The view from here out the sunroof window: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The rain has stopped and the sun is coming out from behind the clouds as we set up in the nation’s capital for the first time since November, when it was a celebration by the campfire as Joe Biden was declared the winner in the 2020 presidential election.

It’s Official: Trump is A Loser – Biden is President-Elect

For the past five months, my own Nomadland journey had me hiding out in a big, old house in Knoxville, Tennessee, staying safe from the coronavirus and those insurrectionists who would like to kill me simply because I’m an American journalist who wrote bad things about their perceived savior, Donald Trump.

It’s a sad state of affairs when telling the truth online — as opposed to spreading misinformation and falsehoods — forces a writer to protect the location of where he lives and works. It goes against everything about sharing on social media, especially Facebook, which knows where we all are whether we like it or not.

Google Chrome thinks I’m in Georgia, and Apple’s Safari thinks I’m in Iowa. But Facebook knows.

We set out last Sunday from Knoxville and made it to a private campground for the night in the shadow of the Virginia mountains known as Shenandoah.

On Monday, we set up camp in the Big Meadows campground in Shenandoah National Park and took a break off the grid for the most part, breathing in the cool, relatively clean mountain air and feeling free again from the confines of a big, old house in a noisy city.

Over the course of the winter, a lot of work got done on the media camper van, a 1999 Roadtrek now with 196,000 miles: A new water pump, a new main computer, new tires and a full propane tank after checking it for leaks.

But I failed to check the water system, and it turned out that a water line valve behind the flush toilet broke off sometime over the freezing winter, so I decided to drive to an RV shop in Winchester, Virginia, for a replacement part. As if the hellscape year of 2020 was not “end times” weird enough, Siri guided me on an alleged shortcut through the George Washington National Forest and I ended up driving through a blinding hail storm on a windy mountain road. I don’t know if climate change caused the freak storm or not, but once again, we survived it and made it back to the campground for three more nights of solitude.

Sunset on the Appalachian Trail: Glynn Wilson

On the third day, I found out a certain site was opening up on the edge of the cliff right by the Appalachian Trail, the first site I ever picked in this campground seven years ago. The scene from there is in my book. Only this time, there were 1-3 bars showing up on the AT&T cell phone connection, so it wasn’t totally off the grid. It was never strong enough to use the iPhone hotspot on the laptop, but the previous campers claimed the kids did online school and dad did Zoom work meetings from the site. Sorry but I never reveal my select site numbers, except to really close personal friends.

A view of the Virginia mountains from my favorite campsite in the Big Meadows Campground in Shenandoah National Park: Glynn Wilson

While there I noticed a nice young couple in the same loop who were traveling around in a white van they had fixed up to travel around the country from California to Maine and back for six months, so I conducted a video interview with them. I’m working on a YouTube video from this leg of the trip.

Mostly I just sat by the fire and enjoyed the views, but I will be back in Shenandoah in a couple of weeks and plan to do some hiking while my friend here rides his new bike on Skyline Drive (more photos later).

There’s plenty of news to cover from here, mostly about the new Biden administration, but the biggest story on public radio is about the metro area getting ready for billions of cicadas to emerge in the eastern United States after 17 years underground. I was here in 2004 the last time this phenomenon occurred, living in an apartment in Alexandria, Virginia.

But the stories about Brood X are not just about the bugs and how they bug people. There will be story after story about all the events in life and the country over the past 17 years, as if the bugs cared. The main thing I remember about the time was not just the deafening sound of the bugs for weeks. The air was so thick with cicada sperm that at times it hung in the air like a fog, smelled like sperm, and literally caused asthma attacks. I promise I’m not making this up.

We will see what happens this year. There are holes opening up in the ground all around where the van is parked, although the cool weather is keeping them underground for a little while longer. All hell will break loose soon, though, so get ready for cicada humor in the news. We will document the event with photos, videos and a description of the science behind it all.

See you soon, from somewhere out on the trail. I’ll be in a campground in the same woods as Camp David later this week near a waterfall.

Sunset on the Appalachian Trail: Glynn Wilson

Stay safe out there. COVID is still mutating and spreading. If you’ve not already done so, please get your vaccine shots. It’s important. So far 150.4 million people in the U.S. have been vaccinated, covering 56.3 percent of the eligible population, 16 and older, but only 45.3 percent of the total population. To reach herd immunity, we need the percentage to surpass 70 percent.