If he were still around, what would Robert Kincaid say?

As globetrotting professional photographer Robert Kincaid looked through the viewfinder of his Nikon F3 camera, focusing on the barn-red Roseman Bridge which would become the cover photo for his 1965 pictorial on “The Bridges of Madison County,” he could surely not have foreseen the 2023 fate of National Geographic magazine.

It was ironic, as The Washington Post wrote last week, that “like one of the endangered species whose impending extinction it has chronicled, National Geographic magazine has been on a relentlessly downward path, struggling for vibrancy in an increasingly unforgiving ecosystem.”

After 135 years surveying science and the natural world, the iconic magazine has laid off all of its remaining staff writers. The cutback was the second in the past nine months, and the fourth since 2015 following a series of ownership changes.

But any extraordinary reorganization strategies related to the magazine’s editorial operations proved only cursory. Photo contracts that in the past enabled photographers to spend months in the field producing the magazine’s iconic images have been curtailed. With the departure of the final 19 editorial staffers, article assignments will be contracted out to freelancers or pieced together by remaining editors.

In addition, you won’t find copies of the famous bright-yellow-bordered print publication on U.S. newsstands beginning next year, yet another cost-cutting move.

The magazine’s trajectory, akin to an asteroid burning up and disappearing after hitting Earth’s atmosphere, has been years coming. The decline of print — which still threatens newspapers and has already claimed many well-known magazine titles with either more infrequent print editions or ceasing publication completely, casualties that include Coastal Living, Ladies Home Journal, Life, Look, Martha Stewart Living, McCall’s, Midwest Living, Newsweek, Playboy, Redbook, Sports Illustrated, Time and Traditional Home — led to the ascent, if not domination, of digital-only publications. To be sure, in the light-speed world of digital media, National Geographic remains defiantly artisanal — a monthly magazine whose photos, graphics and articles were sometimes the result of months of research and reporting.

But it was only a matter of time for one of the world’s most recognizable magazines. Soon to join others as digital-only, printed copies of the magazine that aren’t already part of a private collection will heretofore only be found in antique stores and thrift stores. At its peak in the 1980s, National Geographic had 12 million subscribers in the U.S., along with millions more overseas. It remained among the most widely read magazines in America at a time when magazines are no longer widely read. By 2022, it had less than 1.8 million subscribers.

Many of its devotees so savored its illumination of other worlds — space, the depths of the ocean, little-seen parts of the planet — that they stack old issues into piles that cluttered attics and basements. I count myself among them. I have several bookshelves filled with National Geographic magazines, primarily from the 1930s, ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, that I’ve acquired from antique stores, thrift stores and garage sales.

In my youth, when computers were only seen in science fiction movies and telephones with rotary dials remained tethered within the confines of our house, National Geographic was our window on the universe. The magazine gave us a front-row seat to faraway galaxies, underwater mysteries and exotic foreign lands we never expected to be able to visit. National Geographic — along with volumes of encyclopedias — were our version of today’s computer that is now instantly accessible via our cellphone.

And just as National Geographic was reaching its zenith years before its quiet, imminent decline, Robert Kincaid (who looked remarkably like Clint Eastwood) arrived in Iowa for a photoshoot of Madison County’s covered bridges, and ended up wooing unfulfilled farmwife Francesca Johnson (who bore a striking resemblance to Meryl Streep). Their time together lasted only four memorable days, but when the National Geographic edition was published with Roseman Bridge on the cover, Francesca recalled with melancholy ebbing toward glee, how all Madison Countians must have viewed the exposure: “Remember how we felt like celebrities?” The movie and the magazine were in harmony, reminding us not only of love’s volatility, but also of the magazine’s reach and romance.

I haven’t taken the time recently to sit down and reminisce while leafing through the pages of my old editions of National Geographic — featuring the familiar old laurel and oak leaf border that were a casualty in later years as the magazine tried in vain to keep up with other periodicals — but I think I might do that this weekend. The fragile pages, vivid photography, compelling stories and transformation to yesteryear all make it a trip worth taking, if only for an hour or two.