Hunting for Herons - Chesapeake, VA

We originally saw the decorated, much celebrated Chicago cows in … well, Chicago, of course. That was eons ago and I never snapped a photo. In fact, there weren't digital cameras available then now that I think about it, nor phones that took photos. We thought the painted cows were cool, but hey, it was Chicago, what would you expect? Then we found painted lobster statues in Rockland, Maine. Well over a decade ago, we found a school of mermaids in Norfolk, Virginia. There were much adorned giant-sized boots in Wyoming, colorful buffalos in South Dakota and classy catamounts in Vermont. The list went on and in each place, we appreciated the local color.

Well, now we're in Chesapeake, VA and it's blue herons that have stolen the show and are popping up all over town. The work of local artists makes each blue heron sculpture unique. Each proud-looking, cold-cast bronze sculpture stands 6' tall. The Blue Heron Project is a Chesapeake City community initiative that adorns the city with public art in the form of its icon, the blue heron. It not only beautifies the city, but its ambitious goal is to raise $1 million for education.

We're limited by where our feet will take us, but we've found at least a half dozen within a few miles of the marina and it's been well worth the walk.

The blue heron seems to be an appropriate icon choice for Chesapeake City. We've seen blue herons a-plenty on our morning walks along the Elizabeth River.

Even the local weather vanes tout this celebrated avian fellow.

Evidently there are many more locally decorated icons in the Chesapeake Bay area … the mermaids we spoke of in Norfolk, but also pigs in Smithfield, horses in the Outer Banks and dolphins in Virginia Beach, to name a few. We'll be on the look-out for more celebrated icons in our travels.

History Lessons While We Walk

I mentioned in a previous blog that the Great Bridge area of Chesapeake, Virginia is rich in history, especially relating to Revolutionary and Civil War battles. There are informational signs and markers everywhere and we've found it interesting to roam around on foot and soak up a little history. Walking through the Great Bridge Battlefields and Waterways Park is like stepping back in history.

According to Wiki, “its name is derived from the American Revolutionary War of Great Bridge, which took place on December 9, 1775 and resulted in the final removal of the Brits from the Virginia Colony.

Though the battles of Lexington and Concord took place months earlier, and are historically more memorable, the Battle of Great Bridge can be seen as the first strategically important colonial victory over the British, forcing Lord Dunmore's 200 redcoats to evacuate Fort Murray and withdraw to Norfolk.” A huge mural on the side of a local building commemorates the victory.

The “bridge” was originally just a narrow 10' wide causeway and remnants of it still remain under and around the modern Great Bridge bascule bridge, now situated about 50 yards to the south of the original bridge. The modern Great Bridge spans the ICW/ Albermarle and Chesapeake Canal. A replica of the original causeway is just one of the illustrative displays at the park.

Just across Battlefield Boulevard (yup, that's the name of the main street, aka VA-168) is the Great Bridge Locks Park. This waterway was critical for getting supplies to the Confederates during the Civil War and the Union worked hard to blockade it. The famous Battle of the Merrimack and the Monitor took places just a few miles up the Chesapeake River at Hampton Roads. There's a huge, 7,900 pound ship's anchor sitting on the lawn reputedly from the USS Hartford. The USS Hartford was most noted for its victory in the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864 when its captain, Admiral Farragut, shouted “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” The ship was dismantled at the Norfolk Navy Yard not far away from here and her parts were buried on vacant land along the Elizabeth River. In 2001, the anchor was discovered during excavation and moved here.

Beyond the history of wars and battles there are several informational placards describing the building of the nearby Great Dismal Swamp Canal and the Albermarle and Chesapeake Canal. The Great Dismal Swamp Canal was hand dug and opened in 1805. In the 1820s, Marshall Parks, Sr. was commissioned to deepen and widen the canal to accommodate larger, deeper draft steam vessels. His son, Marshall Parks, Jr. took over when his dad died in 1840, and completed the Albermarle and Chesapeake Canal in 1859. He was one of the first to envision and encourage the connecting of inland waterways along the east coast of the USA … today's Intracoastal Waterway (ICW).

