The rhythmic crunch, crunch, crunch of snowshoes is the only sound I hear except for wind moaning through the boreal forest. The landscape is soft, muted, distilled to its most elemental form. Traveler Mountain, dusted white, looms a thousand feet overhead, its slopes bristling with a mosaic of hardwoods and conifers.

I am lost in thought, although I am in a loose line with ten other people. Hauling a gear-laden toboggan down a frozen, snow-covered river in midwinter in northern Maine provides ample time to think. I drift back to my childhood in Chicago and wonder how I came to enjoy winter camping as much as I do. Without really realizing it, I have come to anticipate and embrace the cold dark season with its bracing rigors, solemn beauty, and little-known risks and rewards. By contrast, all of my family (and most of my friends) would have to be dragged screaming and kicking out here; give them sun and surf or a comfortable ski lodge, not pulling a heavy sled and sleeping in frosty, tombish tents.

Suddenly the column stops. I lean to one side and see Garrett Conover, the co-leader of our group, testing ice thickness with a spear-shaped, steel-tipped chisel. Due to a recent warm spell, the East Branch of the Penobscot River, at the eastern edge of Baxter State Park, has overflowed in places creating wet spots and potentially dangerous snow-bridged holes. While ice chips fly, the rest of us relax in our leather harnesses connected to long, narrow toboggans handmade out of white ash and modeled after those of the Cree Indians.

"Drink before you're thirsty," Alexandra Conover cheerfully reminds us as she strides down the line. After a few hours of steady sledging we have lost a considerable amount of moisture to the dry, keen air. I sip from a plastic water bottle kept warm under my parka and open a bag of trail-mix. The high-caloric nuts, dried fruit and Swiss chocolate gives me a rush of energy. The thermometer dangling from my zipper tells me it's nine degrees Fahrenheit, but I'm not cold.

Garrett waves us on. Alexandra joins her husband at the lead of our sledging chain. Tall and lanky, with steel-rimmed glasses perched over brown hawk eyes, Garrett sports a black scruffy beard adorned with icicles, making him look even more the part of a veteran woodsman. A half-foot shorter than her husband, with long, auburn hair spilling out from under a wool knit cap, Alexandra's slender figure moves with the grace and strength of a dancer despite the wooden snowshoes strapped to her feet.

The Conovers are registered Maine guides. I also think of them as modern-day Thoreaus. This is my second journey with Garrett and Alexandra (the first was a fall canoe trip down the Allagash River using wood-and-canvas canoes), and, as before, their actions illuminate their self-reliance in the wilderness and how wonderfully out of step they are with contemporary styles and trends.

To the Conovers, simple means better. Instead of neon colors and high-tech fibers, they wear stuff one might have seen in a turn-of-the-century L.L. Bean catalogue: bone-white cotton anoraks with embroidered sash belts and coyote fur ruffs (the fur was scavenged from an old thrift shop coat); plaid wool shirts and Filson whipcord trousers; woolen long Johns in shades of forest green and gray; leather woodchopper mitts; and snowshoeing moccasins designed by Montagnais Indians with knee-high canvas uppers, wool-felt liners and soft caribou leather soles. Despite their fashion statement, Garrett claims that he and Alexandra aren't "old-timey" or against the new synthetics. "We constantly evaluate new or unfamiliar equipment and methods in field trials. We use whatever works best."

The Conovers' affinity for the North and their abundant curiosity have contributed much toward their devotion to learn and teach the nearly forgotten traveling skills used by generations of Maine guides, trappers and native peoples of the subarctic. In their early 40s, their knowledge of northwoods crafts-Indian paddling, poling, snowshoe and paddle-making, tanning, basketry, the deft use of the ax and the crooked knife-goes well beyond their age. After obtaining degrees in Human Ecology from Maine's College of the Atlantic, they had the good fortune to find a mentor in Mick Fahey, a renowned Maine guide with over a half-century of guiding experience.
"We served an extended apprenticeship with Mick," Alexandra says, smiling at the thought of this northwoods veteran who died in 1984 at age 78. "He was our primary source, the most intelligent and intriguing person I have ever met. He taught us not only the skills and woodcrafts necessary to travel in the northern forests, but how to look at the world and properly live in it."

