FARMINGTON — The woods and mountains of Maine provide the backdrop for some tall tales along with some real tales recounted in books by Steve Pinkham.

Pinkham shared some stories with eighth graders in Alternative Education classes at Mt. Blue Middle School Friday.

An avid outdoorsman himself with a few of his own stories to tell, Pinkham has also researched and collected more than 25,000 articles and stories dating from 1845 to 1913, he said.

Old stories brought together with the author’s portrait and a short biography share a piece of history and tale of Maine that might otherwise be forgotten, he said.

Pinkham, now of Quincy, Mass., was born in Farmington, lived in Lexington as a child and has ties to Farmington and Allen Mills in Industry, he told the class.

After climbing 100 of the highest mountains in New England and 180 mountains in Maine, Pinkham compiled his first book, Mountains of Maine, in 2009, he said. It took 7 years to write as he researched how the mountains were named and stories about them.

He collected so many stories, two books were needed to share his favorite tales. These were compiled within the pages of “Old Tales of Maine Woods” released in 2012 and “More Old Tales of Maine Woods” in 2014, he said.

He recently received a second place award for the 2014 book from the New England Outdoor Writers Association, he said.

“The reader will get to read stories by many of the other known and unknown men and women who travelled to northern Maine and wrote about their experiences or penned fictional stories set in the backwoods,” according to his website, www.oldtalesofthemainewoods.com.  

Pinkham told the students how writing is now second nature to him along with the skills of searching old journals and newspapers for stories of Maine.  Several stories within the last two books are over 100 years old, he said.

He even took a job with Harvard so he could access the school’s library. 

“It’s fascinating to learn information that no one living knows,” he said of pieces of history found within the articles.

In one article about a trip to Katahdin in the 1880’s, one guide happened to mention how one logging camp on the way was set aside as a quarantine for patients of diphtheria during the Civil War, he said.

Although stories are passed down within families, people often forget to write them down and stories such as that can be lost, history can be lost, he said.

Pinkham told stories of trained trout in Rangeley, bears, a true story of a mountain lion in what is now Eustis and others.  

At the turn of the century, Rangeley was a popular place and was often compared to the Adirondacks, he said. His research did reveal that the largest lake trout, an 18-pound togue, came from Mooselookmeguntic beating the largest fish caught in the Adirondacks.

He is currently researching information on Maine guides, he told the class. When he found nothing about them in the state archives in Augusta, he checked with the Fish and Game department. They reluctantly told him that everything they had on Maine guides was lost in a fire in a the 1980’s. That’s a huge loss, he said.

Pinkham is pulling old lists of guides together and researching them. People across the state are helping by submitting photos and information to try to replace what was lost.

He is also working on another book about Katahdin that includes a hundred accounts from people who made the trek between 1809 to 1905.

“The stories were all written by others,” he said. “I bring them together.”

An avid reader and writer since his teens, Pinkham credits his grandmother with being his mentor. She provided me with books that opened the whole world to me. She also taught me to say “I can,” he told the class. 

“I’m a doer – I just go to it and do it,” he said.

abryant@sunmediagroup.net

Copy the Story Link