Your Scribe has added another selection to his list of favorite books about "cabin country."

The new entry is "Undaunted Courage" by Stephen Ambrose.

The subhead of the book is "Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson and the Opening of the American West," and chronicles the exploration of Lewis and Clark in about 1803-06.

It was written in 1994, and has no direct connection to Maine.

But I just finished reading it, and was intrigued by subject matter: to wit, melding with the outdoors to canoe, fish, hunt, camp and portage your way across the wilderness, from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean in Washington.

One task worthy of admiration was their ability to make their own boats. If watercraft were destroyed or stolen, the crew would simply make more.

Most of us look to Old Town or a similar manufacturer when our canoes need replacing but those travelers in the early 19th century were can-do travelers.

An unexpected revelation in the award-winning book was that many of the outdoorsmen and soldiers of that era suffered malnutrition because of poor diet.

True, they could eat buffalo or venison seven days a week, but Ambrose said that lack of fruit and vegetables caused many men to have ongoing health problems.

(The need to follow a varied diet was unappreciated then).

Also noteworthy for Your Scribe were the numerous accounts of the plentitude of fish and game of that era.

It is likely that Maine, though perhaps short on bison, was also host to an abundance of deer, bear, beaver, otter and fish.

Today we are attempting to coax salmon back to the rivers, and set aside annual funds to stock streams with brown and brook trout.

And we must carefully monitor the deer herd to make sure there will be enough animals to lure hunters to the woods for the purpose of slaying them.

Oh, for the good old days.

Well, almost good. There was that aforementioned tradeoff: all that available meat in exchange for scurvy and/or malnutrition.

(An aside: Though the fish and game folks today say the deer herd is abundant and healthy, in my neck of cabin country there are fewer deer than a decade ago. I haven't seen one in three years - though I have seen plenty of four-wheel drive vehicles parked near my cabin as hunters tromp through the forest).

Yes, "Undaunted Courage" goes on my list of favorites.

The robust achievement of traveling cross country to chronicle the West is remarkable to contemplate even today (though Ambrose does point out they never would have made it without the considerable help of the native Americans).

I vow to read the early histories of Maine's wilderness, written by historian and former political figure Neal Rolde.

My other favorite books about outdoor life are the following:

"Arundel," by Kenneth Roberts.

"A Year in the Maine Woods," by Bernd Heinrich.

"One Man's Meat," by E.B. White, who was not a classic "outdoorsman" but wrote great essays about trying to live off the land.

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