In some ways, reading a book seems like the ultimate non-physical activity. Essentially, a good book transports you to another place and another focus through a purely mental process. Reading is hardly a calorie burner.

In another aspect, though, the written word can have a strong connection with active pursuits, especially outdoor activities. Given that hiking, biking, fishing, hunting or a myriad of other nature-based activities blend action, emotion, and philosophy, it's only natural that a well-written book can speak to your heart, kindle your imagination, and ultimately weave into the experiential fabric of a day on the water or along the trails.

Sometimes, there is an obvious link between a text and an experience. I recall one trip I guided where a writer with an interest in Henry David Thoreau hired me to not only lead a canoe trip in the footsteps of Thoreau, but to help him compare the nature encountered by Thoreau with our experiences.

At night, by the light of a crackling fire or pale yet brilliant headlamp, we would read Thoreau's Maine Woods, which is essentially a mix of field journal, philosophical treatise, and travel memoir. We checked off birds, mammals, and plants we saw or heard. Then, we referenced those organisms against the records kept by Thoreau back in the mid-1800s.

Abstract words written on a page long ago came to life not just through skilled craftsmanship, but also via the very tangible sounds, sights, textures, and smells that inspired the text in the first place.

While Thoreau's Maine Woods is a natural link to time spent in, well, the Maine woods, other books unrelated to our woods and waters can also enliven time in the outdoors. Case in point is the way in which weather, an audio CD of an American classic, and Maine's pre-eminent wilderness park combined to produce an extremely gratifying couple of days in the mountains.

Last fall, while driving through a pounding rain to Roaring Brook at Baxter State Park, I finished listening to Jack Kerouac's "On The Road." The inky black night, full of howling winds and pulsing rain, served as a perfect backdrop for the American classic. After stumbling through the deluge to the ranger station and eventually making my way to my lean-to, I settled into my bag and drifted away to sleep.

Waking to what I thought, at first anyway, was a close-by flashlight, I soon realized that the pulsating light was in fact a radiant full moon intermittently blocked by fast-moving, ragged clouds. Birches and maples swept and swooned in huge wind-blown lunges. The scene was wild.

The next day, my hike brought me to the summit of Pamola Peak, on Mt. Katahdin, across the Knife's Edge from the higher Baxter Peak. Again, a raucous wind powered clouds past, only at this time and at this place it ripped clouds apart in even more savage bursts. The wind here had no trees to push around; it had to settle for me.

The great speed of the low clouds produced rolling light and dark flashes upon the boulder field, which was already covered by various shades of green and gray crustose lichen. It was as though the mountaintop scene were actually an old silent movie or flipbook. A palpable sense of wildness and a raw vitality ruled the moment.

The tone and speed of "On The Road" replayed in my mind. From that point on, Kerouac's manic text, for me, is linked with the frenzied winds that blew rough across Pamola Peak and my exposed face. After 50 years since its publication, "On The Road" has garnered plenty of attention, and while my outlook isn't terribly vital, I think being it linked with Katahdin is quite a compliment.

Occasionally, a book or story requires familiarity with an outdoor experience to fully convey its expression. I recall reading little in high school that touched me. I do remember, however, Hemingway's "Big Two Hearted River." In this short story, the main character Nick returns to an old fishing spot. After some quite successful fly fishing along a river, he looks into an overgrown section and decides that:

"He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic.

In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He didn't want to go up the stream any further today."

An astute reader may come away with the interpretation that the unwillingness to enter the swamp symbolized Nick's desire to avoid thinking of painful memories. It is having been in such a situation, contemplating the unprobed depth of a swift river pool, that pulls the analogy off the pages and into one's heart.

Literature, nature, and experience can link in powerful ways. Why not bring a paperback on your next foray into the great outdoors?

Rex Turner is the Director of Education for the Maine Lakes Conservancy Institute and resides in Augusta. E-mail: rturner@mlci.org.