A long-time mountain-dwelling hermit with a long grey beard who stood about five feet two inches and dressed in much-patched clothes and a floppy, green-painted hat is not like any other model a scoutmaster could point his charges to as an example of how to survive. But Noah lived the skills taught in the scouting Handbook for Boys — just as he could have written the Handbook for Hermits.

For the troops of Boy Scouts who took a walk in the woods to reach the hermitage, most found the long day hike a modest distance even with the weight they packed on their backs. Cold River Hill was not a random destination. The Cold River Valley was not the cultivated urbane orb of paved streets, smelly buses, crowded housing developments, school playgrounds, and city parks. On camporee weekends, scouts usually pitched their tents on the outskirts of such cities in former orchards and on pastureland that substituted for the wilds. Meeting a most curious mountain man must have seemed a novel and worthwhile goal.

Long before Noah’s rise to prominence in the media, many scoutmasters from Vermont, Pennsylvania, New York’s Capital District, the Southern Tier, central New York and points beyond had learned of Rondeau’s digs. Cold River City was a first-hand example of a man’s successful attempt to survive in the wilderness.

Scoutmasters might have described a hermit as a person

who is usually anti-social for numerous reasons, and becomes isolated by preference. As they led their young charges toward Cold River, they might have qualified that definition, joking “He might even offer you some of his ‘Eternity Tea’ or ‘Everlasting Stew,’ which if made from a blue-jay, might be heartier by leaving a few of the feathers and what-not intact.”

The former campers and scouts, now elderly, enjoy their easy chairs and memories of their favorite wild places.

Caution tossed aside, youthful visitors found Noah John “warm and friendly,” according to H.P. Donlon’s remembrance, “with merriment that was joyous.” He entertained his scouting visitors with stories and fiddle music, in a fashion they would almost certainly have found unique.