Secret Vistas: A Spiritual Experience in Shenandoah

A night view of the Milky Way galaxy from Shenandoah National Park: Jane Cappe

By Glynn Wilson –

SHENANDOAH, Va. — It’s a bit early for a year in review story, but for me, it’s been one hell of a year. A humbling year.

I’ve long known that we are all just like tiny grains of sand in the long run of history, here on this special beach of Earth in our little blue and green corner of the Milky Way galaxy and the universe.

But standing outside in a campsite along the Appalachian Trail on a cool, clear Autumn night looking up at the billions of stars in the dark sky here on this mountain in Shenandoah National Park, the reality becomes quite stark and really hits home, if you leave yourself open to it.

I try to focus on the moment and put off plans for the future or remembrances of this scary, trying, stressful, anxious, crazy fucking year, but the way my mind is organized, I just need to run through a quick summary hitting the high and low spots.

Review

After I returned from Washington, D.C. to Mobile, Alabama last October after celebrating my 62rd birthday in the nation’s capital, just like five out of the past six years, my good friend and colleague David Underhill died in November. My 93-year-old mother died in December, and my loyal dog Jefferson died on Christmas Day. I spent last winter in the Conecuh National Forest, thanks to another friend, Mark Hainds. When we moved to Milton, Florida, just north of Pensacola in March, scouting a winter camp for this year, the coronavirus pandemic and national emergency hit and we fled for Lookout Mountain, spending the month of April there in the woods of North Alabama.

On May 1, we relocated to Marion, North Carolina to ride out the summer to see what was going to happen with the pandemic, and managed to get through it by planting an heirloom, organic garden.

In mid-July, however, as the election season ramped up and we spent more time covering politics, the tension in rural Western North Carolina began to rise. We had car trouble in early September, delaying the trip to DC, and for the third time this year, I thought I was a goner.

Once we got the media camper van working and headed out for Virginia, Maryland and DC, however, things began to go well. We had a productive month in and around the nation’s capital, and made it out alive with a victory over Trump.

Skyline Drive and Big Meadows

Along Skyline Drive on Sunday on the way to the Big Meadows Campground, however, the van stalled again. We made it to the campground, but worrying about whether it would make it back to North Carolina weighed heavily on my mind.

I went to bed early, hoping to just sleep through no longer worried about the election, but thoughts of the future began to creep in. I got up several times throughout the night and looked up at the stars in the sky.

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A night view of the Milky Way galaxy from Shenandoah National Park: Jane Cappe

Maybe I heard something on NPR on the drive in, something Joe Biden said, but I began to think about how in the world we would ever make peace with the 71.6 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump?

A Prayer

Instead of embracing the moment as triumph, looking up at those stars and breathing the clean air fed by the miles and acres of trees, I said a prayer.

Now readers know I’m no praying man, but like I said, this has been a humbling year.

Just hoping to make it back to the mountain cabin in North Carolina without having to spend all the money in the budget on our means of transportation, home away from home and MoJo office, I guess I felt like I needed a little help. I had just read a story in the New York Times about all the 300 million exoplanets that could potentially support life, maybe like ours, and figured that if there were any smart folks out there who were capable of telepathy, maybe they would hear my prayer and intervene.

I prayed to Mother Nature and my Cherokee ancestors mostly, but also found myself mentioning Jesus and God and Gia, and simply asked for assistance and maybe a sign.

“If you are done with me and my time is up,” I prayed, “let me die right here tonight in this beautiful place.”

“If, on the other hand, there is still work I can do to be useful to the cause, let me live through this night and make it back to the new address in North Carolina.”

I know it sounds hokey, I said. But if you could just sort of give me some kind of a sign, it might ease my mind a little.

Right after I said it to the stars in the sky at four in the morning, I kid you not, a barred owl over by the campground office hunting mice let out its hunting call, “whoot whoot, hoo hoo, ha whoo,” with a little vibrato in the last note.

Just once. That was it.

Maybe the barred owl is my spirit animal. I don’t know.

It could be that I met this very owl five years ago. It wouldn’t turn around to look at me, but it landed right in my campsite. I had the Nikon nearby and ready.

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A barred own hunting mice in the Big Meadows Campground: Glynn Wilson

I went back to bed and slept past eight, dreaming, wishing, that there might be some way to reach the religious people of America who got confused and fooled by Trump. I still don’t see a way, but maybe time will work in our favor and we won’t have to deal with such a close brush with fascism here ever again.

The good news is I made it back to the mountain cabin without another hitch. The final 30 miles through the Cherokee Wildlife area and Mountain City, Tennessee, and then the final 10 on curvy mountain roads in the dark without the benefit of GPS, was a bit harry. But here we are, with important work to do.

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