THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 26, 1995 TAG: 9507260036
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: Eco-Adventures: a continuing series, takes you to places to see
animals, birds and beautiful landscapes.
SOURCE: BY LISE OLSEN, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
A TALL PINEY WOOD filled with Indians, with buffalo, with wild turkey and bears. A broad river teeming with oysters, and immense sturgeon - a river so broad that on misty days its opposite shore is lost in the horizon.
A place, an early colonist described as having: ``fair medowes and goodly tall trees with such Fresh-waters running through the woods, as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof.''
Such was Virginia and its main highway - the River James - as explorers knew it. One of them was Pocahontas, historic figure turned Disney character in a feature film out this summer.
Tidewater Virginia has much changed in 300 years: The bear and the wild turkey retreated to its wildest corners. The buffalo and the sturgeon disappeared.
But herds of white-tailed deer, the raccoon, and other birds and beasts remain part of the James River woodlands of today.
Visitors can walk through the woods in moccasins, listening to the spirits of nature, as Pocahontas, the Indian princess, must have done as a child. They can amble through woods in many of the same spots where she lived - and find similar things to wonder about.
In the reeds of Jamestown Island, there are signs of the work of muskrats and beaver, who build their homes from sticks and reeds. Some lucky visitors this week spotted a lone bald eagle.
Even in Sunday's near 100-degree heat, I saw two doe ambling through the shadows of the island's thick wood. With them was a tiny fawn, perhaps 3 weeks old, still speckled with spots that well matched the mottled ground. They are part of a herd of more than 100, according to author and amateur naturalist Bill Snyder, who has spent more than 25 years exploring this land.
The deer grazed in the shade, then scurried off toward the swamp, perhaps to wallow in its cool muck, as Snyder guessed.
Pocahontas, whose Indian name was Matoaka, lived on this Island for a time as a captive of the English, a point the Disney film about her life does not include. But she also fell in love there - not with John Smith, but with a man named John Rolfe. Rolfe was the first planter to sell Virginia tobacco, kicking off an industry that still smokes.
For hundreds of years, the land at Jamestown Island was farmed, remnants of the final furrows still show in some spots. But it has been allowed to return to an almost wild state, with the exception of one loop tour road and the archeological site that marks what's left of the original settlement.
Many of Virginia's native trees have reclaimed the land: loblolly pine, black gum, walnut, oak. Entwined in them are enormous grape vines that bear fruit in the fall - part of the wealth of wild berries that fed early residents. Hanging from a tree in the parking lot at Jamestown Sunday was a strand of mistletoe. I would have missed it, but Snyder pointed it out.
Perhaps more impressive than the wood is the river itself.
In Pocahontas' time, the James River was so deep that ships could be tied to trees along the shore of the island. It still can carry oceangoing vessels all the way from Richmond to Hampton Roads.
Pocahontas must traveled it in dugout canoes with her tribe, and in a clipper ship with her husband.
Modern day visitors can cross the river in a ferry for $4 - worth it for the 20-minute chance to gaze at its wide, gray beauty. Aboard, I watched as an osprey fed her nest-lings. As Jamestown Island slowly faded into the mist, jet skiers flew past.
Pocahontas lived on the south side of the James too. She and her husband had a house near a site called Smith's Fort Plantation in Surry County.
In Surry County, too, is Hog Island, a wildlife refuge where settlers once kept pigs and where birds now gather by the hundreds.
It is also on the south side where the James River shore is most impressive: Its bluffs make high cliffs in an otherwise flat landscape. And its beaches are strewn with ancient fossils that the settlers once used to lime their fields. These are remnants of a huge inland sea that gave birth to the James itself.
But my favorite spot to marvel at the river itself is from the bluff next to the visitors' center at Chippokes Plantation State Park. From that high perch, you can survey this huge river and land that has seen so many people come and go.
And wonder what the next 300 years will bring. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by TAMARA VONINSKI, Staff
Photo by TAMARA VONINSKI, Staff
The woodlands of Jamestown Island are home to several deer. Included
in this group were two bucks, four does and a fawn.
by CNB