I don’t have much personal history with the rivers of Virginia.
Some places I visit, I see the ghost of my childhood self everywhere and memories drift up unbidden, sparked only by familiar scenery. But the river is a stranger to me and indifferent to my presence on its banks. Over the course of a long summer day, I will get to know this waterway. It’s a brief introduction, but it’s enough to move the James River from stranger to friend.
I really like Mark Twain’s metaphor for the river. For him, a river is a book. He, of course, could read the mighty Mississippi with ease. He writes in Life on the Mississippi that the features of the river are as familiar to him as the alphabet. When I look at the river, I see an unknown language, so I stumble along trying to read the pages barely comprehending the secrets of currents, rapids, flora, and the mysterious rise and fall of the water.
We began at the James River Runners, a rafting and tubing rental business that gave our group everything we needed for a day drifting down the river. We expected to go tubing, but the river was too high and thus too dangerous for tubing. We had to take the rafts. To us the river looked calm, sedate, completely safe especially for our group used to ocean tides, toppling waves, and dangerous rip currents.
But if the true readers of the river said we had to raft instead of tube, we trusted their expertise. If I couldn’t trust them, I could certainly trust Twain who lamented the loss of innocence that comes with knowing the dangers of the river which lay people can’t read. Most people are transfixed by the beauty, but those entrusted with safe river passage read every ripple for lurking dangers.
The River Runners loaded up the trailer with the rafts and drove us upriver to the place where we would begin our drifting and floating and bumping back down to our parked cars. The drive took no time at all, but the winding river would take all day in our rafts.
For most of the journey, we meandered at the pace we could paddle. Occasionally, we hit mini rapids and we picked up the pace with the rushing water that bubbled up around rock formations and sent us swirling and squealing as we felt the river take control of the raft. Our paddles were briefly useless as the mild turbulence rushed through us and the rocks looked a bit menacing. I was glad for the community of the raft instead of the lone tube that I’m not sure I could have maneuvered safely over the gurgling rapids.
Long stretches like river meadows followed the small patches of rapids. In these calm waters, we stretched out in the sun, cooled off in the water, and grew lazy with every hour. I noticed that the river seemed to have rooms, little alcoves around bends and turns and watery side streets that could lead us easily astray. I wondered about the whims of nature, the haphazard design of it, water as sculptor carving out a masterpiece from the land.
It seemed contained by the banks, but that’s a shortsighted view of the world, for the water will have its way, a flood of creation or a steady, creeping overflow. I probably would never see it coming, would miss all the signs until the water was rising over my landlocked body, soaking my muddied feet, creeping over my ankles. The River Runners would read the foreshadowing on the river, but it would have to be frothing from the page for me to see it.
On this day on the river, we didn’t need to worry about rising waters or raging rapids.
The river was lazy, and we took our cues from its bounty of calm.
#67 Lazy River Days
My grandparents lived in Hampton right near the Colosseum and we would often go down to the James River to picnic. I never knew that you could raft or tube down it as my grandparents and my mother were deathly afraid of the water lol I wish I had known that when I visit Virginia I will go back and do this with my family. If it was offered back then I would never have known. Thank you for the story♥️