When I was in Cambridge during one of the several storms of the millenium the Boston area had this year, I spent a lot of time walking around documenting.

Shoveled snowpiles taller then most people; cars under feet of snow; the infinite variety of weird human response to snow; and an entire Pantone deck of different colors of slush. I took pictures of snowbanks and falling snow, videotaped streetlight snow, recorded the muffled sounds of snowy streets.

And when from a public street I pointed my camera at a little girl playing in the snow, her mother barked at me: "Please stop taking pictures of my daughter!"

So naturally I stopped that, though I wanted to scream at her. Given that we stood in a public space -- stores, schools, churches, intersections all nearby -- I'd be willing to bet you the three of us were under surveillance by at least two security cameras every second we stood outside. Her cell phone calls were probably monitored by local and regional -- and were certainly monitored by national -- agencies. She probably hasn't had an email that didn't run through a random bad-guy filter for a decade or more. And despite all that she just goes about her business, as we all do.

But me she could see taking a picture of her daughter, so she attacked.

Now, as a working journalist I think about this stuff, and it's all best clarified in this sentence, from a New York Times blog in 2012.

You may draw your own conclusion, but a new law recently passed by the state of Alabama took the insane belief that reasonably taking someone's picture in public is some sort of violation of a vaguely understood right of theirs and tried to codify it into law, which would have destroyed not just news photography but all public photography. Fortunately  the governor vetoed the law before further mischief occurred.

All of which brings me back to the post I put up a bit ago about land and rights, in which I complained about how affronted some people get when you step on their land. This generated some wonderful responses that I wanted to share with you.

First, here's a piece from Ellen O'Brien, a Facebook friend-of-a-friend who commented on my friend's share of the piece. At my request Ellen tidied up her comments for use here: 

"Your column about walking the Lawson Trek, and your surprise at the responses of some of your readers, brought back some good memories of my own salad days, when I was a young reporter for the Atlantic City Press, and spent many weekends canoeing with my then-boyfriend on the West Branch of the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. We did exactly what you did, only we did it by river. We canoed until we were tired, or it was getting late, and then disembarked and pitched camp on land that was sometimes state-owned, but probably just as often, not. Once or twice, as I recall, we even used the private-property postings as kindling.

"We pitched camp and (he) built a campfire from blown-down sticks and we sat until dark in the privacy of the river bank until it was time to bed down. And we were up and on our way not terribly long after daybreak.
Good days. A city girl, I learned to like all of it, and sometimes still miss the feel of a canoe moving through the water.

"That was a different time, and the country was filled with movement of all kinds -- political, social and personal -- and most our peers would then have snickered at the kind of possessive outrage that some of our peers now seem to wallow in. Enough said. "

Is that not lovely? I also heard from my friend Fritz, who owns property on a lake used by fishermen, mostly without permission. "As to property rights, to me, it's about liability. Maybe you won't litter or your campfire set the woods ablaze but the property owner will bear the responsibility if you do. Many of us feel it's easiest, especially after prior abuses, to just say no." Prior abuses have included incidents like this: 

"One day, arriving at my lakeside estate, the entrance was blocked by an unknown car.  I ambled over to where the folks were fishing, identified myself and explained that guests were expected within the hour and they would have to leave for now but were welcome to return whenever I wasn't around. Righteously indignant, they told me they had been fishing there since the lake was built and that they had permission from the owner to do so. I explained that, having prior knowledge that the lake was to be built, I'd purchased and had been paying taxes on the land since before it was a lake and asked who had mistakenly granted them access to my property. It ends up that my next door neighbor, evidently not wanting to allow the use of his land, had told these folks to fish on my side of the inlet. Later that summer, on my next trip there, I had to clean up a case of beer cans and a bag of trash from their fishing spot."

Can I get in line behind the property owners to help kick these knuckleheads off their property? But in the end Fritzy comes down on the side of decency and goodness: "I began paying taxes on that place in 1977 and have the thickened skin that comes from dealing with several such abuses since then. Most folks appear to believe that leaving a mess is required to prove their presence. A fisherman once told me that he didn't litter every chance he got. He can use my land any time he wants."

