I got my matches, and a Yuengling ($1.50) and asked the bartender who Hurricane Helen was and how she got her nickname. “You’ll have to ask her,” she said, and seconds later a slightly accented Asian woman named Helen Kim swept in like driving wind, gave me a gale-force handshake and promptly began punching me in the arm and inviting me to the bar’s one-year anniversary in June.

We quickly discovered we once lived in the same neighborhood in Queens — she had moved from Korea to Texas to 78th Street in Jackson Heights, a block from me, then to the Poconos where she ran a bar, a boat rental and a refreshment concession in the park, and who knows what else. She punched me in the arm a few more times before storming around the room, doling out more punches and dancing to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines.” Her nickname was flawed, I realized — if she was a hurricane, it was one without a calm eye.

The next morning, rising early in the chilly room — the wood stove’s fire had gone out overnight — I walked over to a nearby observation point for a bald eagle nest across nearby Lower Lake, though when I got there I realized I had also forgotten binoculars. No matter. I headed out on a lovely and easy hike along the Little Falls trail, which follows a pleasant brook through the bright green beech trees. The next morning I went on a longer and more challenging hike, a figure eight around Egypt Meadow and Bruce Lakes just north of the park — and didn’t see another human soul. (Though plenty of salamanders and baby geese.)

I skipped the swimming beach on the main lake (too cold that weekend) and boat rentals (a bit too expensive for a solo traveler at about $20 an hour). Instead, having never been to the Poconos, I drove around the area’s small towns and winding country roads, with plenty of antiques shops and ice cream stands without quite the sometimes contrived cuteness of the small town Hamptons or Berkshires.

In Hawley, an old mining and mill town, I had a big bird hoagie (turkey, bacon, fried onions) at Fluff’s Deli for the very un-Hamptons price of $5.95, and stopped by the modest farmers’ market, where I picked up my dinner, two thick pork chops from Twin Brooks Farm ($12.88 total — O.K., a bit more Hamptons level, but pasture-raised and attractively marbled), and a $10 bag of Ed’s Heavenly Delights butter crunch as a gift for Beata and Mirek, who had invited me for brunch the next day.