Thomas Moran painted big pictures of special landscapes and helped promote the idea of setting aside national parks with the American public: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — There was a time in American history when artists, writers and photographers were held in such high esteem that the best of the best were recruited by the federal government to showcase some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country to help convince the mass public to get behind setting aside and protecting special places like Yosemite Valley, Yellowstone, the Smokies and Shenandoah.

In these crazy times when so many people have been convinced to hate the government, the press and media and the very idea of protecting the natural environment, when cable news talking heads, podcasters, social media memes and silly videos on TikTok have captured public time and attention to the point of changing national priorities, such things are not as valued anymore.

In the not too distant future, maybe tomorrow, the bots will be taking over, if they haven’t already, so the images you see will be deep fakes, copied from the work of real photographers and artists. And the stories you read will be written by chat bots, copied from the real reporters and writers who spent their lives and careers actually going to places to see and learn about them.

So consider me a throwback to the early 21st century and the late 20th century. To the point of still being a fan of the black and white photographs of Ansel Adams, the giant landscapes of the American West by Thomas Moran, the writings of John Muir and Henry David Thoreau.

The other day when I was downtown to obtain a government ID at the Department of the Interior building, I just had to marvel at the Ansel Adams photographs in the main hall, and visit and tour the Interior Museum.

In an exhibit ironically called “The Big Picture,” a couple of Moran’s panoramic masterpieces are on display, The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872) and The Chasm of the Colorado (1873–1874), which returned to the Interior Museum in 2020 for the first time in more than two decades.

Thomas Moran’s Grand Canyon of Yellowstone: Glynn Wilson

“In capturing the natural beauty of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, Moran’s monumental canvases shaped many people’s impressions of the American West in the 19th century and forever framed the discourse on public lands,” the agency says.

Ansel Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984), an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West, was a life-long advocate for environmental conservation, and his photographic practice was deeply entwined with this advocacy. At age 14, he was given his first camera during his first visit to Yosemite National Park. He developed his early photographic work as a member of the Sierra Club. He was later contracted with the Department of the Interior to make photographs of national parks. For his work and his persistent advocacy, which helped expand the National Park system, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

The Tetons and the Snake River (1942) by Ansel Adams: Photographed by Glynn Wilson

In these crazy times I do not expect similar accolades, even though I’ve devoted much of my life and career as a writer and photographer to the very same causes to continue the struggle for the hearts and minds of the people. But after spending much of the past 10 years finding lesser known parks in the East to photograph and write about, the National Park Service did recently honor me with an award for 1,000 hours of volunteer service. Over the years I found at least a few park rangers to indulge me who believed in this mission and supported the rights of a free press in this country.

Now distracted by other priorities like basic staffing and maintenance issues, and seemingly satisfied by any cell phone picture on Facebook to go through the motions of promoting parks, I find myself and my skills undervalued in the East. So it is time to head west, to see, photograph and write about some of those most special places in this country and on Earth. They say the further you get from D.C., the easier it gets and the more people appreciate beautiful things.

This has been my plan all along anyway. I wanted to spend time in my life in the nation’s capital to learn all about it, to write about it from inside the Beltway, to visit all the famous monuments and museums, and to learn my way around here so I can write about it intelligently no matter where I end up.

Mission Accomplished

Not so much unlike Edward Abbey, who spent time working for the National Forest Service in the Department of Agriculture and wrote a memoir called Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness, I am continuing in this tradition in my own way.

“This is not primarily a book about the desert,” Abbey wrote in his introduction. “In recording my impressions of the natural scene I have striven above all for accuracy, since I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact.

“But the desert is a vast world, an oceanic world, as deep in its way and complex and various as the sea,” he wrote. “Language makes a mighty loose net with which to go fishing for simple facts, when facts are infinite. If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument. What I have tried to do then is something a bit different. Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets, I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as medium than as material. Not imitation but evocation has been the goal.”

No matter where I end up from here on out, I will long treasure my time here and remember it often, even if I’m 3,000 miles away.

Related: Contemplating the Future of Democracy on a Spring Day in Washington

More Big Pictures

Detail of cactus “Saguaros, Saguro National Monument,” Arizona. (Vertical Orientation); From the series Ansel Adams Photographs of National Parks and Monuments, compiled 1941 – 1942, documenting the period ca. 1933 – 1942: Photographed by Glynn Wilson

By Ansel Adams: Photographed by Glynn Wilson

Entrance to the Interior Museum: Glynn Wilson

Photographed by Glynn Wilson

Photographed by Glynn Wilson

Photographed by Glynn Wilson

Photographed by Glynn Wilson

William Henry Jackson was another photographer, painter and explorer famous for his images of the American West: Glynn Wilson

Glynn Wilson in Volunteer Camp Host garb at Artist Point in Yellowstone National Park: Walter Simon

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