Secret Vistas: Dedicated to the Memory of Spider Martin

by Glynn Wilson

The first time I rode the rocky, rolling white water of the Locust Fork River with Spider Martin, I knew it would be more than your average adventure. In stark contrast with today’s drought in the Southeast, near record levels of rainfall in 2002 swelled the narrow banks to the top of the black rocks smoothed over by the relentless forces of time.

Glynn Wilson

Spider Martin on the rocks in 2002

Then, anyone who has ever known Spider Martin knows life around him was, well, never dull.

The record rainfall would continue into 2003 and allow for other explorations of the river. But now that he is gone, they all merge in my mind into one.

When I launched this Website in early 2005, in part inspired by conversations with Spider, I also knew it would be a similar adventure even though he would not be around to share it.

To try to understand you have to picture in your head the most wide-open form of freedom possible in the imagination of a writer and a photographer in America then, sitting at the computer or careening down a fast river. In a world dominated by the professional, corporate press, and in this post 9/11, PR, police state, I know, this is hard to imagine.

But just picture Spider Martin in 2002 in the back of a green 17-foot Kevlar canoe in the lazy water by the Swann Joy Covered Bridge north of Birmingham in Blount County. I’m in the front. In the middle, there are two coolers. One is full of food. The other is stuffed with ice and beer, and not just any beer. Something golden brown.

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