. Vermont Public Radio
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A Stradivarius Of A Boat |
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Built By North Country Carpenters |
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When you see the real
thing, there’s no question in your mind about it. The reaction is visceral, as well
as aesthetic – like coming upon an exceptionally beautiful woman, listening to Mozart
perfectly played or casting a dry fly to a large native trout. |
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I came upon one last
Saturday, a few miles west of Ely, New Hampshire. It’s owner had placed it in canvas
slings to keep it up off the ground and show it to best advantage. |
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The shape caught my eye
from 50 yards away; it looked right, and the closer I got, the better it looked. The owner
saw me caressing it and obviously slipping off into a reverie. “Would you like to
take it out for a spin?” |
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We carried to down to the
pond. He settled the removable cane seats and slipped the lovely cherry oars into the
old-fashioned cast locks. Sitting down on the low seat wasn’t as easy as I remembered
it being, and I was nervous as a cat about getting away from the dock without a bump.
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The Adirondack guideboat, it’s called. It got its
name sometimes after 1850 when sports and tourists discovered the Adirondacks and were
taken care of by native guides, whose boats were as much a part of their work as are
cameras to photographers.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson,
visiting the mountains in 1867, wrote, “We chose our boats; each man a boat and
guide, -- ten men, ten guides, our company all told.” The early boats were often
rough and fairly heavy. But over time, the necessity of portaging them along with all the
gear – as well as their guides’ desire to impress others with their
craftsmanship – made them even lighter, graceful and beautifully finished. |
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They’ve never spread
much beyond their original home, though an odd one will turn up now and then in the most
unlikely place. During the Second World War, an American infantry platoon, trying to cross
a German river under fire, mustered all the small boats it could find and, to its great
surprise, came up with a genuine “Long-Laker,” which a young soldier from
northern New York could row. |
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I saw my first one in the
mid-50’s, when I went to work at a private forest preserve in the Adirondacks. There
were dozens of them in the boathouses of the preserve, from a tiny 1874 cockleshell with a
graceful wineglass stern to 18 foot freighters. With their tumblehome stems, they looked
like the battleship Maine. For me, it was love at first sight. I rowed my
“people” and their gear up and down the lakes in the sleekest boats, took them
fishing in the more stable, and carried freight – shingles, bags of cement and lumber
– in the big ones. Once an older guide and I hauled a huge load of building materials
by stacking the long lumber across the gunwales of two boats side by side, piling roofing
on top of it, and rowing up the lake with one oar each. |
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Describing how they were
built and what materials has been the subject of books, but for obvious reasons, they were
almost all native material. The ribs were split and sawed from the natural curve of spruce
roots, dug up and dried after the loggers were gone. The planking was of the clearest
quarter-sawn pine, shaved to sometimes less than a quarter of an inch thick. Stradivari
himself, if he could have seen what rough woodsmen and north country carpenters were able
to accomplish with the simplest tools, would have gnashed his teeth with envy. |
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| They were wonderful for fishing – as long as the sport didn’t insist on standing up to thrash his fly rod back and forth. They were just a little cranky, and the smallest ones in particular would give an alarming lurch if you so much as lightly eased one bun on the seat. One old guide had a boat that he said was “just lovely to row, but if you’re chewing gum, you wanta have a chew in each cheek.” But because the oarsman usually moved to the front seat when he had a passenger or a fisherman in the back, the distance between them was handy if the passenger wished the guide to change his flies for him. It was not handy if they wished to share some lunch or a swig from a flask. | |
| Mother and I took our honeymoon in a guideboat, rowing up a perfect mountain lake to its inlet, then switching to a paddle to take us the next mile or so to a derelict hunting camp. A photograph of that boat, pulled up on its dock, is an irresistible mix of grace and poignancy. | |
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