In 1980 Alexandra and Garrett founded North Woods Ways, the most traditional registered guide service in Maine. Their base of operations is near Willimantic, Maine, where they live in a cozy wood-heated wall tent tucked away in the forest. They have no electricity, plumbing, television or telephone in their cotton abode; light is provided by kerosene lanterns, heat by a wood stove. "We're just a couple of woodchucks," Garret says in his low-key Mainer way.

We pitch camp, this, our second night out, about seven miles from the trailhead. The wind can't touch us in the dense stand of balsam fir, maples and spruce. Minimal instruction is needed regarding chores, since several members of our group have accompanied the Conovers on prior winter treks to Maine or the Barrenlands of northern Labrador. We unstrap the gear and ferry it from the toboggans to different depots-food boxes to a central location, personal duffels in piles according to tentmates. Within an hour the wall tents are , pitched, supported by a simple arrangement of guy lines and poles. The next priority is food and heat. Alexandra and a few others start preparing dinner in one of the tents while the rest of us help Garrett cut, drag and saw a half-dozen dead, spindly spruce trees to use as firewood.

During this six-day outing, described in the North Woods Ways brochure as a "special quest to see the magnificent East Branch waterfalls in their midwinter splendor," we are learning the art and technique of "warm winter camping." And if anyone knows how to do this best, it's the Conovers, authors of the highly-acclaimed book, A Snow Walker's Companion.

With the weight of our gear on the toboggans rather than our backs, we can afford extraordinary luxury. We are camping in cotton ten-by-twelve-foot wall tents heated with sheet-steel wood stoves. Built to the Conovers specifications, the stoves fit easily on the toboggans and weigh about 25 pounds apiece, complete with nesting stovepipe and a simple metal thimble that conducts the pipe to the outside of the tent.

When I first heard of the Conovers' method of snow camping I had my doubts about its practicality. This was a radical departure from my usual "go-light" approach to winter backpacking, using a small gas stove, quick-fix meals, arid coffin-sized, unheated nylon tent. But I'm discovering that warm winter camping, when done correctly, is not as burdensome or anachronistic as it seems. And despite a growing trend against the use of axes or saws, there is a valid argument for using wood over gasoline.

"A gas stove insulates you from your world instead of helping to engage in it," Alexandra remarks when I bring her an armload of split logs. Without sounding preachy, she asserts that it's not safe or ecologically sound to rely on implements and fuel that are not local to the environment. "I realize there are many places where you can't cut firewood, or there's no wood to cut, so what we try to do on our trips is offer a different way of looking at wilderness travel and basic skills for keeping warm."

I've never been overly interested in woodcraft, but there is something elementally satisfying about gathering firewood, much more so than merely lighting a gas stove with a flick of my Bic. "Firewood warms you three times," Garrett quips as he splits foot-long logs with an axe. "First when you cut it, then when you haul it, and again when you burn it." No argument there: I've hefted the bucksaw for only a few minutes and feel as though I've done a half-hour stint on my ergometric rowing machine.

Darkness falls early in mid-January. At dusk we retire to our respective shelters. My three tentmates and I spread a pair of Army surplus ponchos on our bed of snow that has been stamped flat and allowed to harden. Atop the ponchos go Therma-a-Rest camp mattresses and sleeping bags. Miscellaneous gear is stored in the excavated snowpit near the door and alongside the walls. From the ridgepole we hang damp mukluks, hats, gloves and long Johns. Now all we have to do is relax and wait for Alexandra's dinner call.

