[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 199 (Wednesday, December 6, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7887-S7888]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                       TRIBUTE TO REIDUN NUQUIST

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the question would be suitable for the game 
show ``Jeopardy:'' Name the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the 
United States. Answer: What is the Long Trail?
  The 272-mile trail that runs the spine of the Green Mountains in my 
home State of Vermont was built over the course of two decades, from 
1910 to 1930, and has provided countless hikers with spectacular climbs 
and remote camping in the decades that followed. No hiker's pack would 
be complete on the journey without a small pocket reference book simply 
known as the Long Trail Guide, a bible of sorts for these backwoods 
adventurers.
  The guide was first published by the Green Mountain Club, the steward 
of the Long Trail, in 1917 and has since been revised 27 times. So when 
the club recently decided to chronicle 100 years of Long Trail Guide 
history to mark the anniversary, they turned to a very experienced 
hiker and a dedicated volunteer to take on the job: Reidun Nuquist.
  I have had the pleasure of knowing Reidun and her husband, Andrew, 
for many years. They reside in my hometown of Montpelier, and like so 
many other Vermonters, they share a deep respect and appreciation for 
the natural wonders that make Vermont such a special place to live. 
They also share a generosity of spirit, dedicating much of their spare 
time to preserving our natural habitat and helping maintain the Long 
Trail for generations to come.
  I was very pleased to read about Reidun's latest effort in a recent 
edition of the Vermont publication Seven Days, and I ask unanimous 
consent that the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

        Reidun Nuquist Navigates a Century of Long Trail Guides

                            (By James Tabor)

