He was a golf pro at some resort in Westchester, far more affluent than the typical staff member. I don't think he had any real tie to the scout camp. But he had been coming up for years when I first met him. It was a simple job. He loved canoeing around Pharoah Lake, and for good reason, it is quite beautiful.
You cannot drive directly to the lake though. You can get within a few miles of it through a series of rugged roads, but you have to hike in the last bit. It is not a difficult hike, it is mostly flat, but like most Adirondack trails it had a tendency to be quite muddy in stretches. Pharoah Lake was where I "fought" my first forest fire.
For the life of me, I cannot remember this guy's name, so I will call him Arnold since I associate him with golfing. Arnold had this really beautiful kevlar canoe. Something like the below:
Kevlar canoes are expensive and incredibly light. The Grumman canoes we used at camp weighed about 70 pounds. However, they were virtually indestructible. This was a good feature, because the scouts tended to treat them with the same care as you and I treat a rental car. The trusty Grummans stood up the abuse, it seemed the worst you could do was dent one. Kevlar canoes would have never lasted at our camp. A good kevlar canoe was several thousand dollars and might weigh 15 - 20 pounds. Where a grumman would dent, the Kevlar would tear and be ruined. One of the teachers at Voyaguer school, a legend known as Paddling Paul, had a Kevlar canoe and towards the end of the training, when I got with the program and was not about to be expelled, he let me try it. You do things differently with a Kevlar canoe. For one, entry and exit are done "wet". In the Grumman, it was typical to get in the canoe with the stern still on dry land. This was nice because your feet stayed dry. Once in the canoe, you would use the paddle to push off, and kind of scrape along for a couple of feet. You could not do this with a Kevlar canoe. Rather, you floated the canoe in the lake a few feet off from the shore and then climbed in. At no point would the canoe touch the river bed. Similarly, the typical method of exiting a Grumman involved approaching the shore at ramming speed and causing the bow to impact the beach head. Consequently, the canoe would scrape along the shore line for several feet and both occupants could exit the canoe and keep their feet dry. Exiting the Kevlar canoe was the opposite of entering it. You would stop a few feet from shore, get out and then carefully carry it on shore. Fortunately, because they were so light, it was easy to carry.
Arnold had a very particular method of getting his beautiful Kevlar canoe to Pharoah Lake. He had a cart which went in the center of craft. He then loaded all his gear into the canoe. Every inch was crammed with gear. Somehow, once at the lake, Arnold would find a way to cram himself into the canoe. The cart made things infinitely easier. Because Arnold balanced the canoe quite carefully, all that was required was a push on the rear and a pull on the front to move it along. Arnold would typically request that two staff members accompany him, one to pull and one to push. Arnold would simply walk along side. I think he had injured his back, so he was careful not to get involved. To top it off, Arnold, even though he was in the wilderness, did not dress like it. He wasn't wearing a three piece suit, but he did have gear that looked like it came from the front page of L.L. Bean. I have never been a very snappy dresser, but while at camp my attire and level of personal hygiene was similar to that of a homeless person. The difference in class was very clear.
Arnold was a great guy though, he would drive his vehicle to the end of the road and then accompany us on the trip to the lake. He had some great stories and was not at all pretentious. The only thing that was slightly ridiculous is that when we reached some of the muddiest parts of the trail, he would climb into the canoe to avoid the mud. I may have done the same if I was as well dressed. Getting a Grumman to the trail head would have been quite a chore. Carrying a canoe for mile or so is not too difficult, but the hike into Pharoah was about 5 miles. The upshot of it all was that Arnold typically had the lake to himself, most of the other people who came to Pharoah simply hiked there.
The best part was he was incredibly generous. Once we dropped him off, he would typically give us each a hundred bucks and the keys to his vehicle. We would drive his vehicle back to camp, park it, and come back to pick him up at the prearranged time. We weren't supposed to use his vehicle around camp. I never did because he typically arrived on a Sunday and was picked up the following Saturday. I was usually out guiding a trip during the week. One of the other porters interpreted the instructions of "drive this straight back to camp and park it" as "drive it back to camp and use it as your own personal vehicle during the week, don't worry about taking it off road, it is after all a 4 wheel drive vehicle." Fortunately, he did not do any real damage to it.
The pick up went very much like the drop off, just in reverse. Even though Arnold had been in the wilderness for a week, you would not have guessed it. He was shaved and clean and it even appeared that his clothes had been pressed! If he noticed that his Suburban had a few too many miles on it, he never said anything. He would give us a ride back to camp and then head home. I always looked forward to his arrival. Not only was it chance to make a few bucks, but I always enjoyed the hike into Pharoah Lake.
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