This month-long daily posting I’m calling “Adirondack Hermit Noah John Rondeau’s December 1943 Daily Countdown to Christmas and the New Year” tells of the unusual life of one man who distanced himself from civilization and proved that with determination he could go into the mountains to trap, hunt, and fish, and live in his own individualistic way on a parcel of private property he had been given permission to occupy.   Not only did he do that off and on for thirty-seven years, but he also demonstrated something else that is very significant.  

Noah John Rondeau demonstrated in his unorthodox journey that the spirit of personal adventure outside the conventional walls of home and employment was not yet dead, that opportunities for adventurous living on one’s own terms could still be found.

It’s refreshing to think of the rare individuals who have followed such unconventional paths. Just knowing Rondeau chose to live by and follow a very simple, basic, and honest code is doubly refreshing and encouraging to throngs of men and women who have a touch of wilderness within them. The hermit of Cold River’s story is the story of the Adirondacks themselves. Although he abandoned his hermitage in 1950, the site continues to draw the curious as they themselves seek to experience a bit of Rondeau’s world.  And why? Backpackers say the trip by foot over miles of rough trail blends the feeling of the utterly wild, uninhabited setting of an earlier era with their modern-day adventures.  Some hikers say their trek is nostalgic, knowing they are following in the beloved hermit’s footsteps.  

Noah John Rondeau’s daily story demonstrates that the frontier boundaries of courage and romance still exist within those souls who are willing to venture forth. One has only to choose asetting for the drama.  Rondeau chose his in an isolated, backwoods setting in 1913.  People like him no longer exist any more than do Jim Bridger and Sarah Bayliss Royce.  Your “frontier wilderness” may be in your home’s immediate surroundings, in a state or national park or curled up in an easy chair with a book, but if your mind is an imaginative one, if your heart seeks the unexplored, the setting does not matter. Your life will be an adventure. 

The Secret Code

How often have folks wondered what Noah did from day to day?  And how many of us wondered what he recorded in his cryptic code one person described as the “scratchings of an inebriated hen?’ I for one have.  Look at the example of how he documented each day throughout 1943 in code.  Why did he invent and write in this manner? Were there things to hide? Well, his cryptic code was deciphered in the early 1990s by David Green.  Since the breaking of the code many of the hermit’s yearly diaries have been converted to English.