Menokin Church

When playing basketball at historic Menokin Church, please return the basketball underneath the goal after scoring your final jump shot. Particularly, the basketball with a screw drilled into it. And be mindful of the gorges in the wooded acres behind the cemetery. The Tidewater, sandy soiled, Northern Neck of Virginia with its oysters and pines and epic sunsets over the indomitable Rappahannock River, provide for land shape-shifting. The ground is not stable and smells of pine and water.

All the water movement turns the land. The ravines grow deeper daily and the gorges dive down steeper every day. Fields are continually devoured by gravity. The water flows like the history around this region. The original G.W. found his landing here and navigated these waterways.

I'm trying to define the spiritual realm I am chasing around the Tidewater. The wooden pallet backboard at Menokin Church, the deep curved cut out gorges through the fields. Those who passed without freedom are buried throughout the woods edges and on the fringes of plantation properties. These facts and physical truths give me spiritual goosebumps. I want to ask questions of the past, the unwritten histories of the area, I chase that perspective. I want to hold court with my perception of the past and see how close that is to truth.

One week later:

The unsteady soil of the Tidewater has me flabbergasted. The constant shifting of the land/the fields on a flow toward the Chesapeake, toward the Atlantic. The soil moves on through the night, creating beautiful ravines and gorges. Making for beautiful contour lines on topographic maps. But, all the senses are triggered by this sandy soil. The way it smells on my hands, the way the pines infiltrate it and bring out another layer. The way the flakes of minerals sparkle off my boots when the wet soil dries. It is formless, like water. The evening air, when it catches the scent rising from the ravines is eloquent, outspoken, leaving me speechless. Always reminding me of my place in the universe and my need to breathe deeply brother and taste that piney soil in my lungs.