Under the pale yellowish cast of a kerosene lamp, we talk, write notes and read. In the background is the satisfying crackle of burning wood. Within a few minutes the tent is warm enough to prance around in the buff if modesty allows (it doesn't), and hot enough at the eaves to rival a clothes dryer. Garrett pokes his head inside the door flap and hands me a large blackened pot filled with slushy water dipped from a hole chopped in the ice. "Put this on the stove," he instructs. "We'll use the hot water later for doing dishes."

After he leaves, I peer outside to see how our tripmates are faring. Slender columns of white smoke pour out the stovepipes from the other two tents; I hear laughter and voices from within. In the fading light our snowshoes and toboggans, propped neatly in the snow and leaning against trees, resemble human figures. The scene could be from the pages of a Jack London story, except his characters never had it so good. Frostbitten feet and plunging through ice may make for exciting reading; however, as this trip reveals, the depths of winter can be a most welcoming time for those who are prepared.

The heat has lulled my tentmates into a foggy stupor. A nap seems in order, but as soon as Alexandra shouts "dinner!" we are all on our feet. Grabbing headlamps, we shuffle over to the combination cook and sleeping tent already occupied by the Conovers and the others. It's pushing zero outside, but the moment I step into the "Penobscot Diner" I collide with a wall of warmth. "And I thought our tent was toasty," I say, kicking off my overboots and shedding my coat. When Garrett looks at me quizzically, I hastily add that I'm not complaining.
The aroma of tonight's feast sets us to salivating like a pack of ravished dogs. "Please, eat as much you want," Alexandra urges, piling tin plates high with hot biscuits and mega-caloric mounds of cashew curry topped with shredded cheese and sauteed bacon. "One of the great things about winter camping is that you can stuff yourselves silly and not get fat."

I'm not so certain; a desert of gingerbread smothered in mint-chip ice cream almost does me in. But when Alexandra lifts a second batch of gingerbread from the Dutch oven I can't resist snatching another wedge.
After dinner, I volunteer to get another bucket of water so we can brew up some tea. I slip back into my pile clothes, tug on my overboots, and squeeze out the door. Ice cold air kisses my face. My breath condenses in puffs of steam. Suddenly, I don't mind all that food lumped in my belly. "Fuel to feed the furnace," as Garrett says.

A high winter moon illuminates the snowshoe-trodden path that leads me down to the river. Standing at the lip of the black waterhole, alone in the middle of the frozen waterway, I yank off my hood and listen. There's the muffled gurgle of the current beneath me, the rifle-like reports from cracking ice upstream, the frenetic yips of coyotes prowling the forest for snowshoe hare and winterkilled deer. It has dropped to well below zero-the tip of my pointed nose tells me so. I stare into the forest back toward camp. Through the dark boughs of spruce and hemlock is the cheery glow of the tents.

I awake at dawn. Our layover day yesterday was spent exploring frozen waterfalls and narrow gorges, and now it's time to cover some ground. The plan is to move midway back to the trailhead for our final night in the backcountry. Still asleep, John and Jana, a world traveled couple in their late 20s from southern Maine, are curled up in identical fetal positions under a foot-thick blanket of fiberfill and goose down. Next to me, snoring lightly, is Neil, a Chicago psychiatrist. All I see of him is a mouth and nose protruding through the oval opening of his cinched-up sleeping bag hood.

I step outside to the "pissatorium," Garrett's term for the communal patch of yellow-stained snow. "The clearer the piss the better," according to our guide. "Dark yellow urine indicates dehydration which can lead to frostbite and other complications." I breathe a sigh of relief when my own stream arcs out as clear as gin.

Returning to the tent, I check the thermometer dangling from a branch: 17 below! The temperature inside the tent is about ten degrees warmer than outside, but standing at the threshold in my skivvies it's still not warm enough. Thanks to Garrett's foresight, however, this inconvenience can be easily remedied. Before retiring last night, he placed a neat pile of dry tinder and wood shavings near each of the stoves. I throw a few split logs on the bottom of the metal box, sprinkle some shavings and birchbark on top, and light a match. Vrooomml The tinder ignites as if soaked in oil. A few minutes later the stove is humming, cranking out BTUs. The walls of the Egyptian cotton tent billow taut with the rising warm air.

