Bar Harbor college acquires northern Maine wilderness center

Courtesy / College of the Atlantic The North Woods Ways property transfer included tents, axes, snowshoes, toboggans, canoes and other camping gear.

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By Staff

College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, has purchased a "wilderness center" in Piscataquis County to enhance the school's curriculum in human ecology.

The college bought North Woods Ways, at 2293 Elliottsville Road in Willimantic, from two alumni, Alexandra Conover Bennett and Garrett Conover. Terms were not disclosed.

As registered Maine guides, Conover Bennett and Conover have led expeditions and educational programs by canoe and snowshoe for 40 years. With plans to retire, the pair decided to sell the facility to the college, which plans to continue its use as a traditional skills wilderness center while developing place-based programs.

“North Woods Ways was like our baby,” Conover Bennett said in a news release. “We didn’t sit down and develop a business plan, we just followed what our passion dictated and developed it that way. Now, it is re-creating itself under the stewardship of College of the Atlantic.”

Courtesy / College of the Atlantic

Alexandra Conover Bennett

The facility has offered wilderness travel skills workshops, slide show programs and classes, and helped launch a variety of journeys. There are canoe trips in the spring, summer and fall, and snowshoe and toboggan trips in the winter, in Maine and Canada and sometimes Minnesota.

Willimantic has a population of about 130 and lies 60 miles northwest of Bangor.

Academic base camp

The purchase was made possible by a donation from the Cornelia Cogswell Rossi Foundation, an organization dedicated to community needs such as health care, education and environmental conservation. The main structure at the property will be renamed the Rossi Lodge in honor of the gift.

Anne Green, a Rossi Foundation board member, said she was inspired by the potential that the property has for COA and others.

“We loved the concept of a winter academic base camp, and the year-round education component and platform for engaging surrounding schools,” Green said. “The collection of wilderness equipment, tools, and books represent a rich cultural history of the North Woods that will provide additional knowledge and learning opportunities for students.”

Courtesy / College of the Atlantic

College of the Atlantic students prepare for a winter outing at North Woods Ways in Willimantic. The facility was recently acquired by the Bar Harbor college.

Conover Bennett and Conover founded North Woods Ways together in 1980, and since then have become widely known for their traditional methods of traveling through wild places.

Wood and rawhide

They specialize in using wood-and-canvas canoes and handmade wooden paddles for summer travel, and they have mastered the use of traditional ash-and-rawhide snowshoes, handmade toboggans and wood-heated canvas tents for the winter.

Often traveling hundreds of miles in the span of a few weeks, their expeditions have attracted people from all around the world.

Over the course of their guiding career, Conover, Conover Bennett, and North Woods Ways were featured in over 45 regional, national and international magazines. They appeared in a number of television broadcasts, four film productions and several books. Conover has presented hundreds of slide shows, and both have presented traditional skills workshops at symposiums in the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

Courtesy / College of the Atlantic

Garrett Conover

“We just kind of followed what our passion dictated, and we realized that our style and choices were unique in current Maine guiding, so all the journalists came flocking to us,” said Conover Bennett.

Program development

The 400-student college has been using the North Woods Ways property for educational purposes for decades, both through class field trips and as a resource for an outdoor leadership program.

Those uses will continue, and COA is working on plans to expand its educational offerings there in the sciences, arts, humanities and economics, said COA dean of institutional advancement Shawn Keeley. The college also plans to include the broader Willimantic community in the educational benefits offered by the property, he said.

“We intend to develop programs that engage the community around Willimantic, which could include the local school system, the Appalachian Trail community and programs run by other organizations,” Keeley said.

As part of the property transfer, Conover and Conover Bennett are donating a considerable amount of outdoor gear, including tents, axes, snowshoes, toboggans, canoes and other camping gear.

“We’ve had so many completely generous mentors, donors and friends who contributed in all sorts of ways, and it’s just the fabric of the tradition that we are happy to contribute to,” Conover said about the donation.

Conover, Conover Bennett and College of the Atlantic all stand to gain from this deal, Conover said.

“The most remarkable thing to me is how reciprocal this all is, because COA thinks we’re the legacy people, but we’re saying, ‘No, no, no — COA is the legacy.’ And we each think the other is the better entity of the bunch,” he said.