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Sunday, January 23, 2005
Spiritual journey
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Also on this page: EDITOR'S NOTE | |||||||||||||||||||||
DEER ISLAND — The thuds, cracks and moaning of ice on a vast shifting lake are the only sounds on this starlit, 5-degree night as a pair of campers squat eating steaming-hot stew, miles from the comforts of cars, electric lights and warm beds. Snowshoeing and camping on Moosehead Lake - in one of the coldest regions in Maine - is a pursuit for the hardiest and most experienced outdoorsmen and women. But such extreme adventures are a way of life for Maine guides Garrett and Alexandra Conover of Willimantic, a town in Piscataquis County. For 21 years, the couple have led winter trips through the North Maine Woods and Canada, embracing a way of life and camping that barely exists in this era of global positioning devices and snowmobiles that exceed 100 mph. The Conovers - who have cultivated an ardent following for their traditional practices, which they say they learned from trappers and Indians - have embarked on one of their more ambitious journeys: traversing the frozen waterways of northern Maine by snowshoe to educate Maine schoolchildren about the wilderness and camping. Their four-week trek started Jan. 15 in Greenville and will take them across two lakes and a half-dozen rivers, including the North Branch of the Penobscot, Baker Branch, and the St. John. They make daily updates in an audio journal on their Web site. They are scheduled to reach Allagash Village, 10 miles south of the Canadian border, on Feb. 12. The Conovers want to share with schoolchildren their joy as "quiet users" of the natural world. Alexandra Conover also hopes their journey will show what's at stake as Maine becomes more developed: its wilderness. "It's a land grab," she said of increasing land sales in the North Woods. The Conovers have the zeal of missionaries but the practical nature of veteran guides. The sun is warm over Moosehead Lake as Alexandra drags her toboggan across glare ice. She is explaining how to avoid weak ice: stay away from shallow areas, cross pressure ridges where they are flat, and test the ice with a jackknife or chisel. Pressure ridges, the sections of ice that push up and create open water, crisscross the lake like a rag quilt. Trying to identify the safe spots seems a dizzying job. But after years of winter foot travel, Alexandra does not see the need to chisel the ice. As Moosehead pops and cracks, she is confident in the multiple layers of ice below her. In 21 years of leading winter camping trips, the Conovers have snowshoed across frozen waterways, but this was the first time they have camped overnight on glare ice. The adventure brought a glint to Garrett's eyes. "That's something new," Garrett said with a chuckle the first day camping on the lake. The Conovers departed from Greenville on their "Winter Walk for the Wilds 2005" sporting elements of the natural world: moosehide mukluks covering their feet; thick elk-hide-and-wool mittens on their hands; wood-and-canvas toboggans to pull behind them. On their journeys, the Conovers chop wood, tent with stove fires, cross weak sections of rivers and lakes - even fall in - without fear. "I just throw snow on my clothes to absorb the water," Alexandra said. They use tree boughs for doormats to absorb water, wear all-wool clothing to avoid dampness, and boil water from the waterways they travel to drink. Living off the land, the Conovers have built a following of others who "warm camp," using wood stoves in canvas tents held up by tree trunks, a practice that hearkens back more than a century but is little known today and would pose extreme safety hazards for most of us. Col. Tom Santaguida, head of the Maine Warden Service, had never heard of people "warm camping" in Maine - and thought it sounded fun. But Santaguida also cautioned that anyone winter camping should avoid all situations that would cause a fire hazard. They also need to let others know their route, to watch the weather, and to test all ice with a 4-foot ice chisel, he said. The Conovers, who are licensed guides, had a half-dozen of their followers arrive to camp in Greenville with them the night before starting their trip. The next day, as they swung their arms and stepped lightly in their loose-fitting canvas anoraks, the Conovers left Greenville looking like monks heading toward a spiritual celebration. They were. The 200-mile snowshoe and toboggan trek follows the trail the Conovers covered on their honeymoon 25 years earlier, as new graduates of the College of the Atlantic. They fell in love with the North Woods and never left. Alexandra and Garrett Conover are Massachusetts natives who moved to Maine 30 years ago, she first and he after they met working on Vermont's Long Trail. The Conovers have used all-natural materials and equipment as much as possible, learning from the traditional practices of American Indians. For this trek, they wear the natural untreated canvas anorak, or smock, they first tested in the Ungava region of northern Quebec. The anoraks are windproof yet loose, to trap insulated air and allow freedom of movement. They wear "gauntlet mittens" with long cuffs that extend up their forearms. The elk-hide-and-canvas mittens look like the hand coverings knights wore. On their feet are moosehide mukluks. They also wear plenty of wool rather than fleece, Gore-Tex and other manmade materials.
