The Adirondacks by Paul Schneider

Author:Paul Schneider
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250135209
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

“Hotel guides” at the guidehouse at Paul Smith’s, by Seneca Ray Stoddard. COURTESY OF THE ADIRONDACK MUSEUM, BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE.

But the heyday of the mythic Great Adirondack Guide did not extend far into the twentieth century. Of course there were (and still are) exceptional guides here and there, beloved by their clients, but within a generation the Adirondack guide who had once provided access to a nostalgic vision of wilderness was becoming an object of intense nostalgia himself.

In the May 3, 1883, Forest and Stream, a writer who went by the name of Piseco contributed a long correspondence “about certain changes which have taken place in the character of the [Adirondack] guides, as a body, through the introduction or intrusion into their ranks of men who, while styling themselves guides, and as such receiving guides’ pay and employment, have little, if any, right to claim either.”

In an obligatory manner Piseco gently thumbed his nose at the multitudes, who “from their Pullman cars … are transferred to huge Concord stages and sent bowling over good roads behind four horses into the very heart of the mountains, and are welcomed to the hotels (whose verandahs are covered with gaily dressed ladies, all flirting, fanning and watching the girls playing croquet or lawn tennis in front) by swallow-tailed-coated waiters, and shown into reading rooms, barrooms, bedrooms, as their wishes dictate, and after shaking off the dust of travel, they can adjourn to the parlor and listen to pianos, or to the dining room, and from a well-arranged menu select their dinner.”

Piseco spent most of his considerable effort complaining about the system of territoriality that had developed in the guiding profession, whereby a person was forced to change guides from lake to lake. He griped about the related problem of having to pay the first guide’s way back to his home base. He hated paying a full day’s rate when all he wanted was a half day.

Piseco carped about a guide who refused to show him the best fishing holes “until through self interest I gave in and fed him liberally.” He fulminated about another guide who didn’t adequately “bait his buoy.” He said he’d seen guides spearing lake trout, or offing too many deer. Worst of all, one guide even broke his fishing rod while getting into the boat.

The good guide, Piseco said, the Great Adirondack Guide of the old variety that was harder and harder to find, was something altogether different. The good guide “selected camping grounds, felled trees and peeled bark for our shanties, fitted up balsam beds, shelves and racks, kept the camp-fires and smudges going night and day, prepared and cooked the meals, washed dishes and, nights or early morning, left me sleeping to slip away and return with venison or fish.

“When through restlessness I wearied of one spot and proposed change to some other,” Piseco said, an old-fashioned guide didn’t complain. Rather, he carried everything, leaving Piseco “struggling along with perhaps my rod and creel only.” Best of all, a good guide was very contented with two and a half dollars a day.

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