COLUMNIST ROQUEMORE'S CORNER
2024 April 16
Cedar Key resident and Cedar Key Beacon columnist Susan Engle Roquemore has compiled her writings into two wonderfully and cleverly titled books:
Turn Left at the Big Osprey Nest and
Water Under the Number 4 Bridge: A Memoir of the Beacon Years (1988-1993)
Water Under the Number 4 Bridge: A Memoir of the Beacon Years (1988-1993)
These books are currently sold at:
the Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce Welcome Center,
the Cedar Key Historical Society Museum,
the Florida’s Nature Coast Conservancy events,
and the Woman’s Club.
These organizations receive the book’s full sales price.
the Cedar Key Chamber of Commerce Welcome Center,
the Cedar Key Historical Society Museum,
the Florida’s Nature Coast Conservancy events,
and the Woman’s Club.
These organizations receive the book’s full sales price.
For your reading pleasure and enjoyment of an incisive, often humorous
view of Cedar Key two decades ago, Ms. Roquemore and the Cedar Key News intend to publish selected articles monthly.
view of Cedar Key two decades ago, Ms. Roquemore and the Cedar Key News intend to publish selected articles monthly.
Cedar Key News hopes you enjoy the articles. If you do, and should you purchase one or both books, the above non-profit organizations will certainly appreciate the effort.
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LOOKING BACK: A LETTER FROM THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL, APRIL 1992...
Probably the last place you’d expect to find two “rugged” Appalachian Trail thru-hikers would be at a posh mountain resort: heated pool, saunas, tennis courts, golf course, houseboats and real bathrooms with tub and a flush toilet. Imagine the sense of profound shock at being faced with a full-length mirror after fifteen days and 165 miles on the trail. My mother always told me to give people that looked like that a wide berth. Perhaps it was the lean and hungry look around the eyes or the Arnold Schwartzenegger legs. It could have been the trace of drool around the mouth that began at the Coke machine in the lobby. Hot water (lots of it), shampoo (lots of it), and Brillo to the knuckles and nails made the image almost civilized looking. Neither did I grope through David’s pack looking for the towel and toilet paper. I totally ignored the high rhododendron outside our patio. There was still a vestige of “couth.”
Probably the most remarkable aspect of two weeks on the trail without the accoutrements of modern living is that I survived without a purse full of nail files, blushers, foundations, stubs of eyebrow pencil, lipstick, brushes, combs, Kleenex, car keys, house keys, and 45 pounds of loose change and Visa card receipts. I had developed something of a truck driver’s tan (an ambidextrous truck driver) but how this happened is a mystery since of all the elements experienced; rain, snow, ice, hail, thunder and lightning, the one least memorable was sun! David experienced much of the same transformation except that where my city clothes were tight, his were loose. I suppose it says something about who loses weight on 6000 calories a day and who doesn’t!
It took us no more than an hour to revert to our old ingrained decadent ways: I bought a Sunday paper, and Dave turned on the TV. I begged and pleaded but Dave insisted that I should remember how to push buttons on a telephone and sit in chairs. I gave in. It was to be a day of R & R (including such domestic chores as laundering our one and only set of trail clothes and fumigating the sleeping bags).
Most people do not understand long-distance hiking and roll their eyes skyward when trying to fathom the mentality of the hiker. Dave and I qualify for the title but can’t explain either. It’s not that I really prefer my oatmeal with oak leaves and flavored with a hint of yesterday’s spaghetti sauce. I’ve never envied women with ankles that resembled oil drums or men with grizzled faces. Those things just “come with the territory.” It must have something to do with the purity (not to be confused with cleanliness) of the existence.
There is a sense of isolation even though you may be back-to-back or belly-to-belly with your tent-mate. This is a sense of unity, of integrity, while remaining aloof. A contradiction in terms? Maybe. It is independence of the highest order while remaining profoundly dependent—and realizing that dependency—on higher powers or circumstances outside human (our own) control.
None of this philosophical mumbo-jumbo precludes the sheer fun of being in the woods or the meadow or perched high on a hill eating a can of sardines. It’s not to say that talking to a salamander isn’t slightly crazy—or enjoying real sweat. There’s something magic about knowing that the machine we call “body” is so closely aligned with that which we call soul. No better place to experience this than on a grueling, torturing climb to a ridge out of a deep gap. Muscles plead for mercy. Tendons strain and stretch; toes involuntarily grasp for the next firm footing; the heart pumps and the adrenalin flows as the mind rejects the idea of skydiving. It is the spirit, however, that determines whether with everything else working, the hill will be climbed—a small success, but yours alone.
I’d be lying through my boot laces if I said I was looking forward to a 2000-foot ascent tomorrow in what promises to be a thunderstorm, carrying what is my 40-pound “home” and “my earthly needs.” I’m doing it not because David wants to do it. He isn’t doing it because I want to do it. It’s probably a fact that his spirit and my spirit get together when we aren’t looking and give each other that all important “hand up” or push we both need. (After all, those spirits have been best friends for years. That’s what friends are for!)
It will soon be time to turn in our room key and shut the door on electric lamps and clothes hangers and cantankerous draperies, bed linen that can bounce quarters. I’ll slip into my red wool socks and my fatigues, my 14-year-old “lucky” Levi shirt (and probably poncho) and try to thumb a ride from this bastion of civilization to the trail head. My knees and ankles will be braced with Ace bandages. By the time you read this I will have groaned and “Ow”-ed my way up and down and in and out a few more knobs. I’ll probably have sat down in the mud a few times. I might have cried or trembled. I might be laughing. It comes with the territory.
The Dragon Lady AT April 1992
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