The journey began with a send-off by a crowd of 100 Greenville residents and naturalists from around New England. "It's good to increase awareness of this kind of travel. Too much outdoor activity is based on snowmobiles, Jet Skis or speed boats," said Dave Brown of Craftsbury, Vt. Many snowshoed and shuffled over frozen Moosehead out to Mile Island, the gateway to the lake's frozen openness. Snowshoes squeaked and sleds rumbled quietly as the walkers mingled and laughed. By the time the crowd reached Mile Island, open ice at either end of the tiny island made the trail risky, said the island's owner, Henry Gilbert, who suggested most turn back. So the Conovers continued with only four campers and two journalists. The campers who joined the Conovers on the first leg of this journey - Roger, Gail and George O'Donnell from Belfast and Tom Jamrog from Lincolnville - admitted they would not have made the crossing alone. The 15-degree temperature at noon made the walking pleasant. There was no snow. With rubber boots or ice creepers, it was easy to move over the glare ice. But the warm start to the winter had left the lake ice thinner than usual for early January. After another mile, not a snowmobile could be seen, not an ice-shack party heard. Two-foot-high walls of snow and ice framed dozens of pressure ridges, although footing was dangerous elsewhere. While patches of black ice offered clear views into dark, swirling shadows, other spots with a dusting of snow moved underfoot. With each step, the ice popped; small cracks appeared. The sensation unnerved some of the hikers, but the Conovers did not falter. "In the middle of the lake is the safest place to be," Alexandra said. The Conovers' goal is to average seven miles a day. The first day, because of a lack of snow, they covered more than they expected. They planned to camp at Moose Island, three miles out, but they reached it by 1 p.m. A dock, frozen hard into the lake, welcomed them, and they unpacked peanut butter, jelly, dried fruit, salami, crackers. After lunch, everyone packed up; some walked without gloves. The walk remained warm, the air still, but it was another three miles to Deer Island, which stood far in the distance. To the right, far-away forested mountains towered, and one, covered in snow, stood alone. Everyone looked to Katahdin. As the sun moved, the group came together and approached the hilly banks of Deer Island. They arrived at its south shore by 3:30 p.m., with plenty of time to set up camp. But there was little land to do so. A mound of sparkling shards along the perimeter of the island glistened like Superman's ice castle in the sky. "That pressure ridge is so pretty," Alexandra said of the ice sculpture. Garrett walked around the east side of the island in search of a camp site as others waited. He found an unconventional one but smiled at the protection it offered. He led the other campers to a small cove and, on the shallow ice, they set about unpacking their toboggans, chopping wood cut from the shore, and setting up the two tents on the icy cove. They set up their "warm camps," with small, specially built wood stoves inside. The smoke is piped out of the tent through a metal chimney that exits through a hole in the tent. The smoke tube is as long as 6 feet. The Conovers began stringing their tent over four aluminum poles that weighed less than 8 pounds. The tent was made from the same material as their anoraks, with an oval flap that closed. Alexandra put wood under the 12-pound titanium stove to keep the ice from melting. The tent stove has a reinforced fire box that supported iron pans. The 12- by 12-inch stove is half the weight of steel and can take a third of the temperature, according to its manufacturer. The tent was erected within minutes. Then Garrett cut wood for the stove as the sky turned pink. Leaning a thin trunk on a 3-foot-high pressure ridge beside camp, he chopped foot-long pieces of wood and quartered them. He worked without a jacket. A dull thump from freezing ice filled the air, like the beat of a far-off marching band. A crescent moon rose in a cloudless sky as the temperature plunged to 5 degrees. Finally, Garrett put down his ax, after more than an hour of chopping. He had only to step inside a tent to get warm. "Why should anyone be cold?" Alexandra said later as she reached over to shut the tent flap. Inside the tents, it was beyond toasty. Alexandra found a thin layer of ice in a pressure ridge and chiselled a hole the size of a pot. Using a ladle, she strained out the scum and filled a bucket with lake water. On the wood stoves, the campers boiled the water to drink. Sparks and smoke streamed out the stove pipe. From the forested island, the tents glowed with the comfort of a child's night light. For Garrett, 49, and Alexandra, 51, the outdoors is more familiar than the high-tech, computerized world of today. They believe in living off the land as fur trappers, settlers and American Indians did. Yet they felt the best way to bring schoolchildren along on their journey was through a medium children know: the Internet. So the Conovers, who do not use a computer to run their North Woods Ways guiding service, hired a Webmaster who posts daily audio journal entries about their adventure that Garrett transmits by satellite phone. They wanted to reach schoolchildren because they feel children have the best chance of learning to embrace the land and a more traditional way of life. Some of those who saw them off agreed. "The shorelines of Moosehead are very populated and different than they were 25 years ago. And all the snowmobiles around here, that's different," said Gus Szabronski of Searsport, who camped next to the Conovers in Greenville. Since the 1970s, Alexandra and Garrett have lobbied the state Legislature to keep wild lands open and accessible for campers and "quiet users." It has been a losing battle, Alexandra said. Two years ago on a trip through Labrador, they came up with a better way to deliver their message: "Be who you are, do what you do. Walk to the woods," she said. Rather than driving to Augusta, they'd take the woods and their philosophies to others. "Some little kid in Greenville may talk about this. And this kid may have just been tugging on your sled," Garrett said. "That's the fun. You don't know what you're giving." Next year, the Conovers will bring their journey full circle when they travel by foot down the Allagash River back to Moosehead. "We're not trying to go back," Alexandra said. "We're trying to keep the threads alive." Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at: READER COMMENTS |
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