Unplugging From the Trump Noise Machine: The river restoreth my soul

One of many reasons to end the Trump presidency: To eliminate all the noise he makes and causes others to make about him. Millions of us are sick of the daily Trump show, sick of the hyper-tweeting, the blather, the idiotic statements and fraudulent assertions. It’s practically constant. And while we’re used to American presidents being often in the news, Trump is toddler-like in his demand for attention and his habit of making noise.

So, more than ever, it’s important to unplug and visit an earthly “spirit-home,” that quiet place where you go now and then to reconnect with nature and to free yourself of the overwhelming world. You have such a place, right? It could be a beach, a river, a pasture, a trail, a boulder, any place that gives you a profound connection to all the beautiful life that goes on — in woods, water and air — when we’re otherwise too busy to be there.

Right now, just a few weeks before the presidential election, only my job forces me to stay connected to the national noise machine. But when it gets to be too much — when I feel overloaded with news and the ensuing commentary — I make a plan to get away: I hike and do some fishing and, if I’m lucky, I won’t hear anything but a river riffle, a squawking blue jay or maybe the plucky rise of a trout taking a grasshopper off the surface of my home waters, the Gunpowder River.

I bring my phone, but only for photographs. Sometimes I bring a camera so that I avoid the phone altogether. 

For several long minutes, building up to an hour or two before you know it, I’m immersed in my spirit-home, wading in holy waters, feeling the cold against my waders. I hold my fly rod in my left hand, and drop my right into the clear water of the Gunpowder and I feel some magical charge in my fingertips. It restoreth my soul.