The actual Great Bridge Lock is “located approximately 750 yards west of the Great Bridge Bridge, and is the western terminus of the Virginia Cut of the Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal. This tidal guard lock is a reversible-head, double-gated structure 600 feet long and 72 feet wide, with a depth of 16 feet. Its primary function is to prevent saltwater intrusion from the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River into the freshwater North Landing River and to control tidal currents from these two rivers. [...]The first Great Bridge Lock was built by the Albemarle & Chesapeake Canal Company in 1859. The original Great Bridge Lock survived until 1917, when the Canal was widened. For fifteen years thereafter there was no lock, causing bitter complaints from shippers and local residents. [...]Under the management of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Great Bridge Lock was completed on June 16, 1932.” From a strategic vantage point just west of the bridge, we can easily see boats and barges entering and leaving the locks as the locks open and close, usually in scheduled sync with the opening of the Great Bridge. We'll be heading through these locks in a few days as we make out way west to the Chesapeake Bay.

All in all, our morning walks have been quite educational and entertaining, while still fulfilling some of our daily exercise requirements. Multi-tasking at its best.

Building Walls

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall...

Robert Frost, “Mending Walls”

There have been lots of walls built throughout history … usually to keep someone or something in or out. The 5,500 mi (8,850 km) Great Wall of China, was purportedly begun in the 7th century BCE, the majority of the existing wall built during the Ming Dynasty(1368–1644). Visiting the wall is on my bucket list. I'd like to stand on it and ponder the feeling that millions of feet have walked this wall over centuries before me. It was built as an elaborate defense system to protect the “civilized” Chinese folks from the nomadic northern invaders.

Hadrian's Wall, a 73-mile barricade, was built c.122AD under the orders of Emperor Hadrian “to protect Roman Britain from the Picts and the other barbarian tribes that inhabited northern England and Scotland.” We stayed in Chester on one of our trips to England, so we could get up close and personal with this wall.

According to Wiki, the Wailing Wall, an ancient limestone wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, is a relatively small segment of a far longer ancient retaining wall, known in its entirety as the "Western Wall". The wall was originally erected as part of the expansion of the Second Jewish Temple by Herod (although some would claim differently). The wall resulted in the encasement of the natural, steep hill known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray.

It has also been called the "Wailing Wall", referring to the practice of Jews weeping at the site over the destruction of the Temples. The wall has been a site for Jewish prayer and pilgrimage for centuries; the earliest source mentioning this specific site as a place of worship is from the 16th century.

When we were in Peru, we had the opportunity to visit some the of walls built by the Incas. In Sacsayhuaman on the northern outskirts of Cuzco, the capital of the Inca empire, a citadel was built using huge boulders, cut to fit so tightly and exactly, no mortar was needed. We marveled at the craftsmenship of these masons.

In more modern times, the Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (i.e. East Germany) that completely divided East Berlin and West Berlin (East Germany from West Germany and ostensibly from the rest of the world) from 1961 to 1989. It became symbolic of the “Iron Curtain” that separated the Eastern Bloc countries from Western Europe.

And then, of course, there's Trump's proposed wall along the Mexican border … we won't go there … too politically hot to touch on this blog.

So what has triggered my pondering of walls? David's recent masonry project. He built a 5' high cinder block wall in our new back yard which matches with the wall that encompasses our property. We're walled in or the neighbors are walled out, whichever way you wish to look at it.

It was no easy project. We loaded 72 – 6x8x16 cement blocks weighing 28 lbs each, along with 10 cement caps and 14 half blocks onto three separate trolleys at Home Depot. We rented a truck from Home Depot, loaded the blocks onto the truck, unloaded them in the driveway, then hauled them through the gate to the backyard and stacked them for the wall-building project. Whew! The easy part was actually building the wall. After painting it the same color as the house, it looks great. The result was not to keep anyone or anything in or out, but to enclose the unsightly A/C system and make an enclosure for storing garden tools and supplies.