Nature Can Be a Fickle Beast –

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Autumn 2021 is slipping away from us as the Earth tilts toward its winter position in the Northern Hemisphere, and the southern breezes give way to the north wind and colder temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Old man winter is not supposed to arrive officially until Dec. 21 for the December solstice, the shortest day of the year, when the South Pole is tilted closest to the Sun and the Sun’s rays are directly overhead.

To make the most of the final days of the season, I was making the rounds in the campground the other day searching for the best fall color to photograph, and out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a barred owl in a tree over by a little creek awash in yellow and orange.

After snapping as many shots as it would endure, the brown-and-white-striped owl with the soulful dark brown eyes, smart face and knowing stare got tired of watching me take its picture, and flew off into the woods. So I found myself taking a little break by the creek.

For a moment as I tried to put the troubles of the world out of my mind, my thoughts turned to a tragic story that happened this summer in a national park out west.

Everyone who pays any attention to the news has heard of Gabby Petito by now, along with her fiancé Brian Laundrie. Their story captured the attention of the nation and the world this summer, even though on social media, this fact was lambasted by many who pointed out, rightly so, that many Native American women go missing every year and the big press and media never pay much attention to their stories.

Even I was taken in by this story, however, and not at all because, as some critics claimed, the story was covered by the media since the attractive couple was white.

In the second year of the global Covid pandemic, when many people had turned to nature and national parks for reprieve — a year when a little movie called “Nomadland” swept best picture honors at the Academy Awards — this young couple was posting pictures and videos on social media about their romantic travel adventures at a time when many other people were thinking about and doing the same thing. The pandemic and movie set off an RV travel boom.

They were already getting a lot of media attention. If all had gone well they would have been famous on Facebook and YouTube.

They were not poor, homeless people who had been forced to renovate a van and go camping for survival. They both had families with resources.

There is a lingering feeling about this story that their tragic deaths could potentially have been prevented, if only something different had been done by somebody, somewhere along the way.

Standing there by that creek, I asked myself why I was still thinking about this story, which was covered by every news outlet in the land? The couple died in September. Two months later it is still on my mind. I never wrote about it this summer. I followed the story and shared a few links on Facebook.

Maybe it’s because the story still has a certain resonance out here in Nomadland East?

None of the stories I’ve reviewed seem adequate to the task of explaining this, because these types of stories always seem to get covered and framed as if they are just another tabloid true crime story of murder and suicide. Most of the stories are incredibly shallow, biased and one-sided, blasting the guy as a monster. His family never got into the media fray. So we got nothing from his side on what actually happened, and that’s too bad.

If authorities had caught him before he died in that Florida swamp and put him on trial, perhaps we would have learned more about what went wrong. We’ll never have that chance now.

The more I think about it, the more I think the story was not just about mental illness and death. They both had reported problems in that department. It seems to be rampant in this generation.

But I see it as a very American story, a story of these difficult times we are all living through, still, as the coronavirus variants continue to sicken and kill. The economic impacts of that are also still being felt. Many people are already being impacted by the effects of global warming and climate change.

Related: The United States is Back: The World’s Last, Best Chance to Save the Planet Must Not Fail!

People are still stressed out. There’s no doubt about it.

In addition to the global health crisis, there’s also a pandemic of mental health issues raging too. Are we doing enough to even begin to deal with this?

I’m not a psychologist, so I won’t try to over analyze this thing. I’m just trying to say that this story, it seems to me, did not have to end this way.

As a matter of disclaimer, many years ago, when I was about their age, I too had a fiancé who was a tad crazy who had taken to screaming at me and hitting at me. Rather than hit back, I threw up my hands and ended it, right then and there. I said, “That’s it. No more. We’re done.”

I loved the girl too. That’s the sad part.

This couple obviously loved each other. You can see it in the photos and videos.

But like I told my fiancé all those years ago — and she later thanked me for it — some relationships come to a point where they simply can’t go on. No matter what they say on the Hallmark cards, love doesn’t necessarily conquer all. Economic, political, educational, family or intellectual differences can weigh too heavily on people to sustain a relationship.

