Voices of the Rappahannock

The river has many voices. At her infant headwaters in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Chester Gap, she chortles just like a scurry-crawling newborn as she gambols over the rocks.

By the time she reaches the fall line and the Falmouth white water just above Fredericksburg she seems to laugh out loud, passing us here on her way through, bound for Port Royal and Portabago Bay and then to a confluence with the Chesapeake Bay.

Just below the Falmouth bridge, though, she settles into mature and soft spoken adulthood. 

Ultimately the Chesapeake Bay will subsume her flow as it did the mighty
Potomac and these matrons of old Virginia will blend all they bring with them with the Chesapeake's outflow into the Atlantic Ocean.

Perhaps she knows that in another 80 miles she will reach Saluda as an old woman, contentedly  murmuring  memories to herself, memories and wisdom she has gathered on her journey along these history filled banks, preserving her quiet tales of years past in a whispered secret shared with those who still listen to the old ones. Mostly though, she just talks to herself as The Elders often must do. At Saluda she will bequeath 184 miles of memory and a thousand years of wisdom to the bay. 

Comments

[Uncle Jack]

Not to mention a load of agricultural by-products? Very poetic, Jim. What are you ingesting these days? I want some. Uncle Jack

[Charlie, aka Admiral Pooper Scooper]

Nikki's right. Beautiful word images. Beautiful photo images. Beautiful journal (I hate "blog".) You must be a beautiful person.

Nah.