Ktaadn is in the United States of America, but it acknowledges no authority other than its own. It rises alone for thousands of feet over the surrounding Maine lakes and woods in its distinctive shape, a trapezoid with a wide, flat plane at the top. Its summit marks the end of the Appalachian Trail, and because of the way the trail loops back and forth, Ktaadn is visible for miles and miles to those completing their journey.

For the preservation of Ktaadn (and the wilderness surrounding it) we have Percival Baxter, former governor of the state, to thank. He failed to make Ktaadn a state park during his time in government, so he bought the land himself and donated it to the state, creating Baxter State Park in 1931. Baxter said of his project that “man is born to die, his works are short-lived. Buildings crumble, monuments decay, wealth vanishes, but Ktaadn in all its glory forever shall remain the mountain of the people of Maine.” He continued to buy land in the area and add it to the state park for the rest of his life. Even after his death some small additions have been made, bringing the park’s size to a little more than two hundred thousand acres, intended to be kept forever wild. And he succeeded. Ktaadn is not Mount Washington. Maine is not New Hampshire. There is no road built to the top, and there are no cars with bumper stickers on them saying, “This car climbed Ktaadn.”

The treeline on Ktaadn is at around thirty-five to thirty-eight hundred feet, leaving the top fifteen hundred feet or so to Alpine grasses and other plants and lichens able to grow there and nowhere else in the surrounding area. The area above the treeline, known as the Tableland, is home to two endangered animals, the Ktaadn arctic butterfly and the American pipit, that do not live in the surrounding region. Historically, the top of the mountain has been off limits to humanity. It seems that the Penobscot nation, who inhabited the region before the arrival of Europeans, did not regard Ktaadn as their own. They did not climb it. Its peaks were the home of Pamola, the storm god, who did not look kindly on mortals’ entrance to his domain. He was said to have kept prisoners there. Thoreau reports that his native guide informed him that it was necessary to leave a bottle of rum at the top to appease the god, a ritual the guide had performed a number of times. Even now, when tens of thousands of people climb the mountain each year, the glory of Ktaadn lies in the fact that it does not belong to humanity and never could. Ktaadn is not menacing, but it is indifferent, and to a human being trying to survive on its slopes that comes out to about the same thing.

At the top of the mountain is one rather large concession to the human world and human scale. The top of Ktaadn is five thousand two hundred sixty-nine feet above sea level, just eleven short of a mile. So a rock pile was built at the summit to reach the last few feet into the sky. (The rock pile is believed to actually be thirteen feet tall, since earlier surveyors measured Ktaadn’s elevation at five thousand two hundred sixty-seven feet.) The rock pile is visible a little ways away on the approach to the summit. The clear indication of the summit’s location is nice, but it also looks silly.

Thoreau, while on the Tableland, did not have the benefit of the rock pile, and wrote that “It reminded me of the creations of the old epic and dramatic poets, of Atlas, Vulcan, the Cyclops, and Prometheus . . . Vast, Titanic, inhuman nature has got him at disadvantage, caught him alone, and pilfers him of some of his divine faculty.” God creates Ktaadn: man imitates God, but the best he can do is a thirteen-foot-tall rock pile.

Almost every culture has understood that the divine is somewhere above, and the mountains are where it approaches, the closest we can get to it. The most famous examples are in the Old World—Mount Olympus, Mount Fuji—and I have always thought that the New World, while quick to boast of its natural beauty, feels a sense of shame at the lack of history associated with its natural monuments. The storm god makes Ktaadn his domain and shows his presence atop it. I am reminded of another deity, at whose going out “the earth trembled, and the heavens dropped, the clouds also dropped water,” who revealed himself to another man at the top of another mountain and kept him there so long that everyone thought he was dead. Ktaadn is like that. It is one of America’s holy mountains in the wilderness.

This column appeared in Trinity 2024 issue of The Lamp.