Rivanna River

The Rivanna River is the most meaningful spot on the tour for me. Ever since my family moved to the area, we’ve had the privilege of living right across the street from the river. No matter if the water is frozen over, turned to a murky brown after a rainstorm, or looks like a stagnant pool of nothingness in the summer heat, I feel like I can take a deep breath and relax when I walk down to the riverside. It’s very close to my heart because it brings back memories of Woodlake, the reservoir I grew up next to back in Midlothian, VA. When I was younger, I had really bad anxiety and I didn’t know how to control it. It was so crippling that I stayed in my room all of the time and stayed in my own head. I felt bad for my parents because they saw how much the anxiety affected me, so they tried everything but nothing helped. That is, until my dad came into my room very early one morning, wrapped me in a blanket, and carried me to the car, all while I was still asleep. Then, as soon as I felt a breeze on my face I woke up and found myself leaning against my dad, facing the reservoir. I swear time stopped when we watched the sun peek from the horizon. I was transfixed by the slightest movement of the reservoir that I felt should’ve been sleeping too. I admired how even the gentlest instance of a tadpole swimming to the surface caused a ripple that extended ten times bigger than the tiny amphibian, yet each wavelet was controlled and perfectly in tune with the one that came before it. From that day forward, I chose to have my anxiety imitate the ripple; something small can aggravate it and cause stress, but that stress can be controlled and eventually die down. All my senses were heightened, yet I still felt like I was in a hazy dream.

The wave of memories comes flooding back whenever I stand watching the Rivanna River. In Mishuana Goeman’s piece “Land as Life: Unsettling the Logics of Containment,” she states “any location can potentially be a sacred spot.” In that same passage, she speaks about the effects of an Indigenous person moving to an urban area, where they feel like they have left the games and spending time with family. The land is only meaningful to us if we make it meaningful or frame it as a storied site of interaction. This is why the Rivanna River is special to me, even though the place itself is tied to my personal experiences. I use memory as a tool to connect myself with my current place.

The native history of the Rivanna is a little bit more ambiguous and murky than my personal history with the land. Located on both sides of the river, called Monacan Indian Village of Monsasukapanough. Its remains are buried under the ground near the reservoir. It was Thomas Jefferson himself who conducted a scientific archaeological study of the mound, estimating that it contained the bones of at least a thousand people. His finding that the Monacans at the time had to make a deliberate attempt to go directly to the mound countered the "Lost Race" theory, which argued that Indigenous people weren't civilized enough to build their own burial mounds. Other than human remains, the few pottery shards, and wooden tools found in the burial site, the only other thing that was treasured when found was the map of Virginia in 1608 made by Captain John Smith. Smith never visited the village but relied on the Powhatans, who were powerful enough to assert the creation of historical documents. We don't know exactly where the mound was found; the only thing that indicates the location's past is a place marker. It's not surprising that it centers John Smith as the authority, while the Monacan people were described as a discovery.