       In November 1944, an American soldier fighting in Europe 
     wrote this in a letter home:
       ``I keep a worn out 1935 edition of the Guide Book in my 
     foot locker to always remind me of what I'm fighting for.''
       That ``Guide Book'' just happened to be the Long Trail 
     Guide, and the GI's words hint at how important these little 
     tomes have been over the years, in so many ways to so many 
     people. The plural ``tomes'' is appropriate here; while most 
     people think of the guide as a book, there have been, in 
     fact, 28 versions, all published by the Green Mountain Club, 
     beginning with the first in 1917 and culminating in this 
     year's Centennial Edition.
       As that homesick soldier's note suggested, over the decades 
     these volumes have achieved significance far beyond that of 
     mere guidebooks, for two good reasons. One is that, as the 
     number of weekenders who become (or aspire to become) end-to-
     enders signifies, the Long Trail is not just a trail. Hiking 
     it is a coming-of-age accomplishment, a badge of honor, a 
     bucket-list item, a family bonder and more. The other reason 
     is that the inspiration, dedication and perspiration of the 
     guides' editors and contributors have resulted in the kind of 
     quality that labors of love generally produce.
       Such longevity and excellence, the current GMC leadership 
     realized, shouldn't go unchronicled.
       ``With the 100th anniversary edition, it became clear that 
     the history of the guide had not been told and that this was 
     the perfect opportunity to do so,'' GMC executive director 
     Mike DeBonis said in a telephone interview.
       That decision might have been simple, but finding an author 
     was another story. Any candidate would have to be an expert 
     and diligent researcher. ``This would not be an easy book to 
     research or to write,'' DeBonis explained. ``Because not all 
     the backstory is written down in one place, it would require 
     reading all the old guides, as well as finding and digging 
     through archives and interviewing past editors and 
     contributors.''
       Another consideration: One little book about a lot of other 
     little books could have significant yawner potential. The 
     author of this little book would have to be creative.
       As it turned out, though, the perfect candidate was near at 
     hand: Reidun Nuquist, a Norwegian-turned-Vermonter, devoted 
     outdoorswoman and longtime GMC devotee. And she had long been 
     a contributor to the Long Trail guides.
       Now 77, Nuquist immigrated to the U.S. in 1963 after 
     marrying Andrew Nuquist, a past GMC president. The couple 
     moved to Montpelier in 1970, and Reidun enjoyed a career as a 
     librarian for the Vermont Historical Society and the 
     University of Vermont's Bailey/Howe Library. She and Andy 
     have one son, a fiftysomething Bostonian who inherited his 
     parents' passion for the outdoors in general and hiking in 
     particular.
       Nuquist's own affinity for the Long Trail and the GMC 
     produced, as DeBonis noted, ``a tremendously strong 
     connection to club history.'' In addition to being a Long 
     Trailer herself--one who has hiked the trail end to end--
     Nuquist has served as president of the GMC's Montpelier 
     chapter and spent more weekends than she can remember 
     volunteering for grinding pick-and-shovel work on trail-
     maintenance crews. Frequent contributions to club newsletters 
     and to the guidebooks--including a chapter in A Century in 
     the Mountains: Celebrating Vermont's Long Trail--demonstrated 
     her gift for writing.
       And so, in May 2016, the GMC gave Nuquist the job of 
     tackling the centennial retrospective.
       When reached by phone, Nuquist explained how to pronounce 
     her first name: ``Rye like in bread, dune like in sand.'' If 
     a voice can twinkle, hers did. A subsequent visit to her 
     hillside home, with its neat woodpile and mustard-yellow 
     doors, only reinforced that impression of buoyancy--all the 
     more surprising given that she's currently battling serious 
     illness. Ensconced in an easy chair, with a white knit cap 
     and a shawl around her legs to ward off chill, Nuquist 
     fielded questions with smiles and stamina for more than an 
     hour.
       Asked how she approached the Long Trail project, Nuquist 
     admitted, ``I was delighted to be asked to do the book, but I 
     did wonder how I was going to approach a retrospective of 28 
     separate guides. I knew this had to be more than a 
     bibliographic project. It had to be interesting to general 
     readers.''
       She paused and grinned. ``I figured the way to do that was 
     to write about people.''
       So she did--a very good thing for readers of A Century of 
     Long Trail Guidebooks: A Retrospective, published by the GMC 
     in October. It's short--just 90 pages--and the table of 
     contents indicates that it's much more than a ``bibliographic 
     project.'' For starters, rather than employing a predictable 
     chronological progression, Nuquist divided the book into 
     seven chapters that focus on the trail guides' essential 
     elements: origin, evolution, illustrations, hiker advice, 
     trail descriptions, maps and editors.
       Her writing of these chapters renders a book that could 
     have been literary Xanax into one that's alive with wit, 
     irony and insight. Some examples:
       The guidebook carried business advertisements through 1940 
     but just for the Long Trail Lodge and state agencies, before 
     they ceased altogether--something we may be grateful for.
       Some past advice may strike us as quaint or amusing . . . 
     For fending off mosquitoes, a hiker could follow John Muir's 
     recipe for a repellent of ``three parts of oil or pine tar, 
     two parts of castor oil and one part of oil of pennyroyal.''
       Attentive readers were never shy about pointing out errors. 
     The 1932 edition labeled two mountains as Vermont's third 
     highest, Mount Ellen (4,135 feet) and Camel's Hump (4,093 
     feet). Theron Dean, having climbed both numerous times, was 
     called on to referee. He awarded the distinction to Mount 
     Ellen, intimating that the guidebook editors had been ``in a 
     slightly muddled condition after partaking of a church supper 
     in Burlington.''
       Like much of her own writing, Nuquist's carefully chosen 
     excerpts from the guides accomplish two key goals: leavening 
     the pages with wry humor while delivering interesting, often 
     fascinating information.
       [The] first guidebook was also a yearbook and as such holds 
     valuable club history. In addition to lists of officers, 
     trustees, and committee and section members, it included 
     bylaws and GMC articles of association. The latter stipulated 
     that the club was to ``make trails and roads in the Vermont 
     mountains, to erect camps and shelter houses therein, to 
     publish maps and guide books thereof'' [author's emphasis]. 
     The membership lists of local club sections (chapters) showed 
     an impressive number of women; of the Brandon Section's 
     thirty-one members, half were female.
       The 2nd (1920) guidebook had detailed advice on what to 
     carry and how to carry--down to what to put in each pocket: 
     ``Left shirt: handkerchief, postals [postcards], notebook, 
     pencil. Right shirt: guide-hook, money securely pinned in bag 
     or envelope. Left trousers: matches in flat tin box, 
     waterproof. Right trousers: pocket knife, strong twine. Left 
     hip: toilet paper. Fob pocket: compass on lanyard.'' The only 
     thing left for the hiker was to select the contents of the 
     right hip pocket!
       Nuquist also quotes other writers--book authors, newsletter 
     contributors, journal keepers, letter penners--liberally and 
     to good advantage. Here, for example, is memoirist James 
     Gordon Hindes describing his experience of overnighting with 
     companion John Eames at Frank Beane's Hanksville farm one 
     July.
       We slept in the same bed but could hardly see one another--
     a soft but prominent ridge of feathers billowed between us. 
     Gawd, but it was hot!
       A bit further on, in a section devoted to hikers' travails 
     with shelter-gnawing porcupines, Nuquist cites a verse from a 
     1989 Margaret MacArthur folk song:

     They saw a lump of a beast all covered with spikes.
     Not what they expected to see on their hike.
     ``What'll we do?'' ``Get the guide book from the pack.
     It says knock him on the nose with the back of the axe.''

       Over a century, a few people have been so important to the 
     Long Trail's evolution that

[[Page S7888]]

     Nuquist might have considered a chapter titled ``Titans of 
     the Trail.'' Instead, she opted for the less obvious and more 
     graceful approach of weaving their stories throughout her 
     chapters as their ages and achievements suggest.
       To cite a few examples, the aforementioned Dean was 
     probably the editor of the very first guidebook. Dr. Louis J. 
     Paris was ``the glue that held the GMC together in the early 
     years.'' Charles P. Cooper, ``the hardest working executive 
     the Club has had,'' spent weeks, in all weather, nailing 
     hand-painted white discs to trees and rail-crossing posts. 
     ``The GMC was his hobby,'' writes Nuquist, but, judging by 
     his actions, it was much more than that.
       The same could easily be said of Nuquist, for whom, over 
     nearly half a century, the Long Trail has meant work, play, 
     adventure, friendships, family and joy. All of which makes 
     reading her new book nearly as much fun as hiking the trail 
     itself.

                          ____________________