Garrett Conover and Alexandra Conover Bennett

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Garrett and Alexandra Conover have guided canoeing and snowshoeing since 1980. They are American authors and registered Maine Guides who teach traditional wilderness travel in the boreal North Woods.

Alexandra earned a Human Ecology degree from the College of the Atlantic in 1977. She handcrafts North Woods paddles using a pattern that has been used in this region for over 100 years. When not guiding, she plays piano, accordion, and autoharp, and she composes and performs music.

Garrett studied wildlife biology and creative writing at the University of Montana and graduated from the College of the Atlantic. He has studied boreal ecology and travel skills and is a skilled photographer whose slide shows are used by museums, colleges, nature centers, and other groups.

Before starting North Woods Ways in 1980, the Conovers apprenticed with Maine Guide Mick Fahey and lived in Canada with indigenous families to learn bush skills. They travel with traditional wood-and-canvas canoes and ash paddles, ash and rawhide snowshoes, wooden toboggans, and canvas heated tents for winter trips, choosing durable, time-tested gear. They live in the North Maine woods in a permanent walled tent.

Garrett’s first book, Beyond the Paddle (1991), explains poling, lining, portaging, and ice maneuvering for wilderness canoeing. A Snow Walker’s Companion, written with Alexandra in 1995, became a key winter-travel guide and was reissued in 2001 as The Winter Wilderness Companion, and in 2005 as A Snow Walker’s Companion: Winter Camping Skills for the North, with a section about their 350-mile snowshoe trek across the Ungava Peninsula in Quebec. In 2006 Garrett published Kristin’s Wilderness: A Braided Trail, a novel about a girl growing up among wilderness researchers. The book won several awards, including the Lupine Award from the Maine Library Association, the Independent Publishers Association’s National Bronze Medal, the Midwest Independent Publishers Association Top Honor, and the Moonbeam Award Bronze Medal in the Young Adult category.