Second of a two-part series.

Following the beam of my headlamp, I reached the Kidney Pond campground. Mike and Surfer were there, conversing in quiet tones.

The only unlocked cabin was Sentinel 7, which we had reserved for three days. Mike stomped up the stairs into the dark, unheated space.

In the distance, a noisy wind was sweeping over Barren Mountain. I followed Surfer into the cabin, the door slamming behind me.

There was a propane lamp attached to the wall. Mike lit a match. Soon, the musty odor gave way to the smell of wood smoke. Once the fire was blazing, the place became habitable, brightening our prospects.

We had packed in Jet-Boil stoves, propane, tubes of peanut butter, and spare headlamps and batteries.

I placed six tortillas atop the woodstove. Then I slathered them with peanut butter and honey while Mike tossed ramen noodles into the Jet-Boil.

Mike rigged his phone to an oversize battery to play music. Then Joe Strummer launched into “Silver and Gold” in that gritty, blue collar voice.

I’m gonna take a trip around the world

Gonna kiss all the pretty girls

The wind was whistling through chinks in the wall. Just as Mike reached to pour the bourbon, someone knocked on the door.

It was a young man in a jacket with the park service logo. His name was Ranger Andy.

“You’re the only ones in the park, so I wanted to make sure you got here,” he said.

Silvery particles of snow had created a miniature blizzard inside the cabin. Soon, it was filtering down onto the bunks.

Andy said the severe conditions would last through tomorrow. Then he bid us good night.

Going outside, I saw the black bowl of the sky extinguishing the stars. Grabbing an armload of birch, I headed back to the fire.

When I awoke, it was 8 below zero, the sky low and black, with snow angling sideways. At 7 a.m., it was a fluttering mass of crystals, torn up clouds, and darkness.

Mike and Surfer geared up for a hike while I scribbled in my notebook. The only sound was my pencil scratching over the paper.

Behind the cabin was a plot of land that contained a woodshed. In shell pants, balaclava and down jacket, I exited the cabin and dropped off the porch.

By the time I hauled the last armload of birch, I’d been outdoors for an hour. I set two logs amidst the red-black coals. They flared up instantly.

Mike and Surfer returned a few minutes later.

It was only 1 p.m. The wind was rattling the hinges on the door. The fire crackled, and our headlamps probed the dark corners of the room.

As the fire dwindled, I zipped up my shell, stamping onto the porch. The wind boomed across the pond. Flat-sided snow was flying sideways, spinning toward me like razor blades.

The temperature was far below zero, and visibility was nil.

The trees were vague black shapes. The forest stretched empty and ominous from our encampment all the way to Canada.

Nature is not so much “red in tooth and claw,” but a powerful massing of darkness that’s indifferent to our travails and triumphs.

I stood at the rail squinting at the pond. It was a privilege, standing there on the edge of that absence of everything, knowing that a few feet away, there was a seat by the fire.

I’ve entrusted Surfer and Mike with my life many times, and I knew they’d plunge into the void if I got lost in the storm. Not many people can say that.

When I went inside, Mike handed me a tin cup.

“That’s money,” I said, drinking the bourbon.

It was 7 p.m., an early bedtime, even for me.

I listened to the wind as it fled over the roof. In the morning, the propane lamp was out, the fire down to embers. We ate quick oats with peanut butter.

For Thoreau, breakfast consisted of tea, bread and freshly caught trout eaten with forks made from alder twigs.

The fire extinguished, I latched the door. Strapping on our snowshoes, we walked along the edge of Kidney Pond.

A metallic sky was pitched above the forest, smoothing the clouds. Soon, we were standing on the bridge over the Nesowadnehunk stream.

It was 12 miles to the parking lot.

The track rose over hills that divided the forest in half. Mostly, it was a long walk. We had views of Tracy Pond, the flat white oval showing through the trees.

Soon, I was alone on the road with darkness closing in. Thoreau’s experience here resembled what the original inhabitants had known for thousands of years.

If you drop into another place and time, you should feel obliged to defend it.

I certainly do.

Thoreau’s first trip to Maine left him with the urge to preserve its woodlands and waterways.

Of equal interest to Thoreau were the Abenaki. In “The Maine Woods,” he says that by 1837 only “two hundred and sixty-two souls” remained among the Maine tribes. He wrote that some of the Abenaki were forlorn, since their lives were “domi aut militia, at home or at war, or now, rather, venatus, that is, a hunting.”

Along the way, Thoreau made the acquaintance of a 24-year-old Abenaki hunter, Joe Polis, who spoke English.

Polis told Thoreau that the bear was wassus in his language. The woodcock was nipsquecohossus, and the kingfisher, skuscumonsuck.

“These were the sounds that issued from the wigwams of this country before Columbus was born,” wrote Thoreau. “They have not died away.”

Several of Thoreau’s principles have stayed with me. The first is that the American wilderness – from Maine to Arizona, the piney woods of Georgia to the snowfields in Alaska – is our greatest national resource.

If we prioritize it and care for it, this resource is inexhaustible.

Also, the original inhabitants are our guides and our equals. The way we’ve dealt with their legacy is a national disgrace, but it’s a wrong that can be righted, given a strong dose of moral courage.

Finally, I crossed a snowy field into the parking lot.

Soon, we were on Interstate 95. I was sipping a beer when Joe Strummer’s voice burst from the speakers, singing “Rudie Can’t Fail.”

When I was studying at Acadia University, every March I’d hitchhike from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to Methuen, Massachusetts, where I still live. Often, I’d reach this stretch, halfway home.

Now, I gazed at the trees, bent sideways by the wind. Somehow, I’d slipped inside the landscape. My inner self, along with the vast wilderness, was bound together by the glossy black sky.

Rolling down I-95, I saw all the wanderers, wayfarers, and fur trappers who’d passed this way; the Jesuits, hunters, loggers and land-speculators, going along in the darkness.

And there I was, 20 years old, wearing my Acadia Wrestling jacket, following the other pilgrims into the huge raw country to the west.

Jay Atkinson has published nine books, including “Massacre on the Merrimack,” “Legends of Winter Hill” and “Ice Time.” He teaches writing at Boston University.

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