Welcome to Fort Kant

On its map of major US highways, the National Geographic Family Reference Atlas of the World places the mysterious Fort Kant at the terminus of U.S. Route 1, along the border between Maine and New Brunswick. The atlas presumably intends to pick out the town of Fort Kent, population 4,233, whose eponym, a wooden blockhouse that stands today, was built along the Fish River in 1839 to defend forest lands won from Canada in the bloodless Aroostock War. But let's stick with the mistake. Consider this journal the product of an unslipped erratum, a fictional northern point from which we will defend the power of reason and attempt to know its limits.