#22 (revisited) Shenandoah

#21 (Revisited) Monticello

I spent more time at Monticello learning about the enslaved community than ever before, and it's still not enough. Next visit, I'm skipping the house tour and focusing on the offerings around the enslaved community.  

Thomas Jefferson owned more than 600 human beings during his life. He freed only 7. Two were freed during his lifetime, and five were freed in his will.  Two were his sons, and none was the woman he owned and raped and fathered children with. Three additional slaves were allowed to leave Monticello without pursuit (two of those were also his children).

One of the men freed in Jefferson's will was Joseph Fossett. His family, however, was not only not freed, but he watched his wife and ten children go up for auction and be sold to 3 separate estates. Imagine that for a second, you've received your freedom, but your entire family is separated and gone. No really, take some time to really imagine that was your family.

Jefferson believed female slaves represented to best way to increase his holdings. Why? Their fertility allowed a "self-reproducing enslaved population". That made me sick to even just type. He viewed them as capital, especially after the importation of slaves was banned in 1807.

"I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. What she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption."

And, if nothing else, he wasn't afraid to father and enslave his own children after raping their mother. Hell of a guy, that Thomas Jefferson. Sally Hemings had no legal right to refuse unwanted sexual advances from her owner. Did she use Jefferson's affections to shape the lives of her and her children and protect them from the worst of slavery? Yes, she did. Did she return Jefferson's affections? Possibly, yes. Their emotional relationship was probably complicated, but we should always remember - she was smart, and she was savvy, and she was still enslaved and had no choice.

Sally Hemings was the half-sister of Martha Jefferson (Thomas' wife). Three of her four grandparents were white. Sally was 14 when she was sent to Paris and 16 when she returned to Virginia. She was pregnant was she arrived back in Virgina. She was a child, possibly as young as 14 when Jefferson first assaulted her. She was never legally emancipated.  

I've struggled with the notion of Jefferson as this great thinker who wrote "All men are created equal" and also enslaved men. On this visit I think I cracked it.  Jefferson really and truly believed that all men are created equal, but blacks were not men, not really, not in his mind. He absolutely believed they were inferior, less than actually human. And additionally, he was too invested in his own personal wealth and extravagant lifestyle to give up being a slave owner.  He would never sacrifice some of his material comforts and deign to live in a cabin to pay free men any sort of wage. 

Daveed Diggs said, "I think if you embrace all of his contradictions, you can end up with a lot of things about him that are great, but you still have to remember that he was a slave owner."

Also from Daveed and possibly my favorite way to think about our Founders in general, "You don't have to separate these things with Jefferson.  He can have written this incredible document and several incredible documents with things we all believe in, and he sucks."

#197 West Virginia's White-Water Rafting

"With some of the largest thrills per rapid ratios anywhere in North America, West Virginia's rivers are regularly ranked among the top ten white-water runs in the world, passing through a landscape so rugged (and so similar to that of Idaho and Colorado) that it's often referred to as the West of the East.  Most outfitters suggest getting your feet wet in the poorly named New River (actually the second oldest river in the world after the Nile), which has as many calm stretches as white water pools. A 53-mile stretch at the upper part of the river's full 230-mile length has been named as a national scenic river, and in summer is so calm you could even bring Grandma [or Cortney] along."

"In the south-central part of the state, amid deep gorges and rough, wooded Appalachian terrain, the intimidating Gauley River is the state's most challenging - narrower, longer, and twice as steep as the New River.  During "Fall Release," when the dam is opened for twenty-three days in early September to lower man-made Summersville Lake, the powerful river is the place to be for steep drops with names like "Heaven Help You" and "Pure Screaming [Hell]" and nonstop back to back class IV and V rapids."

I did the Lower Gauley on the last day of the Fall Release and rafted both the rapids mentioned in above.  It was amazing.  Also, rapids always have the best names. On this site you can check out the rapids and watch videos of them all.  ACE was the outfitter I went with and they put this together.

