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Log in"My Debt To Maine" By Theodore Roosevelt
"My Debt To Maine" By Theodore Roosevelt
by Outspoken on Sat Nov 03, 2007 6:29 pm
My Debt To Maine
By Theodore Roosevelt
I owe a personal debt to Maine because of my association with certain staunch friends in Aroostook County; an association that helped and benefited me throughout my life in more ways than one.
It is more than forty years ago that I first went to Island Falls and stayed with the Sewall family. I repeated the visit three or four times. I made a couple of hunting trips in the fall, with Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow; and one winter I spent three or four weeks on snowshoes with them, visiting a couple of lumber camps. I was not a boy of any natural prowess and for that very reason the vigorous out-door life was just what I needed.
It was a matter of pride with me to keep up with my stalwart associates, and to shift for myself, and to treat with indifference whatever hardship or fatigue came our way. In their company I would have been ashamed to complain! And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was rather tired by some of the all-day tramps, especially in the deep snow, when my webbed racquets gave me “snowshoe feet”, or when we waded up the Munsungin in shallow water, dragging a dugout, until my ankles became raw from slipping on the smooth underwater stones; and I still remember with qualified joy the ascent and especially the descent of Katahdin in moccasins, worn because I had lost one of my heavy shoes in crossing a river at a riffle.
Full letter: http://www.maine.gov/doc/parks/programs/history/biblepoint/letter.htm
By Theodore Roosevelt
I owe a personal debt to Maine because of my association with certain staunch friends in Aroostook County; an association that helped and benefited me throughout my life in more ways than one.
It is more than forty years ago that I first went to Island Falls and stayed with the Sewall family. I repeated the visit three or four times. I made a couple of hunting trips in the fall, with Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow; and one winter I spent three or four weeks on snowshoes with them, visiting a couple of lumber camps. I was not a boy of any natural prowess and for that very reason the vigorous out-door life was just what I needed.
It was a matter of pride with me to keep up with my stalwart associates, and to shift for myself, and to treat with indifference whatever hardship or fatigue came our way. In their company I would have been ashamed to complain! And I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was rather tired by some of the all-day tramps, especially in the deep snow, when my webbed racquets gave me “snowshoe feet”, or when we waded up the Munsungin in shallow water, dragging a dugout, until my ankles became raw from slipping on the smooth underwater stones; and I still remember with qualified joy the ascent and especially the descent of Katahdin in moccasins, worn because I had lost one of my heavy shoes in crossing a river at a riffle.
Full letter: http://www.maine.gov/doc/parks/programs/history/biblepoint/letter.htm
"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything."
Plato (427-347 BC)
Plato (427-347 BC)
