chores, but the result of a f