• Fuzzy Box of Kittens - Class III
• Wood's Ferry - Class IV
• Ender Waves - Class III
• Chainsaw - Class III
• Back Ender - Class IV
• Koontz Flume - Class V
• Canyon Doors - Class III
• Junkyard - Class III
• Upper Mash - Class IV
• Lower Mash - Class V
• Diagonal Ledges - Class III
• Heaven Help You - Class V
• Rocky Top - Class III
• Upper Staircase - Class III
• Lower Staircase - Class III
• Roller Coaster - Class III  (Yeah, it really feels like a roller coaster)
• Cliff Side - Class III
• Rattlesnake - Class III
• Rooster Tail - Class III
• Pure Screaming Hell - Class V 

Our guide was really good about giving swim direction before we entered a rapid.  Swim direction means if you get tossed out of the boat which direction is safest so you don't hit rocks or get injured.  Swim directions are: right, left, center, to the boat.  So as we were headed into Pure Screaming Hell he said, "above the Hell Hole (holes are just that - big holes in the river that you drop in to) swim direction is right, below it is left. [it could be left, then right I don't remember for sure] Either way, you're going through Hell."  

I have absolutely zero pictures.  I planned to buy the photo package that they offer (they have a pro photographer set up to take pictures at one of the Class V rapids), but somehow they messed up and didn't take any of our boat. So, yeah, nothing but words to describe the insanity that is a Class V rapid.  Especially immediately following a Class IV.  

5 Things About My Gauley Trip:

1. Someone got thrown from the boat.  He was fine, a strong swimmer, and had expressed a desire to get tossed before we started.  I had, also, started the day in that spot and absolutely knew if I stayed there I'd get tossed - and I wasn't going in the river - he was kind enough to switch with me.
2. Someone "lost" a contact on the trip.  Well, he didn't lose it because it popped out of his eye and his wife (sitting behind him) saw it teetering on his eyelashes and snatched it up.  He was able to get it back in, but a) this is why I didn't wear my contacts, and b) he closed his eyes tight through all the other hits.
3. At one point we hit a WALL of water.  After we emerged our guide said, "The whole front of the boat disappeared; I wasn't sure I still had you guys for a second."  One of the very front of the boat guys responded, "I could hear you yelling forward, but could only think "I'm underwater, does it really matter if I paddle?"
4. The Lower Gauley has some really technical rapids and I was super proud that our team of strangers (9 guests, 1 guide) really worked together as a team to get through some of those rapids.
5. Our Guide was super chill, he mostly in super calm and quiet voice give us the paddling instructions, but there were a couple of times when he would start YELLING them and I could only think, "shit's about to get real".
6. [Bonus Thing] The Upper and Lower Gauley together is 26 miles.  If you do them together you've completed the Gauley Marathon.  Lower Gauley is 10 miles of rapids with 3 miles of flat water.
7. [Bonus, Bonus Thing] I did a full day trip and it was amazing. We stopped about halfway through for lunch, but honestly, I would've rather we stop to hydrate and keep going.  All it did was make everyone cold and take us out of the groove.  But by all accounts, the lunch was good. (I didn't eat anything, but it was pulled pork and pulled chicken sandwiches.)

#196 Acadia National Park

"Mount Desert Island (from the French word meaning "bare", and pronounced like the English word dessert) is Maine's national treasure, a 12 by 14 mile domain of walks, sights, inns, and eating places that are as captivating today as when the Rockefellers, Astors, Fords, Vanderbilts, and the fellow "rusticators" founded a summer colony here in the early 20th century.  The families later bequeathed much of the island to the government, which in 1929 set aside 60 percent as Acadia National Park."



"The timeless serenity of the island is tested by the ever increasing number of visitors - its centerpiece draw, for instance, the swooping 20 mile Park Loop Road, attracts big crowds."