Of Mountain Men and Malcontents: The Story of the Cold River hermit

On a frigid winter's morning in 1947, a state helicopter touched down in a secluded Adirondack forest. The goal wasn't to rescue a lost hiker or injured hunter, but rather to pick up a soon-to-be celebrity on his first visit to New York City. Remarkably, the passenger in question was the legendary hermit of the Adirondacks, Noah John Rondeau, who lived alone in the high peaks wilderness for nearly 40 years. Rondeau was not a typical hermit. While he left civilization to live a life of solitude in the woods, he also enjoyed regular visits from dozens of hikers and hunters each season. He had very little formal education, yet effortlessly conversed on a broad range of subjects ranging from science to politics. Rondeau rejected society for decades, but reveled in the attention he received as a hit "attraction" at sportsmen's shows, as the guest on radio shows, and even a spot on a television show. Born to a local French-Canadian family in 1883, Noah left home at a young age to escape both poverty and an abusive father. He lived in and around the Lake Placid area and worked at various jobs from barber to logger. However, greatly dissatisfied with his meager earnings, he decided to live off the land in 1917 and set out to create a hermitage along the Cold River in isolated Corey's Mill – an 18 mile hike through the mountains to the nearest town. He called himself "The Mayor of Cold River (Population 1)" and built two tiny cabins, one the town hall where he cooked and slept under bearskins, and the other the Hall of Records where he kept his supplies. Over the years, Noah added a number of wigwams of tree branches set in tepee style. Ingeniously, he notched each branch into smaller sections so that one whack of his hatchet cut the firewood to size for the long, bitterly cold Adirondack winters. Short in stature, Rondeau sported a long woodman's beard and dressed in buckskins with bear claws for buttons. He carried an 8-foot bow for small game and hunted deer and bear with his rifle, although with little regard to hunting and trapping out-of-season. Like Thoreau at Walden's Pond, he kept journals of his day-to-day experiences and thoughts on man and nature. But unlike Thoreau, it was not Rondeau's intentions to share his journals with the outside world, for he often recorded his thoughts in a mysterious code. He referred to his retreat as an escape from "Big Fool American Big Business." Nor did he have much use for government and what he called Higher Authority, especially game wardens. His opinion of politicians was not flattering either. He thought Franklin D. Roosevelt a tyrant, and referred to John F. Kennedy as the "spoiled kid of a rich millionaire." He was perpetually in trouble with the local game wardens, and spent some time in jail for pointing his gun at an officer. In 1920, one run-in caused him to write a 30-page complaint letter to the Conservation Commission. For all the trouble Noah caused them, the Commission refused to issue him a guide's license for the next 17 years. Despite the ongoing conflict, one of the conservation department pilots befriended the hermit, and regularly air-dropped food, supplies and mail. Over the decades, word of Noah Rondeau spread and the mountain man became something of an attraction in the deep woods, one year enjoying 200 or so visitors. Then the Conservation folks got the idea to use him to promote their efforts to urge the state to expand the protected land within the Adirondacks. So on Valentine's Day in 1947, at the age of 63, Rondeau arrived in New York City for the National Sportsmen Show. Bewhiskered and dressed in his fringed deerskin jacket and leggings, with a fiddle in one hand and his long bow in the other, he became the hit of the show. For the next month, Rondeau lived in a swanky Manhattan hotel, dined in the best restaurants and became something of a celebrity with 14 interviews for radio, a TV appearance on "We The People," and was featured in three news reel shorts. Invitations came in from other sporting shows, and Rondeau accepted, enjoying immensely his time in the spotlight. For four more years, he travelled to shows throughout the state and Boston. But in 1950, the Cold River Hermitage was no more. A devastating storm blew through the upper Adirondacks, leveling acres of trees. The area was shut down to visitors for three years to prevent wildfires. Noah worked for a while as Santa at North Pole near Lake Placid. He never again lived in the old hermitage, but hiked in and out carrying load after load of his supplies. By 1956, he had packed up the last of his "artifacts" from his life in the woods. Rondeau was 73. He lived quietly in town for the next 11 years, dying in the Lake Placid hospital in 1967. Gone but certainly not forgotten, today a state plaque marks the spot of the Cold River Hermitage, and the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake houses a permanent exhibit complete with one of the cabins and a life-size wood sculpture of the famous hermit. The museum received all his artifacts, journals, and photographs of Rondeau's voice can be heard on a recording that accompanies the exhibit. Two biography books and numerous articles, one in the New York Times, tell the story of Noah John Rondeau. He lived his life alone but not lonely at Cold River, described by one writer as "a hole in a woodpile way the hell and gone back," where the deer gathered around his camp at night when he played his beloved fiddle. Sadly, his last wish to be buried at the hermitage was never realized. Noah John Rondeau's grave is in the nearby North Elba/Lake Placid cemetery, a short distance from the homestead and gravesite of another infamous malcontent, the notorious abolitionist John Brown.

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Of Mountain Men and Malcontents: The Story of the Cold River hermit

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