Adirondack Peeks Summer 2024

MOUNTAIN VIGNETTES Chant Royal for Noah John Rondeau

Charles Weld, #3930

My father, my sister and I packed into his clearing—a rite of passage. We were teens. Climbing his rise, there wasn’t much to see. Although still alive, he’d left the site years before, was in his eighties, and living again near Placid. I remember seeing a rusted bucket handle make a u shape, the wire growing from a tree. For our sake, my father told his story which somehow struck a chord with me, just at the age of curiosity about less-explored ways of living in the world. His sans souci sufficiency and low center of gravity, seemed an unforeseen reward to those who began to live a life less cumbered, more carefree. This: a kiss for the Mayor of Cold River City, who shored up sagging spirits with many a confab, a noun he preferred to chat, which speaks to his outgoing congeniality, extended to those that, business aside, hiked in around Mt. Seward and began to live a life less cumbered, more carefree.

He loved palaver and would talk into the night, after hunters hiked in to visit, accept their gifts, serve supper, play his fiddle, wax erudite about bear and politics, less hermit than barber which is how he started, cutting hair in Lake Placid. Some neighbors thought heartbreak drove him to the woods, although the record doesn’t bear this out. More likely, he soured gradually to the town’s enticements, and happy with the prospect of no rent and ample board, began to live a life less cumbered, more carefree than what he’d known. A camp back then, if out of sight, was often ignored—the 1920s—so, a one-room affair was standard for those who trafficked furs, despite the law. But squatting was squatting, and he took care to avoid State Land and not draw attention. Easy to snake planks from a deserted lumber camp, and a lucky break to find a stove or barrel left behind. Packing his hoard, load by load, to a rise above the river looking toward Couchsacraga, he built his hermitage, feeling the glee he’d later be known for, as he took a first step forward, began to live a life less cumbered, more carefree. His firewood stood in teepees of poles, each cut not quite through to stove length. Drying upright in the open air, tree towers—twenty feet high. At zero Fahrenheit, he knocked chunks off their bottoms to warm his lair, without clearing snow off a woodpile. Not one to bellyache about the cold, he’d take an axe to hack steak from a frozen deer, add vegetables from cans he’d lowered into the river (it served almost as a pantry cupboard) to a stew he named slam bang, and voila! be ready to welcome company. At a table of sorts, guests, restored, began to live a life less cumbered, more carefree. During the long, winter days, he would write in his journal in a code of circle, triangle, and square glyphs, dots, and wavy lines. Maybe this sleight was to throw off future readers, keep them unaware the State game wardens to task. It was his word against theirs. Jailed for poaching, he ignored advice, and, as his own counsel, spoke to the jury that found him not guilty. Released and reassured, he again began to live a life less cumbered, more carefree. of his spite. Although kind, he didn’t fake civility, and took every opportunity to take

Photo credit: Sébastien Provost #14679 SUMMER 2024 | 23