“Better is the poor man walking in his simplicity, than the rich in crooked ways.”
– Solomon, Proverbs

Secret Vistas – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

CAMP DAVID, Md. — A serene fog hangs thick in the trees here on Thursday morning, muting the Autumn colors and making the forest seem still and quiet. The weather is near perfect for fall here, with highs in the 70s and lows around 60, campfire weather, and no wind to speak of to knock the leaves off the trees, yet. Even the chipmunks stopped scurrying around so fast from nut hole to nest hole, one pausing on a rock just long enough for me to snap a picture.

The deer hunters arrived late Wednesday afternoon in the Cunningham Falls State Park campground, not wearing masks and sitting by their fires next to each other less than six feet apart, talking, laughing and drinking their cheap beer and whiskey as if nothing was wrong in the world, never mind that the consumption of alcohol is technically not allowed here. The good news is the campsites are big and far apart. They are all gone for now anyway, somewhere off in the woods trying to rid the forest of what’s left of the wildlife for sport.

On this trip I’ve not seen one bear, only a few deer, and not one raccoon, opossum, red fox or skunk, and not many birds or butterflies, except a pair of Carolina wrens that seem to like hanging around under the media camper van. They are too quick for pictures. There aren’t many fish left in the streams around here anymore either, except when the fish and wildlife agencies stock them. Rachel Carson would be appalled at the state of nature in Trump’s America, 2020.

As summer fades into fall, the days grow shorter and there’s less sunlight, a signal for the leaves to stop producing chlorophyll in their annual preparation for winter. Summer greens fade to yellow, orange, red and purple before the brown takes over for the cold months.

As a writer, photographer, journalist and traveling and camping tourist, I am drawn to these scenes like millions of other human beings, keen to my own sense of biophilia, although most of them these days fail to even stop long enough to get out of their cars, much less take the time to sleep in the woods and really get a feel for these places.

Trying to capture one of nature’s most artistic seasonal displays often makes me feel exiguous. Maybe my equipment is not good enough, or perhaps my eye is ill-equipped to render such beauty into a digital form to show others. Like many experiences in dealing with nature — trying to ride big waves, skee rough waters and slopes, climb tall mountains and jagged rocks — I find the practice of trying to photograph fall color a humbling experience. Nothing I can produce will ever match the actual magnificence of the scene.

Nature is like a god; like a ghost, it’s hard to get a photograph that truly captures the beauty.

Then again I’ve never claimed to be the world’s greatest photographer. It just so happens because of the new economy of the web that I am, in a way, forced to go about illustrating my own stories. I do enjoy it, but I could be just as happy having another photographer along on the camping trips for the company, better equipment and a more experienced eye.

Like a good man in American literature, however, it seems difficult to find a good photographer to come along for the ride. Many photographers are out of business, thanks mostly to the quality of cell phone cameras, which have turned every soccer mom into a photographer.

Facebook has turned every citizen into a journalist of sorts too, making this entire profession almost obsolete. There’s not much money to be made in journalism anymore, unless you are the owners of the New York Times and Washington Post.

Although a reporter for a little newspaper in North Alabama recently claimed that his publisher was turning a profit from local advertising and subscriptions, primarily by not paying many reporters to produce much in the way of news and certainly not by challenging the conservative status quo.

A Democrat in North Carolina recently told me that the little newspapers there have been warned by local businesses owned by Republicans that if they so much as print a point of view critical of President Donald Trump and sympathetic to a liberal Democrat, they would pull all their advertising support in a heart beat.

At least we don’t have to worry about that on the web, where we have total freedom to report, write and photograph whatever we consider to be important, political pressure be damned.

Maybe one day soon there will be more money in it, when most of the newspapers go the way of the Dodo bird. But for now, as long as we get enough advertising support and contributions in lieu of a subscription fee to pay for web hosting and the expenses of travel, we will keep telling it like it is and trying to perfect this new press online.

People tell me all the time, even just yesterday right here in the campground, that they would still rather read something in print than on a computer screen. But if that is the case, why are most newspapers so devoid of intellectual content? And why are books not selling anymore?

I have a book for sale that explains why the press is so critical for the continuation of democracy. You don’t have to read it on a computer. You can order the paperback edition at Amazon.com.

Jump On The Bus: Make Democracy Work Again

Alas, I am a child of the 20th century and made for print journalism, not celebrity reality television. I refuse to constantly take selfies of myself or aim a video camera at myself in the narcissistic enterprise of our time. I will continue to promote an altruistic point of view and eschew greed, selfishness and corruption, even if that means I remain a poor man.

Like one good book says, in more ways than one:

“A poor man walking in truth is better than a rich liar.”

“Better the poor whose walk is blameless than the rich whose ways are perverse.”

“Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse, double in ways, though he be rich.”

But even the preacher usually gets a love offering, often for cowing to the political line and telling a false story.

Where is the truth, justice and American way in that?

More Photos

(I’ll be damned if I will post these and give them to Facebook. If people can’t click on the link and read and see it here, too bad. That will have to be their loss.)