Working hard on being like that fisherman, I begin all interactions with land giving its owners the benefit of the doubt: I assume they're like Fritz. If I'm wrong, I'll just apologize and be on my way. 

Now, one more rule to think about, since I'm on the topic. I made the image above using SketchGuru, a free app that turns photos into pencil sketches. I did it because I'm thinking of ways to use the images I take in a black-and-white context (like ordinary nonfiction book pages, which make photographs looks like spilled coffee). But now, raising the questions about the rules of nonfiction discussed hither and yon, is it still nonfiction? What about my Instagram feed? Virtually every image I share on my journey is cropped, filtered, edited; I make the picture look as much like what it felt like to be there as I could. That is, I do with the pictures what I do with the text: I try to make the picture express as honestly as possible the experience, though I obviously and admittedly emphasize certain aspects of my perceptions. 

Here are two images; on the left the original, on the right the gussied up one that went to Instagram. Are they both nonfiction? I think so -- what do you think?  

One of my undertakings on the Lawson Trek as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT is to think about more than just about Lawson and the scientific and cultural observations he made. I'm also trying out current journalistic tools and seeing how they compare to Lawson's. I'm a science journalism fellow, not just a science fellow.

That is, Lawson made a trip in 1700-1701 and told the world about when next he could -- in a book in 1709, which was a perfectly reasonable turnaround at the time. My time scale is somewhat less casual, and part of my work is to learn to use the astonishing tools that allow me to remain constantly constant. 

I built this website to learn how to build a website. I'm going along on my trip and keeping anybody who's interested apprised moment by moment on an Instagram feed that appears on the Lawson Trek homepage; on Tweets and Facebook posts (I chose Instagram because it plays well with others; I thought I'd be live-Tweeting, but Instagram transfers to Twitter way better than Twitter transfers to anything else -- lesson learned). I have shared information from a canoe in the Intracoastal Waterway, updated my status from a barrier island during a wicked storm, transferred pictures in the field from my GoPro to my phone to my blog, taken pictures with special iPhone lenses, and used solar power to recharge all my devices. It's been a hoot, and I'll have things to tell you about all that eventually.

That is, I am practicing the journalism of my time just as Lawson told stories in a way that was appropriate for his. A good bit of what he wrote had rather a chamber of commerce feel to it -- he was clearly encouraging people to come live in Carolina -- so you have to recognize this, as people certainly would have then. But even Lawson, when he told you stories he had heard secondhand, let you know that.

So I'm kind of heartbroken that given current events I have to make a point of this, but I will: everything I tell you on this site is as true as I can make it. If somebody just tells me something, I'll tell you that, and who told it to me. If I see something myself, I'll tell you that too. I'll even shoot pictures and video when I can. If I do research I'll either link to a source or tell you the source; and if I don't, and you come looking for it, I'll supply it.

The reason I even bring it up is because on the trek's first segment (summarized just this week on the Scientific American Blog Network!) something interesting happened. I was making my way hither and yon, and a reporter I had contacted at the Charleston Post and Courier named Bo Peterson gave a call to Nature Adventure Outfitters, which was functioning as my base camp and support structure during that segment. He wanted to do a story and wanted to meet me somewhere where he and a shooter could observe me in the canoe and getting out of the water. So I got a call  (on my cell phone, either out in the water or at camp the night before, I can't remember) and we organized a way for him to meet me and my current guide at a stop I planned to make, at the Sewee Shell Ring. 

Which meant that, just about the time Bo, his shooter, and a few other Lawson Trek friends expected us, we came paddling up a little tidal creek towards the boardwalk at the shell mound. Bo and his shooter had expected me to have a canoe paddle, but I was using a kayak paddle (rather easier, when you're canoeing alone, than switching sides every stroke or three). One of them said something about it, and one of the people with Nature Adventure Outfitters said she could call me and get me to pick up the canoe paddle if they liked. Bo and the shooter were appropriately horrified. They're telling the story of what happens, not making it happen. Remember the scene in "Broadcast News" where Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks fight about whether the soldier they're filming was going to put his boot on whether they filmed him or not? Sounds like it was like that.