Soon, Alexandra announces that breakfast is ready. In the cook tent she has whipped up an enormous stack of blueberry pancakes and a frying-pan full of Canadian bacon. Stove-warmed Maine maple syrup and fresh-brewed coffee helps wash it all down.

After eating, it's back to business. Camp is broken quickly; the finger-stinging cold does not lend itself to idleness. While lashing boxes and duffels to the toboggans, I strike up a conversation with Carolyn, a seasonal U.S. Forest Service employee from northern Wisconsin. She tells me that our current weather is a heat-wave compared to her last trip with the Conovers. During a ten day, 60-mile snowshoe trek across Canada's Labrador, the temperature never got above zero Fahrenheit and once dropped to minus 58 degrees. "Hauling the toboggans was the hardest part," the tall, powerfully-built woman says. "The extreme cold changed the consistency of the snow into something like sand. Our best efforts only netted us a mile per hour."
She finishes tying a series of quick-release knots, then adds, "It was tough, but I had a wonderful time. If the Conovers were taking clients to Labrador this winter, I'd be going with them." Instead, her 50th birthday present to herself is this East Branch Penobscot trip. I almost feel sorry for her that our trek is so painless.

At 9:30 we're off and snowshoeing up the frozen watercourse. The river itself is a sinuous white highway, what the Native Americans of the region called "i-shipits-nan," their immemorial winter road. Eight of us are harnessed into toboggans; the rest string ahead and pack a "float," or stomped trail. Nearly a foot of powder has fallen since our arrival, enough to conceal the tracks we made on the way in.

Today is my turn to haul the infamous "bus," an extra beamy toboggan loaded with the wannigan cook set, several boxes of food, personal duffel and a rectangular stove. Garrett estimates the gross weight of the bus is about one hundred pounds. Pulling it on the packed straightaway is no more difficult than carrying a light daypack on my back. But when we detour into the forest with its deep snowdrifts, I have to lean into the yoke and plod ahead like an ox.

We make easy progress toward our destination, an appealing campsite passed earlier in the shadow of Baxter Park's dramatic ridges. The wind is at our backs and the snow glistens under a cloudless sky. We stop often to examine fresh animal tracks: the belly slides of river otters; the bounding leaps of pine martens and snowshoe hares; the signature heart-shaped hoof prints of moose; the trampled snow of deer yards. A former naturalist and wildlife research assistant, Garrett explains that wildlife is concentrated along the river corridor for the same reasons we are: "increased mobility and ease of passage."

A short time later Garrett calls another halt to probe the ice for thickness. Alexandra, in the meantime, unfolds the topographic map and lays it atop the bus. I peer over her shoulder as she traces our route with her gloved finger. "We haven't covered many miles, have we?" she laughs.

No we haven't. But in every other way we have traveled far.

For More Information:
North Woods Ways (NWW) trips take place in the wildest areas remaining in the Northeast. Beginning and experienced participants have the opportunity to observe and learn many of the finer skills of comfortable winter camping by adopting the snowshoe and toboggan techniques of the native peoples of the subarctic.
NWW provides all group gear such as toboggans, wall tents, sheet steel stoves and food. In addition they supply footwear (soft-soled mukluks) which is not readily available elsewhere, and snowshoes.
For a brochure and trip fees, contact:

Alexandra and Garrett Conover
Northwoods Ways
2293 Elliottsville Road
Willimantic, ME 04443
phone 207/997-3723

For more information regarding the trip, sponsorship opportunities, media enquiries, or just to say hello please
e-mail us. Garrett and Alexandra have a volunteer who collects their email and forwards it to them. Please remember that Garrett and Alexandra do not have email themselves and will respond via snail-mail to your e-mail
correspondence. Should you still wish to send them email please remember to include your snail-mail address in your message.