Noah John's sense of humor was apparent in the names he chose for the buildings that comprised his camp at "Cold River City, population one." Two low-ceiling cabins, eight by ten feet and covered with canvas and tarpaper held down with rocks, nails and poles, were called the Town Hall and the Hall of Records. During cold weather, Noah John slept in the Town Hall, heated by a make-shift stove made from a fifty gallon oil drum. The Hall of Records served as toolhouse and storage space for his annual supply of winter meat - a buck and a bear- and for sleeping quarters for summer guests. Surrounding the cabins were six or seven wigwams used for summer living quarters and for firewood in the winter. These he called "Mrs. Rondeau's Kitchenette," where he lived and cooked in warm weather, "the Beauty Parlor," "complete with dry sink (a hollow stump and a bearskull soap dish," "Rotton Wigwam," "the Trap House," the "Pyramid of Giza," and other names. Although he may not have intended it, his camp was a rude parody of the camps of his wealthy neighbors, one of whom was a Rockefeller, with their enclaves of rustic buildings. A visitor, A.T.Shorey, arrived at Cold River City in the evening. "To get the full startling effect of his camp it should be visited at night," he later wrote. "There is something eerie in tall tepee poles with their tops lost in the lower branches of spruces and in the weird props all about such as bear skulls, axes and chopping blocks; and in the soft cultured voice of a little man with a black beard talking of simple woods experience and mixing with his talk a [great] deal of philosophy and common sense."

Despite the impression Noah John conveyed of culture, he had very little formal schooling. This was the great regret of his life. The first of nine children born to a poor family transplanted from Canada, he struggled with English (his parents spoke French) during his early years at school which he attended sporadically. At fifteen he left home, a small farm near AuSable Forks, and tried his hand at a variety of trades including shining shoes, barbering, filing and sawing at a lumber camp, painting, carpentry and masonry. But he knew that he needed education to get a better job, and at age twenty-seven attempted to go back to school again. When it didn't work, he began his long drift toward Cold River. The shelves of his Town Hall were lined with as many as sixty books on astronomy and other subjects, including two copies of the Bible and books by Henry David Thoreau, as well as glass jars full of flour, sugar and grease. Like Thoreau, Noah John understood nature by living closely with it, and also like Thoreau, he kept a journal of his observations. He perused the night stars through a homemade telescope mounted in a tree. In the evenings he played his violin, which hung in a case over his bed made of boughs, an air mattress and bearskin. The woods animals were attracted to his playing, and visitors reported hearing deer snort and seeing the glow of their eyes in the dark beyond the campfire.

For food, Noah John fished, hunted and trapped, supplementing his diet of game with vegetables from his garden in summer and a supply of tinned goods in winter which he buried to keep from freezing or stored under the ice in the river. His friend Bill Petty from the Conservation Department frequently air dropped supplies to him. The longer Noah John stayed in Cold River, the more notable he became, entertaining as many as 200 visitors a year. He was discovered finally by Clayton Seagears who wrote a folksy article about him published in the New York Conservationist in 1946. This signalled the end of Noah John's seclusion. Seagears and Bill Petty thought the hermit should be displayed at the National Sportsmen's Show, "to help sell the need to retain the wilderness character of New York State's Forest Preserve and to show it is possible in the most heavily populated state in the nation to live in primitive wilderness, how to protect and enjoy it." The hermit was dropped an invitation in the winter of 1947 and shortly thereafter plucked out of his camp by helicopter and flown to New York City.

Feted and fussed over at the Sportsmen's Show, Noah John enjoyed the limelight as much as he enjoyed the dusky woods. People liked his gentle manner and his homespun philosophy and humor. For several years he was Exhibit A at state-wide sportsmen's shows where he sat surrounded by his woodsman's paraphernalia - snowshoes, packbaskets, bow and arrows, deer and bearskins, etc. - and where he autographed the photographs he sold. A story about him in one of the metropolitan newspapers ended eloquently: "His one lesson to all of us ...is this: Use your natural resources wisely and they'll use you well. Take out only what you need. Help put back what you take. See more in hunting than just the harvest, more in fishing than the fading spots on a dying trout, more in the future of your outdoors than the bare hills, gully scars and muddy waters. Shake hands with the guy. He's helping America learn something."