I love professional journalists.

I mention that only as background. What I really want to tell you is that after we pulled up, and after a good hour or so of chatting, conversation, lunch, and good fellowship that led to Bo's excellent story, I went to clamber aboard the canoe and head out. 

Then I remembered -- I wasn't sure I had adequately sung the praises of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship, which I wanted to do to be both polite and very accurate. I wouldn't be on this project without its help, so I want MIT and the Fellowship program to be very happy with what they see. Anyhow, I asked Bo to make sure he remembered to mention that and he tossed his head. "That goes without saying," he said. "They're the funding organization; of course I'll mention them." And of course he did.

I tell you this because for the next month I told that story: "This is what it's like when you deal with a pro," I said. "He is accurate and responsible, and he makes sure to include elements of the story that I forget or don't think are important." He's a trained, experienced journalist and he knows that besides the knucklehead in the canoe with the crazy journey, the story involves why, and how, and who pays for it, and all that stuff. He's listening to my story, but he's making sure he tells the story, as he understands it. I was thrilled and kept telling people how happy I was to have dealt with Bo -- this is dealing with a pro, and I kept making the comparison to, say, some blogger (like me!) who may or may not be trained and may not think of all the stuff trained journalists have been taught to think of. I happen to have spent years in newsrooms, so I think I'm trained. I read plenty by bloggers who spent years in newsrooms and are trained and plenty by bloggers I don't think did, and who I don't think are. So I was real happy with Bo.

Then came this week, and the Rolling Stone debacle, when a trusted magazine ran an extremely high-profile article about campus rape, making extremely inflammatory accusations, without coming close to checking the accuracy of its sources, and I wanted to scream. This is dealing with the pros? This big-deal, New York, professional journalism organization printed stuff that it just really was pretty sure it thought was true. And suddenly there's no difference between the pros and anybody else. Suddenly, just like after every Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair or James Frey, I have to do what it seems journalists -- especially independent journalists publishing on their own sites, like this one -- constantly have to do now.

I have to promise you I'm telling the truth.

I consider myself a professional. I believe everything I tell you is true. If I have any reason to doubt, I wait; if I tell you something that seems uncertain, I tell you where I learned it and to what degree I believe it. If I make an accusation or disturbing claim (I strongly doubt on the Lawson Trek I will ever do such a thing but just the same if I do) I'll make sure I'm not running off on a single source, becoming an unwitting tool of someone with an agenda or, worse, an unwitting tool of my own agenda that I'm too blind to see. 

Everyplace I tell you I go, I really go. Everything I tell you I see, I really see. If I tell you something is true and it's old, I probably got it from a trustworthy source that I can produce; if I tell you something is true and it's current, chances are I saw it myself and have told you all about that.

Now I know -- the real tragedy here of the Rolling Stone piece of course is that there's still plenty of reasons to believe the alleged victim in that story genuinely was hurt, but because of Rolling Stone's lousy standards she'll now find it very hard to be believed. And expanding the depth of field a bit wider, of course, we now have to worry about all (alleged!) victims of sexual misconduct being afraid to come forward because it's now one untrustworthy story harder to believe them. 

But even that's just part of the picture. The real picture is a story like the Rolling Stone story is an assault on all reporting, on all nonfiction. Those of us who tell true stories for a living have only one thing to sell: the truth of what we report. This is real. This happened. I can tell you this because I know this, and I know the difference between "I know this" and "I pretty much think I know this" and "wouldn't this be nice?" And every time Rolling Stone or one of the people I mentioned above does something like this it makes it harder and harder for people like me to tell the truth and make a living at it, because the temptation to tell lies -- or to lower your standards when the story just seems really, really good or worth it -- is constant. 

The Rolling Stone mess doesn't just make it harder for rape victims telling the truth. It makes it harder for people telling the truth about climate change or evolution or the moon landings. Or their childhoods or racism or sexism. Or long walks around the Carolinas looking for the path of someone else who passed through 300 years ago.