A view of the sunset over the babbling brook by campsite 30 in the Owens Creek Campground, a power spot: Glynn Wilson

Secret Vistas –
By Glynn Wilson –

CATOCTIN MOUNTAINS, Md. – This column has been several days in the planning, but I needed to wait until after the ABC presidential debate to finalize it. That’s done, and what a great performance by Vice President Kamala Harris and a relief for all of us in this country who are sick and tired of Donald F__ing Trump and fear any chance that he may find a way to get enough votes to return to power in the White House.

I think he’s about done now. Thank Dog

Kamala Harris Stood Up to Trump and Bested Him in the ABC Debate

I just noticed that this is also the anniversary of 9/11/2001, so let us not forget.

Now to the issue and story at hand. If you have followed me for awhile on this news website, now in our 10th year in business and going on the 20th year of my journey in independent web publishing, without corporate influence or editors in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Birmingham or New Orleans telling us what to write about and how to write about it – or even if you are a new reader who recently found us on social media – you may have picked up on the fact that I’m not a religious person.

While I was raised in a Southern Baptist home and environment in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, I escaped that dogma a long, long time ago and now basically side with the atheists in any debate about the existence of a god or supernatural deity.

But that does not mean I don’t have a spiritual side. I don’t talk about it much, probably because I figure it sounds hokey or corny.

Much like the Deists among the original founding fathers of this divided United States of America, I have long found a peace and even a spirituality in special places in nature, especially mountain forests and protected national parks. I used to love beaches, and lived on one in Gulf Shores, Alabama for that first few years back in the 1980s when I had the opportunity to cover the environment as a beat. This connection with nature, what E.O. Wilson called “biophilia,” is one of the reasons I agreed to specialize in environmental reporting, writing and journalism back when an opportunity bus pulled up to the station

Jump On the Bus: Make Democracy Work Again

After the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska in the spring of 1989, I was offered a chance to cover the environment as a specialty beat for a chain of newspapers on the Gulf Coast. That began a long journey into learning about what the founders called “nature’s laws.” I could go off into a long, academic rant here with lots of links to try to prove my point. But I’m not going to take the time to do that today. It’s obvious to me that many of those who regularly read the stories and columns on this website already understand that, and stand with me in this point of view.

So let me just tell a little story about something that just happened to me, and let you in on what is about to no longer be a secret. My plan for many years that began as a semi-retirement quest to spend time in and around the nation’s capital in a Roadtrek camper van remodeled as a media van has involved a longer term plan to eventually head out west in the next phase of my semi-retirement journey.

My time was up in a national park campground just north of Washington back in June, where I was honored with an award by the National Park Service for 1,000 hours of volunteer service. For the past couple of months, as you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been camping in federal and state parks about an hour north of D.C., or sometimes in Shenandoah in Virginia.

Since I’m about to leave here soon, I want to reveal the plans and tell you a story about what just happened.

For the past year or so, I’ve actually suffered a minor form of what psychologists call “transitional anxiety.” I became burned out on covering news, and was not looking forward to covering the Bidden-Trump rematch election. I also suffered from some burnout from living in a camper van and dealing with the public as a volunteer campground host last winter, in fact, but soldiered on until I could figure out a plan for what to do and where to go next. I even sought psychological counseling for this anxiety, and went through a year of therapy dealing with it.

There was also a post-Covid pandemic recovery element in this, retraining my brain to socialize with other people without suffering the fear of getting sick and dying by going out to watch live music or simply shaking someone’s hand.

But in the end, my therapist and I basically concluded that I had no deep-seated or chemical-related psychological problems and did not suffer from any childhood-based Freudian depression issues. I just needed to concentrate like I have always done for my entire adult life and career and figure out what it is I wanted and needed to do, where I wanted and needed to go, then then do the planning to make it happen.

So that’s what I’ve been engaged in for the past year. Things are now coming together, and there is a really cool place and a spiritual experience I want to tell you about. Some of you may have noticed my picture and post about this on my personal Facebook page.

In all my explorations of national and state parks and campgrounds in and around Washington, two years ago I had an opportunity to serve as a camp host in a stunningly beautiful place in a forest in the mountains in Maryland called Owens Creek Campground. It’s located in the Catoctin Mountain (National) Park, a unit of the National Park Service as they describe it, in the same park and forest as the presidential retreat of Camp David. That’s not something they like to talk about much, the park service rangers and law enforcement rangers that is, but anyone can figure it out on an Apple or Google GPS map.

It’s not a large campground, with only 50 sites, but the woods are stunning and it’s a dark and quiet place much of the time. Except when the weekend warriors find it and bring their unruly kids and pets who are not yet educated in the spiritual nature of national parks and how to behave in them. Some will learn with time, just like I did. Others, well they may become fascist Trump supporters, like some of the cops who patrol in this area. Some Republicans like nature too. Whether they want to admit it or not, it’s in our genes. Biophilia.

