Madeline Dodge said, “Noah had a humorous way of saying come to his mountains on vacation and avoid the highway carnage.”

Noah: “It doesn’t take 400 dead people to celebrate a holiday in here.”

Madeline Dodge’s voice was one of Noah friends I always recalled when used to bathe in the deep pool that made a great swimming hole in the wild river on the downside of the remains of the log dam. When I described the once deep washbowl and how very cold the water felt brought eighty-eight year-old Madeline’s wonderful hermit memories to the forefront. She ac-knowledged that the cold I had felt was cold, but assured me it could not have been as cold as what she had experienced back in the 1940s. Madeline stressed it was really COLD!

Madeline Dodge was an early 20th-century mountain climber and mem-ber of the Adirondack Mountain Club. Over the years she dropped by to visit with Rondeau at his digs. Many years later, after he left the woods and resettled in Wilmington, New York, Noah made her home a stopover. They both believed in economy. Both reused coffee grounds and tea leaves. When Noah brought a can of tobacco along and pulled his pipe from his pocket, Madeline wasn’t opposed to filling her crusty old briar pipe right along with her house guest. With both sitting in rockers by the kitchen range, Noah would lean down to the wood box, open the door, light the end of a splinter of soft wood from the hot coals and turn the burning end to ignite their tobacco. Silently both then drew several deep puffs, savoring the aroma of the flavored tobacco. A smoke. A nip. They enjoyed their necessary vices.

In time Madeline talked with me about her friendship with Noah and how he coaxed her into the water the first time she met him.

Madeline: He was a gentleman of the first order; he could hold his own with anyone—king, queen or president. The first time I hiked in I hadn’t the faintest idea of what to expect but I had made up my mind. After walking fourteen miles I was going to say, “Move over kid, I’m going to stay” if there was any opposition to his having company in camp.