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Shannon LeRoy watches the morning mist rise off Second Roach Pond earlier this month. LeRoy sold her camp to the Appalachian Mountain Club and is now its camp manager for lands in the 100-mile Wilderness.

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Canoes belonging to the Appalachian Mountain Club line the shore at Gorman Chairback Camps on Long Pond.

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Shirley Gamble of St. Petersburg, Fla., and Arlene Petty of Ava, Mo., hike the Appalachian Trail after traversing Chairback Mountain.

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Guests of Medawisla Wilderness Camps canoe across Second Roach Pond.

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Staff writer Tux Turkel paddles on the Roach River between Second and Third Roach ponds.

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Kevin Sproul, a carpenter for the Appalachian Mountain Club, cuts logs being used to restore the lodge at Little Lyford Pond Camps on First Little Lyford Pond, several miles east of Moosehead Lake.

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Staff writer Tux Turkel paddles the Roach River.

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Staff writer Tux Turkel bikes along an old road in Maine’s 100-mile Wilderness.

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AMC public affairs director Rob Burbank hikes the Appalachian Trail en route to the summit of Chairback Mountain.

ABOUT THIS SERIES Today: The Appalachian Mountain Club has far-reaching plans to make thousands of acres of Maine woods into a national destination for backcountry recreation. Monday: We canoe across three remote ponds, dragging our boat down a rocky river that rarely sees human footprints. Tuesday: A wrong turn takes us off a new 17-mile mountain bike trail as we explore a rocky route between two sporting camps. Wednesday: A plan to follow a proposed hiking route off the Appalachian Trail becomes a bushwhacking challenge to get off a mountain before dark.

ABOUT OUR REPORTER AND PHOTOGRAPHER

TUX TURKEL is a staff writer who covers business issues, including tourism, energy and real estate. A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, he has won several state and regional awards for reporting and has worked at the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram for 27 years. In 1997, he and three other journalists reported the Forgotten Water series for the Maine Sunday Telegram, tracing the 130-mile Eastern Maine Canoe Trail from the New Brunswick border to the Penobscot River.

DEREK DAVIS has worked in photojournalism for 10 years, the past three at the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Previously he worked as a staff photographer for the Journal News in Westchester County, N.Y. He is a graduate of the University of New England in Biddeford.

HOW WE PREPARED THIS SERIES, AND WHY

STAFF WRITER Tux Turkel and Staff Photographer Derek Davis spent four days exploring an area of the Maine woods that is undergoing important changes.

THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN CLUB is working to create a national destination for adventure tourism and recreation on 67,000 acres east of Greenville. The plan is in its infancy and will evolve over the course of the 21st century.

THE TWO traveled by canoe across remote ponds and along a shallow river, pedaled a new 17-mile mountain bike trail, and followed the route of a proposed hiking path that would connect with the Appalachian Trail. They also slept at or visited four sporting camps along the route and met people working and staying at them.

THE GOAL is to give readers a taste of the adventures they can find today in this changing region, and what the potential might be in the years ahead.

Our small group was counting on the GPS to locate a line of orange survey ribbons marking the route of a connector trail that the Appalachian Mountain Club plans to build here over the next few years. Except for the trail's designer, no one had bushwhacked this 1.5-mile line through unbroken woods. With night coming and heavy rain in the forecast, finding and following this route was our best hope of getting back to camp.

This future hiking trail, which will someday climb over a 2,000- foot-high ridge and connect two wilderness lakes, hints at a bold transformation taking place in the woods here, 20 miles east of Greenville.

The Appalachian Mountain Club has purchased 37,000 acres of forestland and three sporting camps in the Katahdin Iron Works area. Now the nation's oldest conservation and recreation group is improving campsites and building 26 miles of new hiking and Nordic skiing trails, while setting aside more than a quarter of the property as a wilderness ecology reserve.

But this is only the first phase of an ambitious, $45 million plan to turn a lightly traveled landscape of woods and water into a global destination for outdoors recreation and nature tourism.

Directly to the north of the Katahdin Iron Works area, the AMC has an agreement to purchase nearly 30,000 acres. In time, the properties could be part of a network of traditional sporting camps and remote cabins stretching across 200,000 acres of public and private lands that form the core of Maine's 100-Mile Wilderness region. Spaced 10 miles or so apart, these camps and cabins would become rustic way stations for hiking, skiing, paddling and other day adventures, from the Greenville area all the way to Baxter State Park.

For four days this month, staff photographer Derek Davis and I explored this region by canoe, on mountain bikes and by foot.

To travel between two remote ponds, we dragged our boat down a shallow stream that rarely sees human footprints. We were the first riders not accompanied by AMC staff to pedal a new, 17- mile bike trail linking two sporting camps. And, with much effort, we traced the route that soon will create an appealing loop hike off the Appalachian Trail in the Barren-Chairback mountain range.

On our journey, we met extreme hikers working their way along the Applachian Trail, and families with young children here to paddle a canoe, learn about birds or search for moose together. In this broad landscape, we saw room for almost anyone with an appreciation of nature to shape their own personal adventure.

A BACKCOUNTRY BALANCING ACT

Encouraging a diversity of experiences is part of the goal here for the Appalachian Mountain Club.

Based in Boston, the AMC is perhaps best known for the string of huts and lodges it operates in the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire. The first hut went up in 1888. The White Mountains were a remote and wild destination then, and the AMC's founders had a grand vision of land protection and outdoor recreation. Today the national forest covers more than 750,000 acres.

When the AMC's current leaders look across this corner of Maine, they see similar possibilities evolving here in the 21st century. The Maine Woods Initiative, as the club calls the effort to preserve this region, is the biggest single undertaking in its 131-year history.

The AMC is a nonprofit corporation, but it has the financial and organizational muscle to make things happen. The group has 90,000 members in the Northeast and an endowment that topped $43 million last year. It has raised more than $30 million toward its...