Winter Wonders

Northern Maine, 30 degrees below zero, windswept snow, huge ice ridges. . . perfect conditions for a walk.
By Mel Allen

Right now, as you are reading this, somewhere in the broad, isolate, winter world of northern Maine, Garrett and Alexandra Conover are walking and snowshoeing the frozen waterways, as much a part of the land as the foxes and coyotes. The Conovers are registered Maine Guides. Since 1980, they have operated North Woods Ways, leading wilderness trips and priding themselves on following the traditions of the woodsmen and American Indians who lived on this land long ago.

Garrett and Alexandra have guided many hundreds of people in warm weather and cold, but these photos, taken by Garrett, come from 29 winter days when they guided themselves. Last winter's walk was a celebration of their own endurance, following the trek they took on their honeymoon 25 years earlier. They are older now, early fifties; they have paddled and walked through thousands of miles of wilderness, from Maine to northern Canada. Garrett has written two books, including, with Alexandra, The Winter Wilderness Companion, an outdoor skills guide. They live year-round in a tent perched beside a stream in Willimantic, Maine. They do not live this way just for an income; it is simply their life. And what Garrett sees through his camera is a season made even more beautiful by its starkness.

Last January, the couple set off from Greenville, Maine, and arrived four weeks and 200 miles later in Allagash Village, just south of the border with New Brunswick, Canada. Everything they needed to survive the brittle heart of a Maine winter they pulled on two 10-foot-long wood-and-canvas toboggans. For shelter they had a tent, heated quickly by a lightweight woodstove with smoke piped out through a 6-foot-long metal chimney. They ate well, and often. They could not imagine waking in an insulated house built to keep cold away as if it were a sickness.

Part of their mission in life is to teach. Each day of their trip, they called in a report of their travels via a satellite phone, and a friend posted their voices on the Web. School-children logged on and learned about the strangely beautiful world when the nights plunged to 30 degrees below zero.

The ice groaned, boomed, and cracked all night, Garrett said on January 16. I thought it sounded like humpback whales singing. Alexandra thought it was like a huge skin drum resonating. And the next day: When we lay down on the lake and looked down through the billions of tiny bubbles in the ice, it was as though we were looking through a telescope at a distant galaxy of stars.

Garrett and Alexandra are planning another big trip, this time walking south. They will start in Allagash and head to Moosehead Lake and Greenville, hoping for the cold that stops rivers and transforms deep lakes into paths, hoping that through their words and photos they will guide children to someday come into this place called deep winter and take a look around.