The first path to the river
Before there was a plan, there was a path. In the summer of 2022, the only way to reach the river through our stretch of it was to make one. The ground between the road and the water was low, wet, and thick, more swamp than trail, and the Shenandoah was somewhere on the far side of all of it, close enough to hear on a quiet day and impossible to walk to.
So we cut a path. Nothing engineered, nothing permitted, just the first rough line hacked and dragged through the undergrowth until you could actually put a truck on it and follow it down toward the water. It is the least sophisticated thing we have ever done here and one of the most important, because it turned an idea you could only look at on a map into a place you could stand in.
I brought the kids. That is the picture at the top of this post, and it tells you more about why we are doing this than anything I could write. The first time you push through the last of the brush and the river opens up in front of you, you understand the whole project in about four seconds.
Everything that has come since, the surveys, the clearing, the piers, the permits, started here, on a wet path we made ourselves so we could finally reach the water. It is where the story actually begins.
- The first rough path reached the river, turning a place you could only look at into one you could walk to.
A dry, solid place to keep the tools that would build everything after.
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