Mike was a fine guide and known for his well-made snowshoes. He was a hard worker, and a niece recalled, "People far and wide liked Mike." The real center of this home, however, was Olive. She married at nineteen and followed her husband into the wilds to make a life. Olive kept and trained the hunting dogs used to track and run deer. She herself fished and hunted.

Olive had many responsibilities as the wife of a guide who "took sportsmen." Like other Adirondack women of the time, she did hard physical labor for long hours. She tended to sheep and made her own wool for weaving and knitting. She took care of the horses and the farm animals such as the cows, pigs and chickens, butchering them when the time came. Her niece remembered Olive in later years, wringing a chicken's neck and chopping its head off for Sunday dinner. Olive also helped cut ice for the icehouse and made maple syrup. She tended a huge vegetable garden and was even known to grow watermelons, an almost impossible feat in the short Adirondack growing season.

Olive's home overlooked the confluence of the Indian and Hudson Rivers. This was a spot of great activity in the Spring when river drivers would float their logs downstream. Olive was always busy feeding the hungry drivers, and, on occasion during a log jam, Olive would cook for thirty or more at a time. Fortunately, she was able to keep her pantry full.

Olive Gooley had other dimensions and interests besides farm work and tending to the needs of sportsmen and river drivers. She was a smart, educated woman. She loved books and read anything she could get her hands on, including Shakespeare and Tennyson. Olive often recited or read stories to the sportsmen, who called her Mother Gooley, even though she was a young woman. Realizing her love of reading, they would bring or send her books.

Olive knew Latin and taught herself other languages. She also wrote poetry and letters.

Olive is remembered by her family as a fine story teller with a good sense of humor. Her nieces remembered her reciting wonderful stories and poems while knitting away in her rocker. Two of their favorites were "Tom Twist" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee." Often Olive would read aloud to them, knitting at the same time.

Olive was a generous person, and famous for her double knit mittens. As an old woman she would sit on her niece's porch in Indian Lake, knitting and watching the children walk by on their way to school. When she spied a child without mittens, she would call him over and ask to see his hand, taking its measure. Then she would say, "Stop by on your way home," and she would have a new pair of mittens waiting for him. Tourists, hearing of Olive's wonderful mittens and socks, would order dozens of them. They were not only exceptionally warm but were woven into lovely patterns.

"Olive was a knitten' to beat all!" explained her niece. "Our family had warm hands and feet, and so did scores of others. She gave away many. Sold some, but money meant nothing to Olive."

Olive lived many years and saw many changes in the people who came to the Adirondacks, first for sport and later for other types of recreation. A true story teller, she passed along the stories of her own life in the wilderness to generations of her own family, so that they, too, could know their link to the Adirondack past.