It’s really too bad. But when they got out there in the vast American West all alone living in a small Ford Transit van in a summer of Covid, drought, heat waves and wildfires — chasing their bliss and experiencing nature up close — rather than being soothed by nature in the raw, things must have become too close. Things were said. Things you may not be able to take back.

They disagreed on some things. On what we will never know. They both died before we could find out. They didn’t post the bad moments on social media.

But when the disagreements — whatever they were — grew violent, someone, somewhere should have seen what was coming and called the rest of the trip off. They should have headed for home — alive.

Somewhere between Gabby and Brian and their friends and family, someone should have said, “Enough.”

It’s too bad nature’s healing power was not enough in their case. It really can make a difference.

Perhaps with better direction it could have worked out for them too.

So sad.

What To Say?

I want to say something that could make the difference for humanity. But even if I had 50 million readers in a syndicated newspaper column like Walter Lippmann once had in the era of the mass circulation daily newspaper, running in papers all over the country and the world, it would still not be enough.

With all the information so available at our fingertips through the internet, it’s still too hard for so many people to figure out what’s real and what’s not, to decide what’s the right thing to do when the going gets weird or tough.

Of course I’m human and not totally immune from the Covid crazies at times. But I do feel like I’ve mentally prepared myself for so long to live in this world full of political turmoil and human tragedy. That’s mostly what I’ve written about for so long my regular readers get tired of hearing it, I’m sure.

When one of my best friends and benefactors died in November, 2019, and my 93-year-old mother died in December of that year, and my dog died on Christmas Day, I still managed to move on, get by and find ways to have some fun in what life I have left.

When the Covid crisis hit in March, 2020, it was a scramble there at first, just to find a place away from people to hide out and see what would happen.

But — and I want say more about this but will save it for another day — 2021 somehow feels like it has been one of the best years of my adult life. Maybe it’s partly because it came on the heels of one of the worst, in a way, what we called the Hellscape Year of 2020.

I think it’s in large part due to my advanced planning and the weather in the mid-Atlantic region in the summer and fall, my choice to camp here rather than remaining in the South or heading west. I found places in the mountains in the Eastern United States to escape the worst impacts of climate change, and I remained steadfast in finding a way to enjoy my daily existence. It’s also due to having some really great friends, and I don’t just mean on Facebook.

Winning?

There’s been a lot of talk about “winning” in certain quarters over the past few years, which has mostly become a joke on social media, especially from the left.

There was a time in my life when walking 18-holes on a hot summer day in New Orleans was the very definition of winning, not just the game of golf but the game of life.

We used to say, in a particularly Cajun joke: “What would Beaudreau say?”

I can’t repeat what Beaudreau would say. But if he was 90-years-old and still playing golf, he was winning.

It certainly felt like winning to me for the past seven months sitting comfortably outside in a mountain campground sipping an IPA and keeping up with the news and watching movies online.

If any of the theories of the end of the world ever do come true, you can win the bet that this is where I will be, watching it all go by.

Maybe if people could somehow realize how small we all are, temporary dots the size of a grain of sand in an ever expanding universe full of black holes, some of this out of control human greed, selfishness and hate could dissipate just as the energy in a black hole dissipates over time. A black hole with the power to shape a galaxy like a god — such as the one at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, Sagittarius A.

After understanding this beginning to life — as opposed to the over simplified one in that other book — and then spending just an hour in Snowy Yellowstone, all these little arguments we’re having with each other on a daily basis might just seem like Trivial Pursuit.

If only they could have realized that in time, maybe Gabby and Brian would be alive today.

So parents, quit feeding your children garbage if you want them to live, and I don’t mean just mean junk food. In a world flooded with information, much of it is garbage.

Listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash sing: “Teach the Children Well.”

Fall Color Photos

___

If you support truth in reporting with no paywall, and fearless writing with no popup ads or sponsored content, consider making a contribution today with GoFundMe or Patreon or PayPal.