Louise Dickinson Rich The lady who took to the woods

by Charles Francis

Possibly the most famous book about the Maine woods is We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich. The book describes the author’s life during the late 1930s and early 1940s at Middle Dam on Lower Richardson Lake in the Rangeley region, was a national bestseller and was one of the sparks that set off the back-tothe-land movement of the 1950s. Rich went on to write some thirty books, many of which evidenced her great love of Maine. She was not, however, a native Mainer.

Louise Dickinson Rich was born in Huntington, Massachusetts in 1903. When she was two, the Dickinson family moved to Bridgewater, Massachu- setts. Rich attended Bridgewater public schools and Bridgewater State Teachers College where she trained to be an English teacher. She then went on to teach high school English and endured a short unhappy marriage.

The turning point in Rich’s life occurred in 1933 when she took a canoe trip on the Rapid River in western Maine. The Rapid River empties into Lower Richardson Lake at Middle Dam. It was at Forest Lodge at Middle Dam where she met Ralph Rich. It must have been love at first sight, for Louise was to make Middle Dam her home until Rich’s death.

Today we would use the term ‘dropout’ to describe Louise and Ralph Rich. In fact, they had more in common with the flower children of the 1960s than with their own contemporaries. Ralph Rich had been a successful Chicago businessman who opted to make his living catering to the sportsmen who came to Rapid River for its famous salmon and ten-pound trout.

Louise and Ralph were unconventional in another way. They never formalized their union. It was Louise’s publishers who were responsible for the propriety of the public misconception that the two were married. In fact, the two could not even claim a common law marriage as Maine does not recognize that type of union.

The chief spur to Rich’s writing career was economic necessity. As the Depression worsened, fewer and fewer sportsmen came to Rapid River, so to earn an extra dollar or two, both Louise and Ralph began writing for magazines. In doing this, Louise was following in the footsteps of her more-famous cousin, poet Emily Dickinson. Then, in 1942 Louise published We Took to the Woods

It was the perfect time for the book. The country was exchanging the bleak- ness of the Depression for the horrors of World War II, and was ripe for an idyllic work like We Took to the Woods. Its descriptions of the life Louise, Ralph, and the guides, loggers, sportsmen, and other residents of the Middle Dam area led was wonderful escapism for readers caught up in the day-to-day changes the country was undergoing at a lightning rate. Rich’s tales of log drives, record fish, and mail deliveries by boat created a world that was both pristine and orderly and was a much-needed respite from reports from the war front. In addition, the proceeds from the book provided the family, which now included a boy and a girl, with its first financial security.

Louise Dickinson Rich and her two children left Middle Dam in 1945 when Ralph Rich died. Again, it was economic necessity which spurred Louise to write. She returned to Bridgewater where she lived for most of the 1950s.

Here, she wrote several other books based on her experiences at Middle Dam, including My Neck of the Woods. In addition, she began a series of children’s books, several of which, like The Kennebec and Star Island Boy, had Maine settings.

In the late 1950s, Rich moved to Gouldsboro in Downeast Maine. Out of her experiences there came The Coast of Maine and her second most popular book The Peninsula

Louise Dickinson Rich, the lady who took to the woods, died in 1991. While several of her books are now out of print, We Took to the Woods continues to hold the imaginations of countless numbers of readers who wish for the idyll of living on a lake far from the hustle and bustle of the world.