LOCALadk Magazine

Summer 2018 LOCALadk Magazine 41 LOCALadk through the Saranac lakes. Still in business today as Ra- quette River Outfitters, Frenette came to represent a new breed of guides who were young, well-educated, and virtual campfire gourmets. Twenty years ago, Frenette was joined by his partner Anne Fleck, a hard-core boater and skier who left a field research job with Dartmouth to introduce others to the Adirondack wilds. Together, Frenette and Fleck have built a business that has bridged two eras. Today, only 5 to 10 percent of their business involves hands-on guiding. (Sometimes, under the weight of business, Frenette jokes that he wants to sell the company and go to work for the new owner, just rowing peo- ple around the lakes again). Even so, many elements of old- time guiding remain, in the form of consultation and psycho- logical support for people who are new to the woods. Fleck keeps a stash of sweaters and raingear that she loans out to people who show up unprepared. She also offers com- fort to people whose cell phones are telling them there will be a rain shower at 2:15 in the afternoon. "Ever yone's so tied to the weather," she said. "I tell them there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad gear." The weather creates special moods and scenes, and good guides today help vacationers appreciate a summer shower or a soup fog – and hey, it's the Adirondacks: in 10 minutes it'll change. Weather apps aside, there remain themes that have spanned a centur y and a half. Like Dunning, Frenette is cau- tious about burgeoning clientele, noting the "fine line" be- tween enough tourists for economic sustainability and too many tourists for the well-being of the park. It's not the first time this concern has been raised. A clergyman and guide who came to be known as Adiron- dack Murray wrote so glowingly of the region in the 1800s that it inspired thousands of tenderfoots, who came to be known as Murray's Fools, to leave the city for the wilderness – sometimes arriving on the train platform with trunks full of copper kettles and fine china at the ready for their wil- derness adventure. Nor was his advice particularly useful. Having read Murray's guidebook, photographer Seneca Ray Stoddard said he hoped the reverend's preaching was a bet- ter guide to heaven than his book was to the Adirondacks. And if not, "his congregation might have worried through with a cheaper man." But for most of the old guard, guiding was serious busi- ness, beginning with clients that included sur veyors, scien- tists, and fortune hunters. Within a couple of decades, guid- ing evolved into a focus primarily on recreational pursuits, mainly hunting and fishing and, later still, hiking and explor- ing. The best known of the old guides, and it's no accident, is Orson "Old Mountain" Phelps, who tended to ratchet his homespun wisdom up or down, depending on who was cut- ting his paycheck. Where Dunning was cantankerous, Phelps was irascible; there was a subtle but lucrative difference. Like a hillbilly version of Yoga Berra, Phelps' peculiar idiom is memorable. The view from Mt. Marcy was "heaven up'hist- edness." He reported to well-perfumed friends from the city that he was fed up with this "eternal sozzlin' (because) soap is a thing I hain't no kinder use for." When two young women he was guiding up Marcy were gossiping away and failing to adequately appreciate the beauty, Phelps threatened to "run them off of my mounting." Like Yogi, who reportedly admitted, "I never said half of the things I said," a fair amount of doubt surrounds Phelps's more celebrated pronouncements. The writers knew that colorful descriptions would sell more stories, and it was not in the best economic interest of Phelps, who derived new customers from these stories – to correct the record. Today, most guides agree, knowledge is valued over en- Tony Salerno Rob Frenette & Anne Fleck (above), Anne Fleck (right)

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