One of the campsites is sort of a well guarded secret, just like the location of Camp David. It’s not totally a secret. The site is actually hard to get. Site number 30 is right along the creek, where the tent pad is so close to the water falling over rocks that you can nod off to sleep to the soothing sound of the babbling brook.

Another view of campsite 30 in the Owens Creek Campground in Catoctin Mountain National Park: Glynn Wilson

I’ve never before been able to reserve the site myself, until recently. I figured after the Labor Day weekend there might be a good chance, before all the campers show up for the fall leaf color season coming up in October. Sure enough, last weekend I was able to lock in site 30 for two nights on Friday and Saturday.

Keep in mind that I was still not sure whether I was heading west in the next few days or weeks, or whether a new plan that came up as a possibility might take my path back to the South through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama back to where I came from, and over to Atlanta, Georgia to potentially cover the controversy that could upend the election in November.

A long lost cousin found me on Facebook through the Ancestry dot com website, and he was in possession of a long lost part of my own family history, the Love family from St. Clair County, Alabama where my dad was from.

I wrote about that recently, after Donald Trump and his campaign staff got into a fight with officials at Arlington National Cemetery. You can read about my cousin and our two uncles who died on the island of Okinawa in the final months of World War II here.

ELECTION 2024: Fighting to Save Democracy One More Time

When he approached me, I thought maybe it could work, going back to Alabama one more time, visiting old relatives and cemeteries, and at the same time, I could go to Atlanta and get the dateline just in case this election comes down to Georgia, where the corrupt Republican election commission is trying to mess with the system to make it possible to hold things up if Trump does not win there.

We ran two stories about that, one from ProPublica, and one I did on the latest polls and Electoral College scenarios.

Election Deniers Secretly Pushed Rule That Would Make It Easier to Delay Certification of Georgia’s Election Results

Two Months to Go Until Nov. 5: Will American Democracy Survive?

So I was still undecided on which direction I would go and when. It has now been decided, and here is the cool spiritual experience I just had about it. You can call me crazy, but I swear I’m not making this up.

I had long visited that creek by the special site on many occasions, and found it to be what the Cherokee or other native Americans would have called a power spot, where the movement of water over rocks generates electrolytes. These kind of places are considered sacred ground by the natives, used as a spiritual place to communicate with their ancestors and make decisions about life directions, even war and peace.

I still believe that I have some Cherokee genes, even though so far I’ve not been able to prove it. But I felt the spiritual power there, so I spent a long time sitting quietly in that spot and praying in my own way, conferring with Mother Earth, the Greek Goddess Gaia and the spirits of my ancestors by this babbling brook seeking guidance on the new direction this journey or quest may take.

Should I go South again to Fulton County, Georgia for the election fight to come there? Or on to Arkansas and the diamond 💎 path out west? That is in reference to a diamond mine in Arkansas where they are still finding diamonds on occasion, where there is also a campground and the public is allowed to search for the gemstones there.

“Who needs my help?” I asked. “Who will pay for it?”

“Last chance on Sunday,” I said in my Facebook comments. “Show me a sign or make my phone ring ⛰️🏕️🌎🤠🇺🇸”

When I made this comment, there was a pileated woodpecker calling in a tree to my left, sounding like some jungle bird. I looked up the direction I was facing on the compass app on my iPhone and it was in between south to my left and west to my right. I took a screen shot on the phone to prove it.

iPhone Screenshot

The woodpecker seemed to indicate south. Then it stopped and flew away.

As I sat here waiting until checkout time at noon, letting the smoke take effect and sipping the last of the iced tea, I spotted something moving in the trees across the creek. A doe and a fawn came down the hill toward the creek and turned to their left, to my right, heading west.

“I guess that’s it then,” I said.

I had already received a heads up from my friend and colleague in Arkansas, Journalism Professor Ron Sitton at Arkansas State, tipping me off about an interesting Congressional campaign there between a Black Democrat and an entrenched MAGA Republican incumbent. He had been contacted by the campaign staff looking for interns to help with media and social media. He gave them my number.

After some negotiations, they have now agreed to become a sponsor and advertiser with the New American Journal to provide the budget for me to go there to cover that campaign through the election. So my spiritual guidance seems to have been accurate. My next story will be about what’s going on with that campaign. Stay tuned…

More Recent Photos from Other Spots

Another view of campsite 30 in the Owens Creek Campground, Catoctin Mountain (National) Park: Glynn Wilson

Another view of Owens Creek on the bridge at the entrance to the campground in Catoctin Mountain (National) Park: Glynn Wilson

THE VEGETATION in the Catoctin Mountains in Maryland is much like it is in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. I’m no botanist but it’s the vegetation you see all along the blue ridges of the Appalachian Mountain Range. This is Sweet Joe-pie weed or trumpet weed: Glynn Wilson

___
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.