Although the guide boat might look like a canoe to the untrained eye, it is not. They are different craft from different backgrounds. Guide boats are wider than canoes, are propelled with oars, not paddles, and were designed more than a century ago to move summer folk, along with hunters and fishermen, across the lakes and rivers that dot this mountain region. The boats are light, good not only for skimming over the water, but also for portaging. Each comes with its own yoke.
Some people think they are the perfect vessel.
One man with a pair of oars can move quicker than two men with paddles,'' he says. You can travel 30 miles in a guide boat on an easy day. A widower, he works alone in an old barn heated by a wood stove made from a galvanized barrel. The wood shavings on the floor are his kindling. The shop's cement floor is speckled with varnish and pine-green paint, and a layer of sawdust covers his long workbench, which is watched over by a bevy of calendar pinup girls.