One of the more somber aspects of our staycation in the Poconos occurred on our search for Tanners Falls. It brought to mind a story by Edgar Allan Poe. Here’s why: Tanners Falls is not well signposted. This is quite a rural area. We were following our GPS when the signal died right after she said “arrived.” The problem was there were no signs and although we tried a couple of tick-trails that ended up at a stream, nothing like a cataract was anywhere near. Finally we realized that a tiny sign reading “Tanners Falls” was posted on a “Road Closed” barricade. Since to road was actually open to the Falls, my wife brought the car but I wanted the exercise and went by foot. Walking along the way I found a roadside shrine and noted that in addition to the name Laura Lynne Ronning was a small plaque stating “Murdered July 27, 1991.” Now, there was no signal out here, and I was alone on the road. And I had no desire to bring my family down so I kept it to myself.
At the hotel (with wifi) I learned that Laura Ronning’s murder was never solved. She was a counselor at a nearby camp walking to the waterfall on her day off when she was raped and shot and thrown into the woods. The only suspect was a mentally unstable man (now since deceased) and the evidence was all circumstantial. He was, unlike some known criminals of high profile, found not guilty. The Ronning family moved out of the state, not wanting to be where someone could literally get away with murdering an innocent young woman. This is where Poe came in. His “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” is the first detective fiction based on a true case—Poe was often, figuratively, first on the scene. The murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers, whose body was found in the Hudson, was never solved. Poe tried his hand at the by then famous unsolved case.
The murder of a young woman was a tragedy that Poe felt deeply, I suspect. I took some academic flak for including Poe’s observation that the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetic theme in Nightmares with the Bible. I realize this is a masculinist thing to write, but the fact is that some men feel very protective of women. I know there’s a psychological name for this, but it isn’t chauvinism. It is a sense of sadness, for what Goethe tried to express by writing “Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.” On staycations I try to look for literary angles, even when they are, from time to time, sad.
