NEON District

     Earlier in the month on a gray wet day I participated in planting a rain garden in the NEON District of Norfolk. NEON has little to do with electrified gasses, rather it stands for New Energy of Norfolk, and the powers-that-be have designated this area as the city's arts district. As clunky as the name is, I do applaud the city for promoting the arts, especially in a part of town where the nearby downtown economic boom has been slow to catch hold. A little support, and a little prodding from the city, and now there are galleries, theater spaces, a comedy club, restaurants, and a vacant lot called The Plot which has become a community gathering place. On the day we were there, we planted several pond cypress (Taxodium ascendens), and a couple of grasses. Throughout the district plants have been tucked here and there, mostly through the efforts of volunteer groups, like the Master Gardeners.

     Along an otherwise boring chain-link fence, a colorful garden had been sown, or maybe sewn.

     Many of the walls in the NEON Distract are painted with murals and sanctioned graffiti. My favorite is by artist, Christopher Revels, whose normal medium is sidewalk chalk, which he uses to draw his Walking Houses. Revels' houses are always drawn on stilts above water, an appropriate image for a city second only to New Orleans under threat due to sea level rise. These images speak to me personally. Since I was a teen, a recurring theme in many of my dreams has been water and waves washing under stilted beach houses, taking carefree beach-goers out to sea, only to return them on the next wave unharmed, back on the beach.

          Thankfully downtown Norfolk is a much different place then the ghost town it was when I first lived here 40 years ago, but it would not have happened without a great deal of push and effort. Gritty has always come naturally here, but edgy and hip has taken work.

Early Fall on the Lower Chickahominy

     This past Saturday I took my kayak to the Chickahominy River, close to where it meets the James. This was not my first time here. When I was a child my father belonged to a rod and gun club with a cabin on a bluff overlooking one of the river's tributaries, and visits there are some of my fondest place memories. The water here is brackish, more fresh than salt, but still subject to the tides. This mix of different waters allows for an abundant diversity of animal and plant species, which made hunger a little less threatening to the native Americans who once called this place home. It was here that Capt. John Smith was captured, and taken to the chief of the Powhatans. As the flawed story goes, Smith's life was eventually spared by Pocahontas, the chief's daughter. Today the river and its tributaries remain relatively free from development, and save for a few houses and a bridge or two, it is easy to imagine what the Chickahominy may have looked liked centuries ago.

     The Chickahominy has become one of my favorite places to paddle, and after any time spent there I always come away renewed. Part of the allure for me are the trees, specifically bald cypress (Taxodium distichum), and the opportunity to paddle between their knees and underneath their canopies. At the moment this species is tied for first place with live oak (Quercus virginiana) as my favorite tree. This weekend they were just beginning to sport their fall orange color. As I rounded one clump of cypress I could hear a loud commotion created by a pair of belted kingfishers, whose calls always sound like bitching to me. They were upset by a wake of vultures and a juvenile bald eagle perched in the trees along their part of the river. The kingfishers would not rest until the intruders were gone, and the presence of a lumbering middle-aged man in a bright red kayak was enough to push the raptors on their way, quieting the kingfishers. The lone eagle joined several others further down the shoreline; the place is thick with them, almost like pigeons.

     In one area of the river some of the cypresses looked as if they had been frosted. While it made for interesting photos, the "frost" was actually a coating of guano, probably from cormorants, or egrets.

     The cypress were not the only trees with fall color. A few red maples (Acer rubrum) right next to the shore were starting to turn, as were a few sweetgums (Liquidambar styraciflua), both a little further along, color-wise, then their kin on drier land. In many of the trees poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) climbed in shades of red, orange, and yellow, proving that even one of our most reviled plants can have its moment. All over the coast here, not just along the Chickahominy, the white blooms of saltbush let you know what time of year it is.

     Eventually I had to leave the river, and as I neared the campground where the landing was, I was brought back to reality. One camper at a site right on the river was busy hanging his oversized American flag on a pop-up tent, right next to his oversized "Make America Great Again" flag so, all the other campers and everyone on the water would have no doubt as to where he stood. Who does this on a camping trip? My gut response was to yell adjectives, but that would have been just as bad as waving oversized flags in other people's faces, and I didn't want to find out if he was exercising robust second amendment rights as well. I feel like we are living in a land of multiple realities these days, with collisions an ever present danger. I think I prefer a reality full of birds, paddling on mixed waters under bald cypress.